Completely creeped out.

Pee. On a stick. Ew, that's all I'm saying.

Another aspect of this is that the test result will fade over time - all the tests I've taken (I took four because I didn't believe them) had instructions that said that after a certain amount of time the results, which are based on the presence of a chemical, would be invalidated.

What does poor Dad get to memorialize the conception? A little silver vial in which to put his sperm?

What a silly gimmick!

Barring some sort of actual health problem, if you can't remember it then it's probably not worth remembering. Even if you do get amnesia or something, I'm not sure this will be all that useful.

And you do get the child in the end, which should be all the reminder you need. Something could go wrong, of course, but then I'm not sure a lot of people would want to use pregnancy test to remember a miscarriage.

Just more plastic crap people don't need.

Side note; that baby looks high.

Just sayin'.

We took a photo. For our blog. That sufficed.

My first thought was that the keepsake proliferation comes with the decrease in fertility. If you have three or four kids, or more, you're not going to memorialize every moment of each childhood (and pre-childhood). I would imagine that the quantity of stuff in baby books decreases with birth order. But if you have only one child, everything about the process is special.

But then I wondered whether other low-fertility societies (Western Europe, Japan) are also going in for this sort of thing.

That baby does look drugged or something!

I did save mine from this last pregnancy becasue it was my third and I am concerned that she will feel like I didn't save anything because she is my third baby....yes, I have my own issues being the second child and having my own mother saving very little of my babyhood stuff so I felt less wanted......but I totally see what you mean. Why would you need a special purpule sack from the company though???

I didn't get to keep the 'stick' BTW because that is one of the many things damaged in the housefire including the babybook I had started for this sweet baby...... anyway I think people are consumed with documenting the importance of thier life. Be it children or occasions etc. I also find it hard to NOT take pictures and actually enjoy a vacation or a trip......ooops rambling

Keeping one's hair and fingernail clippings, umbilical cords and other 'disposable' body parts (and ones that are not normally disposable but were made so by accident) and dealing with them in a ritualized way that is dissimilar to how one disposes of household trash is a frequently occurring element in human cultures.

Seems like you're calling 'creepy' over a fine line. If you have a home birth, do you: (a) dry and preserve the umbilical cord? (pretty ritualized) (b) send it off to be cremated with other medical waste (in between) or (c) wrap it in plastic and toss it out with the trash (no ritual)? Which act is most creepy?

I think you're being weird to suggest that keeping that stuff is more creepy than throwing it away. My opinion is that the non-creepy response is to wrap the pregnancy test in red and pink threads and basil leaves and keep it under the bed, and then bury it in a solemn ceremony on the day after the child's first birthday.

I thought this was interesting because as a young childless college student, I associate pregnancy tests with fear and hope that they come out negative. And with shame that comes from buying them in public without a wedding ring.

I had seriously just never thought about buying a pregnancy test being a wonderful and hopeful thing worth saving, which I'm sure sounds really ignorant of me.

(Not that all young college students would react the same way to a pregnancy at this point in their lives, but it would definitely be something unwanted, scary and dangerous to me. I wonder if there are tests marketed more to my demographic, even by the same company, or if the idea of an unwanted pregnancy is too taboo?)

I don't think that anything soaked in urine should be kept. A photo is just fine.

My thinking is that keepsake proliferation has increased substantially with the changing nature of photography.When I was a kid (I'm 37), personal photos (as opposed to professional ones) were only taken on special occasions: parties, birthdays, vacations, day trips to zoos or amusement parks, and the like. The idea of a housewife walking around with a camera in her pocket to snap a shot whenever her kid did something adorable was unheard of. Our "unique, precious moments that require formal remembrance through some type of physical creation/artifact" were remembered with pictures.

But now cameras are ubiquitous, and in the demographic that's being courted with keepsake pregnancy test holders and the like, most households have multiple cameras of varying quality. And photos are not only mundane, they're no longer physical keepsakes. A photo album is now something with a URL, not a leatherbound book. A picture of the new baby -- or the pregnancy test heralding an upcoming baby -- can be zapped from Baltimore to Brisbane more easily than it can be turned into something tangible. Even the "baby book" which was once a staple gift at the baby shower has given way to the mommyblog. (I looked for one recently. Even the 5,000 sq. ft. Hallmark Gold Crown megastore doesn't carry them any more.)

So other forms of commemoration are being thought up, to slot into the "special keepsake" arena. Kits to turn wedding bouquets into long-lasting dried flower arrangements, or shadow boxes to hold the first toast champagne flutes and the wedding invitation in a "tasteful, artistic" arrangement for the wall. Pregnancy test keeper bags. Little lucite boxes for the dried up stump of umbilical cord (not even kidding). A resurgence of the old bronzed baby shoe. And so on and so on.

I'm with Haley above - I would not consider a positive pregnancy test a happy moment. I don't want a kid, not yet. And that makes me wonder: there are many women who are quite aware what they would do with this knowledge. They would schedule an abortion. There are other women who are perhaps a little on the fence, and seeing a coupon like this might manipulate them into continuing the pregnancy. Or add to the guilt for women who choose to abort. (Not that all women feel guilt post-abortion, but I digress.) There are even other women that might not decide to abort, or even consider it, but they still might not feel joy at finding out about a pregnancy, and so this package* is basically telling them there is something wrong with the way they feel. It is a very sensitive subject for some women, and seeing such happy mommy and baby imagery right at the very moment they find out they are pregnant could be really damaging. I wonder if anyone at the marketing department even remotely considered that placing this coupon directly in the package is maybe a little irresponsible? I think that most home test kits advertise in a pretty responsible way (with more of a focus on efficiency and solid results than on joy and love and families), so this strikes me as unusual.

Note that I am not remotely suggesting the company is aiming to subliminally promote the pro-life movement or anything, because I'm guessing they either didn't think of this (which would be odd) or they thought of it, but didn't care, because the profit is their bottom line. Either way, I don't think it was a malicious or political decision; just a poorly thought-out one.

*I am assuming that the coupon comes with the actual test itself, but I might be wrong. If it is in a magazine or something, then basically my whole point is void - but I get the impression that it does indeed come in the test box.

gross and creepy

I kept my test from my daughter, and I'm not a overly sentimental, save-every-strand-of-hair type. We were actively trying, and I shared the news with my husband by presenting him with the text in a box; he wasn't creeped out by the pee stick (a plastic cap does go back over the part that gets peed on), and I still have it in the box. I never really thought of it as being a strange thing to keep, but I also can't imagine buying some kind of special keepsake package for it. Honestly, I just sort of kept it without thinking about it one way or the other, and it would seem weird to me to toss it now. For whatever it's worth, though, the positive result is still readable close to 8 years later.

I also kept the test for an unplanned pregnancy a couple years ago that ended in a miscarriage. I almost threw it away not too long ago, as it doesn't really have the same significance to me as the one from my daughter. But it also felt weird to throw away the only tangible evidence I have that that pregnancy ever existed.

In fairness, urine is perfectly sterile, and usually does not have a strong odor.

I think what's creepy about this isn't that someone might save a positive pregnancy test. That seems a little odd, perhaps, but understandable. It's the idea that someone decided the "saving the pregnancy test" phenomenon was a great opportunity to make money by producing some useless plastic crap.

More than that, I find it pretty bizarre that this "keepsake" is being offered specifically by the makers of pregnancy tests. If I got a positive pregnancy test right now, I would not particularly want to "remember the moment I knew." Nor would I be very happy to see the "free keepsake" coupon, with its implicit suggestion that I should feel warm and fuzzy about a little plus sign.

If this were a standalone item, I think my reaction would have been much more neutral.

Memoriam from my pregnancy: the 18-year old college student who REFUSES to live in a dorm, uses all my gas when she borrows my car and begs for money though she has a job and is threatening to never move out cause she doesn't want me to be lonely (she has no idea I have U-Haul on speed dial).

An 18-year old pee stick, not so much.

In my experience with pregnant women - I am a midwife - women who are trying to conceive can be great consumers of pregnancy tests. Some of them buy boxes and boxes of them. Some start testing 8 days past ovulation and don't stop until they get a positive (day 10 or 12 very often) or start to bleed. There are online support forums where people share pictures of early tests, trying to figure out if they are positive or not (the lines are very light in the beginning) I'm not sure how new this phenomenon is but I would hazard a guess that this has altered the percentage of the "pregnancy seeker" demographic for test makers. The early testing also means that many women are aware of miscarriages that they weren't before - a very early miscarriage seems like a normal period to some women - so these tests are the only thing they might have from that pregnancy. Which is to say that I think the pregnancy test has LOTS of significance for some women.

I don't think its gross at all, it just is what it is. I don't think women plan to give the tests to their kids, do they? I kept mine for a couple years I think before I threw it away. It was fun to see it in the drawer (with the cap on) and remember the events surrounding the beginning of my first planned pregnancy.

Another one of our many medicalized and consumer oriented pregnancy and fertility rituals I guess.

I saved my positive tests from my pregnancies. Yes, I have other "memorabilia" (and children) to show for it, but they had sentimental value for me as the first knowledge I had of the pregnancies. No intention of handing them over to my kids at any point, and as for considering my experience "unique", really, if I were not to attach significance to any part of my life unless it was unique I would need to be indifferent to everything, as would everyone else here.
This is being used as yet another opportunity on this blog to insult parents (or especially, women) who actually have sentimental/positive feelings toward pregnancies and children. Sure, pressure to reproduce exists, but bigotry toward mothers does as well, and adding left-wing mother-hate to the right-wing insistence on narrow standards of acceptable motherhood only puts a very large segment of the female population under still more external pressure. I eagerly await the day with mother-shaming will be seen as anti-feminist along with slut-shaming (of which it seems to be a variety in certain circles.)
It's one thing to criticize this pregnancy test company's assumption that all their customers want to be pregnant (although, as I mentioned above, those who do buy more tests) and another to attack other women for attaching meaning to something you yourself don't and for keeping mementos of something significant to them, or for not having an acceptably high level of squeamishness toward their own bodies/bodily fluids.

A few thoughts...
1) Having miscarried twice, I do have my positive pregnancy tests, and like other who have posted here, I keep them as a reminder of a very real experience in my life. However, I think that is precisely why the ad bugs me. I cringe when I see anyone express as fact any derivation of "I'm pregnant = I will have a baby in my arms to take home from the hospital after 40 weeks (+2/-2) gestation." Sadly, that sentiment is just naive.

2) This is just another way marketers are capitalizing on our post-feminist culture's idealization of pregnancy (I know I've posted on this topic before, but I think it's worth mentioning again). Not that I think it's at all anti-feminist to have children. I think the last time I spoke about this, my comments were interpreted in that way because I did not appropriately explain myself. I'm a feminist and the pregnancies I mentioned above were planned and very wanted. I am saying though that in the midst of a backlash against feminism, it should not at all be surprising to see pregnancy idealized, as it is most often cast as a fulfillment of heterosexual traditional gender norms (and an antithesis to feminism, which is cast as anti-sex and romance, hateful of men, hateful of children). Pat Robertson (quoted in Washington Post) said that the feminist movement is a "socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians."
http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1P2-1021641.html
I teach at a private religious college and many of these students are very conservative and have grown up with a notion of feminism that is exactly along the lines of his statement. So I think it's a logical extension that much of the cultural attention in recent years towards pregnancy is a result of the post-feminism backlash.

3. I think this ad would also be interesting in a discussion of body and emotion. It's interesting that marketers are framing women's relationships to their bodies and the appropriate emotional reaction to pregnancy. Even though my pregnancies were planned, I definitely still panicked ("Uhh, am I READY for this?"). And, as mentioned above, positive tests for unwanted pregnancies certainly create a wide range of emotions that based on this ad are not deemed appropriate.

I'm 40, my eldest child is 17, so this stuff wasn't around when I began having kids.But I saved my pregnancy tests.I also have photos of my pregnant self and bare belly.

And most mothers I know have a small collection of pregnancy and baby related items.I have baby teeth, hair from first hair cuts, the hats the babies wore in the hospital,umbilical cord clamps- all sorts of stuff.I suspect the company is reacting,late,to a phenomenon that already existed and are not creating a need in order to sell more pregnancy tests.

Feminism,motherhood, etc.? Never entered my mind.It is to me, the same as saving old school papers, graduation and prom photos, little league awards and trophies. People save funeral programs and take photos of the corpse in the casket.People save mementos of moments that were important to them and that define them.Its no creepier than having an old hat with Mickey Mouse ears on a shelf and the photos from Disney World in a photo album.

People used to make lockets and jewelry with the hair of loved ones.Relics? Aren't those the actual bones of saints?

Cheap pregnancy tests are available at the dollar stores now, it makes sense for a company to offer something extra to distinguish their products from others to increase sales.Those who have no interest in saving tests or having babies will probably just get a cheap effective test,those who want a baby will probably be inclined to get the one with a keepsake pouch.

If I take a pregnancy test and it comes up negative (I'm hoping any pregnancy tests I take will come up negative until I'm ready to have a kid) I'm still sending in for the pouch and will use it to store condoms.

I've been working really hard to clean my apartment the last few months, and I've made a lot of progress. I am (or was) textbook Chronically Disorganized, and I have learned a lot from watching "Hoarders" on A&E and reading "It's All Too Much" by Peter Walsh.

I mention this because sentimentality becomes a huge issue in having so much stuff. A lot of people feel like they need to keep every single physical aspect of their lives as a memory trigger. This is a great example of that.

Also, they feel like they *can't* get rid of things because they are throwing away a part of someone the love. (Literally in the case of hair locks and umbilical cords.) I wonder if a lot of women feel like they shouldn't throw out their pregnancy test after seeing this ad.

All this leads to a *lot* of stuff in our lives.

Most people don't need a Hoarders intervention, but a lot of us put too much sentimental importance on physical items. I considered it a big breakthrough when I realized it was ok to toss old greeting cards in the recycling bin. That I wasn't being disrespectful to people I cared about.

Peter Walsh talks about the fact that having too many of these items makes them all lose their meaning.

Offsite storage units are becoming more and more common (at least in America.) There's a lot of physical artifacts and "end products" from people's lives in those storage units.

My mother kept the pregnancy test for my sister for a long time. I don't know if she still has it. She also has locks of my hair from my first hair cut.

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