The Cuddle Cot--is this something new?

In tonight's paper I read of something called a Cuddle Cot being donated to the local hospital. Two families who had stillborn babies made the donation. So what is it?

"A Cuddle Cot is a device that cools the body of a deceased infant, slowing decomposition and giving grieving parents more time with their child."

Uh, this raises some questions. How fast does a baby go bad? And how much time does one need to bond with a dead baby? Why does this contraption cost "roughly" $3000? Seems to me that someone found yet another way of selling things to grieving parents. You know that hospitals will certainly charge for use of the Cuddle Cot. Amazing...

OMG. This is

a) macabre
b) cynical as fuck, like you say they will charge for it, you betcha
c) exploitative - you can't 'bond' with a corpse, but I bet there will be grieving parents who will be sold it as a therapeutic tool for the grief and loss, which it just fucking isn't. Parents of stillborn babies need counselling and support to deal with a traumatic event, not hospitals who encourage them to prolong the agony for money.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/02/02/grieving-couple-use-cuddlecot-spend-16-days-caring-baby-died/

These people spent SIXTEEN DAYS with a dead baby. This is horrific.

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cfinboston
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/02/02/grieving-couple-use-cuddlecot-spend-16-days-caring-baby-died/

These people spent SIXTEEN DAYS with a dead baby. This is horrific.

Imagine the SMELL!

I did some quick research about Cuddle Cot and came to some personal conclusions.

It looks like a weird hybrid between a morgue refrigerator and a baby bassinet.
The look and function seems to be to allow the parents the delusion that the baby is not dead and that everything is normal.
The babies photographed looked really dead.
It seems that anymore than a couple of hours with a dead baby is enabling a emotionally dysfunctional mindset.

Although I do not have a Ph. D. in psychiatry I can say with some confidence that this is not a normal part of the grieving process.

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cfinboston
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/02/02/grieving-couple-use-cuddlecot-spend-16-days-caring-baby-died/

These people spent SIXTEEN DAYS with a dead baby. This is horrific.

No words to describe the revulsion.

Well, it beats a teen McCorpse going on how many years now?

Okay, I believe in letting people work through grief, including keeping vigil with the corpse, but that's just another example of the death industry gouging the bereaved. Corporate funeral homes have quotas and sales scripts, and buying/renting this particular morgue-fridge-bassinet-combo will be yet another opportunity for them to "up-sell". Bereaved people already have sales pitches coming at them for fancy coffins, unnecessary embalming, flowers, drapings, fancy urns, etc.

Let them sit with the deceased, mourn, and say goodbye. Note that I said "mourn", not "bond". Calling it a chance to "bond" is just patently false. And leading parents to believe this device will help them is hugely misleading. Don't let them think they're gonna "bond", because if they spend time and energy doing that, it'll fuck up their way of dealing with the baby's death. Don't sell them a fucking fridge cot for it. Put the baby in a tiny morgue fridge while the parents work out the particulars for its funeral.

My foster pug died while I was at work this week. I got home about an hour after she had passed (my lunchtime sitter was there). She was in ambient air in a cat bed, and was not rotting.....but I wasn't going to pull a Jahi on her either. I sat with her in my lap (in the cat bed) and then took her to the vet. It was about three hours later.

I need to start making shit like this for suckers...parents will buy anything.

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From a bottle cap message on a Magic Hat #9 beer: Condoms Prevent Minivans
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I want to pick up a bus full of unruly kids and feed them gummi bears and crack, then turn them loose in Hobby Lobby to ransack the place. They will all be wearing T shirts that say "You Could Have Prevented This."

Navi, I am so sorry to hear about your loss. Nothing is truly worse than losing a beloved pet. I know you gave her the very best possible life, and she was happy with you.

As for these cuddle cots? A refrigerated loaf bed is a ridiculous idea, and doesn't help with parents 'moving on' after the death, either. How is this NOT some kind of a scam perpetrated on breeders over their emotional suffering?

Wouldn't it be harder to bury a loaf after bonding with it? WTF kind of idea is THIS? All rhetorical questions, of course.

I think I'm going to say that these people are McMathing their kids. Keeping their corpses around for much longer than they should.

Of course, I've never lost a loaf so I don't know what it feels like, but I can tell you one thing...breeders are going to probably start posting pics of their deceased loaves on fakebook, lying in these creepy things.

I think the only right thing to do is bury the loaf after it dies, and move on with life. That's what we do with adults and pets who pass. If it's good enough for the rest of the world, why the hell isn't it good enough for a human who wasn't even alive for five minutes?

What I don't get is the couple in the article, particularly the male. He is happy and smiling and practically giving the "thumbs up" sign when they are holding their terminally ill baby. And I noticed he was nowhere near the mother.

It was just weird. If I were going through a gut-wrenching experience like that or with a terminally ill relative, the last thing I would want to do is take pictures. I could understand taking a picture of the kid, but not everyone in the family, posing and smiling as if this was a happy event.

ETA: Navi, so sad for you. Bless you for giving the sweet doggie a home.

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cj
How fast does a baby go bad?

Jokes rising .... Must stop....

... .. from conception...



There's got to be a joke about refrigeration and recipes in there somewhere

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cfinboston
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/02/02/grieving-couple-use-cuddlecot-spend-16-days-caring-baby-died/

These people spent SIXTEEN DAYS with a dead baby. This is horrific.

Why not cut costs and just have the damn thing stuffed? It sounds like taxidermy would be cheaper.

I'm so sorry you lost your dear fuzzy, Navi. Losing a pet is a godawful experience, especially if they leave you unexpectedly (the way you wrote made it sound like perhaps you weren't expecting this to happen).

Parents are suckers and can easily be separated from their money if a product will make parenting more "convenient" in some way. I'm not surprised that a device that would allow parents to preserve their loaves' corpses would be a big hit. I know I mentioned it here before, but I once discussed how someone should create backyard miscarriage burial kits complete with tiny custom-made caskets and tombstones and "death certificates" with the clump's name and alleged gender. You could charge several thousand dollars for this shit and Moos would smother you with money to get their hands on one in order to properly "grieve" for their late periods.

Why would you want to snuggle with your dead infant's corpse for over two weeks? This Cuddle Cot bullshit is a form of very unhealthy enabling because it allows emotionally unstable parents to be in denial and allows them to take their dead kid home and treat it like it's alive for a while. As painful as it might be, learning to cope with loss is something we all have to deal with and this kind of a device doesn't allow for healthy coping. It paves the way for grieving parents to develop a sick attachment to their deceased children and will make letting go that much harder.

Isn't it a crime to hoard a dead body in your house? What happens when Moo and Duh don't want to surrender their kid's cadaver for proper disposal/burial because they've bonded with the dead body?

Wouldn't it be a lot more painful to have to see your child turning purple, decomposing, skin sloughing off, various fluids leaking out of various orifices and so on? I know this Cuddle Cot thing might stave off decomposition a tiny bit, but that kid is still gonna fucking rot. Meanwhile, if this kind of shit were made to preserve adult bodies so grieving widows and widowers could bring their dead spouses home for a while, people would say it's disgusting and macabre. I'm not saying it's weird to want to spend some time with a loved one's remains in order to say goodbye, but sixteen fucking days? The kid's flesh was probably coming off in the parents' hands.

The kid died due to genetic abnormalities, which means it won't be long before the two defective parents start humping again and working on a replacement loaf. Maybe they should save their Cuddle Cot for when mistake #2 comes out brain dead and they want to take that one home to play with too.

Cambion: keeping a dead body in your house is not a crime, provided you're not concealing it. It does have to be reported to the proper authorities...coroner, etc. But yeah, after a couple hours, rigor mortis will set in, along with lividity. Parents will not want to deal with that reality. Proper cooling will keep away the smell, etc for a few days...but the fucking Cuddle Cot is really just doing the same thing a morgue's cooler would do...and probably not as well as that, I think, because the bassinet shape means there's no lid to seal in the cold.

Oh and sixteen days is a sign of deep issues and those parents need professional help.

Navi, so sorry for your loss.

I find the idea of this cuddle cot horrifying. The being that had been loved, be it baby or pet, has gone and is not coming back. There is nothing to bond with. The last gift you can give them is to treat their body respectfully, not make it some sort of weird centerpiece in your sideshow of grief.

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"Not every ejaculation deserves a name" - George Carlin

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ehartsay

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cfinboston
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/02/02/grieving-couple-use-cuddlecot-spend-16-days-caring-baby-died/

These people spent SIXTEEN DAYS with a dead baby. This is horrific.

Why not cut costs and just have the damn thing stuffed? It sounds like taxidermy would be cheaper.

I feel compelled to mention an idea from Victorian times that didn't really catch on: electroplating the dead. (http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/morbid-monday-electroplating-corpses) What's better than bronzing baby shoes? What about bronzing dear little Dudley?

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yurble

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ehartsay

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cfinboston
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/02/02/grieving-couple-use-cuddlecot-spend-16-days-caring-baby-died/

These people spent SIXTEEN DAYS with a dead baby. This is horrific.

Why not cut costs and just have the damn thing stuffed? It sounds like taxidermy would be cheaper.

I feel compelled to mention an idea from Victorian times that didn't really catch on: electroplating the dead. (http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/morbid-monday-electroplating-corpses) What's better than bronzing baby shoes? What about bronzing dear little Dudley?

So...I learned something today...thanx yurble! I Atlas Obscura...how did I miss this little gem?

As for human taxidermy...it does not go well. There's no fur, scales, or feathers to hide the stitches, and the skin goes leather and dark.

First - I'm so sorry for your loss Navi. You gave that baby more love and care than she had most likely ever had

Second - This thing is fucking creepy. Not just a little.....odd....but Norman Bates had a one night stand with Ed Gein with this being the result of that fling type creepy. Holy Hell it's either the most brilliant marketing ploy or just one step beyond loaf worship. In a way I'm actually kinda jealous that I didn't think of something like this and milk grieving parents like cows for the money.....but then again I'm a decent human being and believe that people should not drag out the grieving process because that's all this is for.....milking the parents for money. Back in the day, one of my co-workers was an Airman who did the admissions to the base hospital we worked at. I creeped out when he told me that they would dress the still-born's up and take a picture with the mother. I still think that is beyond morbid and creepy.

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"It is better not to look like what you are; it is better to look like a bourgeois woman because then all the doors are open for you and then you can just go and make hell." - Marjane Satrapi

This is gross.

One of the photography meet-ups I'm on is all about trying to get photographers to do the weird dressing up the stillborn and taking photos. I ended up not joining any events because while the pay is most likely great the scenario grosses me out. Having to pretend taking a photo with a dead baby and pretend it is normal is beyond my ability. And no way in hell am I touching a dead baby.