The MadeForMums Community: how parents and parents-to-be help us make our content better
Here's how the brilliant parents and parents-to-be in our communities collaborate with our expert writers to shape MadeForMums articles and recommendations – to help all parents make confident choices
Our goal at MadeForMums is that, whatever parenting stage you are at, we can give you the information and advice you need to make the right choices for your family.
And our MadeForMums communities play a vital role in helping us do that.
That's because we believe that our expertly sourced, thoroughly checked reviews and pregnancy and parenting content becomes even more useful when it's enriched with the real-life experiences (and pictures) of other parents who are on – or have been on – the same parenting journey as you.
Here are some of the MadeForMums communities we collaborate with most often – and how they help us make our articles and recommendations real, reliable and super-trustworthy...
MadeForMums Top Testers Club
Our MadeForMums Top Testers Club is a 4,000-member-strong community of parents and parents-to-be, who test, rate and review pregnancy, parenting and family products for us – and recommend to us other products they use and love.
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When you read our 10 of the Best product-recommendation articles, you will see pictures of the Top Testers (and, often, their children) who've thoroughly tested each product, along with their super-honest feedback.
Top Testers are central to the judging of our MadeForMums Awards and MadeForMums Toy Awards, too. Every single shortlisted entry is put through its paces by at least 2 Top Testers, as well as scrutinised by our expert judges.
Our Top Testers also collaborate with us to enrich other content on our site – from making Easter bunny face-painting videos and demonstrating toddler games you can play indoors to sharing birth stories and pictures of pregnancy ultrasound scans to help us explain the nub theory for predicting a boy or a girl.
The MadeForMums Bump Project
For the MadeForMums Bump Project, we recruited a group of women who'd just found out they were pregnant and followed 29 of them all the way through their pregnancy until their baby was born.
Every week, we asked them to rate their mood, tell us how they were feeling physically and take a pic of their growing bump. Each of them also tracked the purchases they made on pregnancy and baby products, and recorded a weekly video, audio or written diary.
With our Bump Project community, we shared nine months of joys, worries, symptoms, scans, endless hunts for a comfy maternity bra – and of course, the arrivals of the new little people in their lives.
And, thanks to their amazing collaboration with us, we've built up an incredibly detailed picture of the pregnancy journey, with all the different ups and downs it can take.
Our articles about pregnancy and birth often contain quotes – and pictures – from the women in our Bump Project, and their different experiences of everything from morning sickness to Braxton Hicks have helped us add real-life context to the advice and info our expert writers provide.
The MadeForMums Chat forum
Our MadeForMums Chat forum is the place where, over the years, thousands of women – and a fair few men – have gathered to share their experiences of trying to conceive, being pregnant, giving birth and looking after a baby.
It's a friendly community where you can come to celebrate the things that are going great – and have a moan about the things that aren't. You can make friends with others who are pregnant, or trying to get pregnant, at the same time as you, compare symptoms, ask each other questions, share advice and find some really great support.
And it's also a place where we can chat to you, too. Our forum community helps us to understand more about what pregnant women are thinking about and going through from day to day, and what things they want to know more about.
As a result, we often use quotes and pictures from our forum community to enrich our articles about pregnancy and conception – from what a very faint (positive) line on a pregnancy test looks like to how much your bump can drop when your baby's head is engaged.
Illustration: Jordan Edmonds Moore; Pics: With thanks to members of the Top Testers Club, the MadeForMums Bump Project and the MadeForMums Chat forum
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Authors
Helen is author of the classic advice book Parenting for Dummies and a mum of 3. Before joining MadeForMums, she was Head of Community at Mumsnet and also the Consumer Editor of Mother & Baby.
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