Pampers


Crying at work everyday is great craic.


So is arguing with yourself, with everyone else, about whether we should be there at all?


It’s a lot easier to be the dickhead with the camera when you’re at something that’s obviously fun or celebratory but when the alarms go off and the nurses and doctors start rushing in you quickly feel like a spare tit.


Bliss are the UK’s main charity for anything to do with premature babies and they’re who introduced us to the neonatal intensive care unit down in Southampton. We never have as much cash as you’d expect to throw around on these gigs, never going to make anyone rich, so it’s about finding people who are open and interested in being involved in the first place. Pampers of course made a donation to Bliss for their indispensable help but they got stuck in well before any of that chat happened.


Having a premature baby is a scary, isolating thing. Parents are disconnected for weeks or months on end from their families by being on the ward and disconnected from their little ones by the incubators. Bliss wanted us to put something on air that wasn’t just a “sad, sick baby ad” but something that said to all the parents on all the wards up and down the country, “This is sad, of course it is, and it’s a bit unusual but you’re not at all alone or weird. There’s plenty of other mums and dads out there in the same situation, worrying the same worries and fighting the same fight”.


With that in mind we stuck to it and after a few visits we started to see our babies put on weight, we started to see them come out of the incubators for longer and longer each day then not need them at all. We saw cots getting built and nurseries ready and waiting for their new owner. Then we got to see a family go home and suddenly it was obviously fun and celebratory and we were all crying again!

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