"I don't want your hand-me-downs."

You either love them or hate them. This mum hates them.

I am a few weeks away from giving birth to my first baby.

It’s a girl and I can’t tell you how excited my husband and I are. We tried for nearly 10 years for this precious one.

Ten hard years of fertility struggles. If you’ve been through it, you will know it isn’t easy.

So I want everything to be perfect for my little girl, because I am too old now to have another. This is it. My one chance.

You’ll have to forgive me if this doesn’t sit right with you but I feel really strongly that putting my newborn in your old baby clothes just doesn’t mesh with my picture of perfection. It is far from it.

My dilemma is that the good will of excited neighbours and relatives has turned me into the baby item dumping ground of our suburb.

Every few days another well-meaning mum will show up with another bag of clothes, another used baby swing, another box of germy toys.

I’ve been accepting them, not wanting to offend, but I have no intention of ever using them, so they sit piled up in a spare room, still in boxes and bags waiting for a more welcoming destination.

I don’t quite know what to do with the growing pile of goods. I know I could donate them to charity but that seems wrong too – giving away someone else’s stuff.

I can see that some of you might think I am being unreasonable.

I fully realise that babies aren’t cheap, are they?

But my husband and I have waited and saved and planned for a very long time for this daughter and nothing will be good enough for her but the best.

I long to pick out each tiny babygro, each little pair of pink ruffled socks, I want to pin back her hair with sparkly clips, and wrap her up in soft cashmere shawls.

I have her nursery nearly ready and I don’t need to add your old blankets with milk stains, or your already-used-by-three-children rocking horse.

I don’t begrudge others who want to use second hand items, but it just isn’t for us.

I worry, I must confess, about germs and stains, and things that simply won’t fit. I worry if they are organic or whether they are washed in allergy free laundry powder.

I can see that sounds a bit pretentious, but I just want the best for my daughter.

What I don’t know is how exactly I can explain that to the donators.

Just the other day a mother pulled up with two huge green garbage bags packed to the brim with her children’s old clothes.

Some of them weren’t washed, they were a tad musty and some were even boy’s clothes.

How do I return them without hurting this mother’s feelings? I am sure I am not alone in this problem everyone wants things to be perfect for their first don’t they?

She’s going to be my only child - I’m not going to get a second chance so I don’t want to spoil it with second hand items.

What advice can you give this soon-to-be-Mum? Do you like hand-me-downs or can you empathise with her point of view?

Want more? Try:

“I’m so sad that my children had to do this today.”

“I confess…being a mum is really boring.”

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