WHERE would new mums be without their wet wipes warmer? Can someone explain to me how we survived before we had the capacity to keep up to 100 bum buffers warm so our little ones don't have to suffer the shock and distress of a cold wipe in the middle of the night?

If only scientists hadn't been wasting their time searching for cancer cures and environmentally-friendly energy sources, we could have had this vital innovation installed in every home years ago. Just think of all the endless hours of counselling we could have saved our poor damaged children, traumatised from such a young age by cruel mothers wielding unheated moist wipes.

And it is not just that they are moist and warm, the housing unit also comes complete with a pop-up lid for one-handed dispensing! All this and it is only £25. What a bargain.

Or maybe it is just yet another over-priced gadget aimed at parents with more money than sense. And there are a lot of us about. It is not that we have a lot of cash as such, it is just that the mind-shrinking reality of life with a newborn means that our money-to-sense ratio is weighted heavily on the side of our wallets.

Sleep deprivation and the exhausting daily treadmill of looking after a tiddler makes new parents - and new mums in particular - easy targets for the latest bit of nonsense that manufacturers say you absolutely must have to raise a happy, well adjusted child. Don't buy their product and you will, of course, unleash a gibbering maniac on the world: a child bent on destruction and picking off his classmates with a rifle from the roof of the school cafeteria.

We all know it's nonsense, but we also don't want our child to feel deprived. So we buy the latest doohickey, place it lovingly in the nursery - perhaps in a specially made holding unit (yours for just £21.99!) - and then leave it to gather dust until we need the space for the next bit of essential baby kit.

The sensible thing now would be to repackage the doohickey and take it to the nearest charity shop. Or dump, whichever is closer. But no, instead we wrap it up in numerous bags and bung it in the loft because, even though we haven't used it this time, it will come in very handy for the next baby.

Or is it just me? Am I the only one with a loft stuffed to the rafters with more baby bits and bobs than Mothercare? Do the manufacturers really only make these wet wipe warmers, musical potties and shantala buckets for me?

Yes, I bought a "night feed system" only to discover that it was actually easier to bung a bottle in a jug of hot water. And I readily admit that I paid good money for an electronic bottle warmer only to discover, once again, that it was actually easier to bung a bottle in a jug of hot water. But much as I would like to think I'm the only one, I imagine there are many thousands of similar suckers out there.

Baby care is so much easier than it was a generation ago. Our mums didn't enjoy the convenience of disposable nappies, formula you can make in advance or wet wipes (warm or otherwise).

My own dear Mama often gazes at the bottles lined up in the fridge or the nappies piled up (sort of) neatly in the cupboard with something not a million miles away from adoration. But my newfangled gadgets - my musical nappy bag dispenser and my heated navel defluffer - get little more than a raised eyebrow and a disbelieving shake of the head. And quite right too.

They are nothing more than wallet-emptying, space-filling bits of modern nonsense. Apart, of course, from the musical nappy bag dispenser and heated navel defluffer. These don't actually exist but give the manufacturers a couple of years and they could be yours for just £25.99 (batteries - and brain cells - not included).

Updated: 09:13 Tuesday, September 02, 2003