The answer to ‘baby brain’: BeetsBLU PagerTag review

I used to think that ‘baby brain’ not only was a terrible misogynistic stereotypical word that would never cross my lips but also a complete myth.

It’s still a term I dislike, but unfortunately I’m one of its victims. I got pregnant and started to leave my phone on trains and lose my keys in the house, which had NEVER happened before, and I have never been more embarrassed. Five years on, my brain still isn’t what it used to be. I mislay things a lot more than I used to, which is not helped by mischievous kids who like nothing more than to play hide and seek with the TV remote.

In late June I was approached by a company called Beets BLU to review their PagerTag. I can honestly say it has helped with this brain problem in the last month, and even more so on holiday right now.

PagerTag is a digital key fob that basically tracks your valuables using Bluetooth Smart. It works with most smartphones (some Android don’t have Bluetooth Smart so best check before you order), and you just attach the small slim pager to the item you don’t want to lose and link it with your phone, and you’re off. In terms of size and weight, it attaches to things with a thin string and weighs nothing so it’s really easy to carry around. You can slip it into luggage or wallet or attach it to your keys very easily. You could also, I guess, put it on your kids and pets so as not to lose them either, which feels a bit wrong but might actually be a really good thing if your kid is one of those that runs off, especially in a crowded place.

You can do all manners of other things with it too:

1. It sounds an alarm on the key fob and the smartphone when the Bluetooth link is lost (around 33 feet/10 meters in line of sight, less in some conditions)
2. It has a remote control (accessible on the key fob button) which allows you to do certain actions on your smartphone, like: play/pause music, talking clock, voice memo, fake text or phone sound and more.
3. Proximity detection with automatic sound alert : there is a radar function which sounds an alert within a designated proximity. The app also detects and stores the last known location of a key fob at the moment of disconnection.

I’ve not figured out all these things yet, because I really only need the alarm but it’s a handy little thing.

 

I tested it throughout July and will definitely carry on using it in future, but here’s my little Pros and Cons list to give you an idea of what it’s been like:

PROS: small, lightweight and it does exactly what it says and it does it well, so you really do not need to lose your keys ever again! It looks like I’m not listing a lot of pros against the longer cons list below, but ‘does what it says on the tin’ is as good an endorsement as you could hope for imo.

CONS: I’m going to play devil’s advocate and mention the few frustrations I’ve had with the product. They’re not big things and are purely a matter of preference rather than anything wrong per se but:

• I wish that I could turn off notifications. I don’t like that it is always live on my phone. I get a static notification on my phone that tells me whether or not the pager is connected to the app at all times. It winds me up purely because I don’t want a constant reminder that I have this app on my phone, if you see what I mean. It’s like having an annoying thought scratching the surface of your brain that you just want to switch off thinking about but can’t.
• I don’t need to know where my keys/luggage are all the time. 99% of the time, they are not lost. What I do want, is that when I can’t find them, I can activate the alarm. I do not want the alarm to activate itself automatically when I get further than a hundred metres from my keys. Especially when I’m popping to the loo at a work conference (for a quick email check on my phone), my phone starts to vibrate and I have no idea whether the alarm activated itself in the other room, disturbing 50 university professors and the head of school. This happened the first week I tested it and I got so paranoid that I turned Bluetooth off so as not to risk a repeat.
  As it turns out you can configure the alarms to not ring, or to only sound on the fob or the phone or both, or, I guess, you can just use the proximity tool when you’re out of range. So all of this can be sorted out easily HOWEVER I wish it was easier to figure out other than by trial and error, and this leads me to my main ‘bug bear’:
• The instructions aren’t super clear. It took me the longest time to figure out exactly what steps were needed to make it work and actually stopped me from setting it up straight away, mostly because I’m an idiot and my eyes totally skipped over the bit about downloading the free app onto your phone. That’s because it’s all written in ridiculously small letters that look like T&C small print, with unhelpful headings like Configuration and Usage, as opposed to a clear first you do this, then this, then this, and a separate section for resets. I thought that once the Bluetooth link was on, it would just work but no, you do need the app (of course). I’m not a complete luddite but yeah, that was not my finest moment and was totally stupid. Still, I can’t help but think it would be great if the instructions were a little bit better designed. They could do with better labelling, with clearer 1, 2, 3 steps and some actions capitalised.
• I wish there was an alternative way to attach the PagerTag to things other than the string. I don’t have a better idea (I’m so not an ‘ideas’ person) and I’m sure magnets on electrical devices are a really stupid idea. But keys and luggage are not the items I lose the most. My keys are in my bag most of the time so it is rare that I need to find them. So what do I need this great product for? My phone and the TV remotes. Mostly because KIDS. They play on my phone and drop the remotes down the sofa and leave them in obscure places. My TV remotes don’t have anything on which to hook the string to, so I can’t use it with them. And then of course, there is the irony that I need to connect the pager to my phone so it makes no sense to keep them together as I can’t use one to find the other, or I need to use a different phone to find this other one. Complicated stuff.

Finally, I also left the Bluetooth unconnected to the pager for too long and received a red notification on my phone asking me to reconnect the two. I waited too long to do this and by the time I’d done this, well, Bluetooth couldn’t reconnect. Ironically, in the meantime, I’d lost my keys so I couldn’t use the PagerTag to locate them. I found them again a minute ago and had to reset the devices but that was easy to do by following the settings instructions on the phone app. The moral of the story is: keep the link alive!

NOTE from the author: I was given a BeetsBLU pager in exchange for an honest and fair review. I did not pay for it and only accept to undertake sponsored reviews for products that are relevant to this blog or of particular personal interest. I wasn’t asked to give a good review, just an honest one. I also told them I’d post this in July and it’s August now, yeah me!

In addition, please note that this site uses associate links. if you choose to purchase products via the links provided, I receive a small percentage which goes towards the upkeep of this site at no extra cost to you.

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Courageous Parenting: stepping away from the comparison wars

A couple of days ago, I reviewed Brené Brown’s book Daring Greatly. It was an engaging and deeply challenging read, and I was so impacted that I decided to devote a couple more posts to discussing the contents.

Brown spends an entire chapter addressing Wholehearted parenting and has many wise and challenging things to say about our culture of comparison. This is one of those chapters where I just want to quote everything because all I’ll end up doing is paraphrase what she said and make a bad job of it. I managed to get it down to this one powerful message, that we can’t expect to teach our children how to become healthy adults if we can’t model it ourselves. No pressure or anything but she is so right of course.

 

“Who we are and how we engage with the world are much stronger predictors of how our children will do than what we know about parenting. In terms of teaching our children to dare greatly in the ‘never enough’ culture, the question isn’t so much ‘are you parenting the right way?’ as it is ‘Are you the adult that you want your child to grow up to be? In other words, if we want our children to love and accept who they are, our job is to love and accept who we are. We can’t use fear, shame, blame, and judgment in our own lives if we want to raise courageous children. Compassion and connection – the very things that give purpose and meaning to our lives – can only be learned if they are experienced. And our families are our first opportunities to experience these things.”

 

I don’t know what it’s like in other parts of the world, but here in the UK, competitive parenting often feels like a real battle and it has a hideous name, the ‘mummy wars’. And it is SO easy to fall prey to that way of thinking, to toe that black and white line of ‘my way is the best way’ and everybody else’s different parenting choice borders on child abuse. Yes, it can go that far language-wise in some corners of the internet. Breastfeeding vs formula feeding, attachment parenting vs controlled crying, dummies, how many crisps, is he walking yet, which pre-school, is their lunchbox healthy enough, are they getting enough sun, the list goes on. And on. We compare, we worry, we agonize over every little choice and hope our little precious babies will turn out ok despite the fact that we haven’t got a clue what we’re doing. It’s EXHAUSTING.

I hear that whilst we can’t help but observe other parents do their thing, this way of comparing and judging others is not quite as relentless in some other places as it is in the UK. Why this should be I have absolutely no idea but whatever the reason it’s not that British parents care more about their offspring than anywhere else in the world. The reality, of course, is that we all parent differently and there are (mostly) no rights nor wrongs, if this wonderful forum thread about parental practices from around the world is anything to go by (although, no car seats? I did judge a little. So what, sue me).

Being human and all, whilst I feel I know myself better and this has led to being far less concerned about other people’s opinions than I was in my early twenties, there are nonetheless times when I have to fight against making comparisons. We all have our insecurities and there are a few areas where I feel unsure or ‘less than’; from time to time, I will read something or see someone who seems to have it more together, or whose child appears to do better, and I will doubt myself. I can’t help it, and there’s not much that can be done about the actual experience of these emotions. I do however have a choice in how I respond within and without myself. Should I express those feelings or not, should I share my opinion, should I lean into the discomfort and question my motives; in all cases my response should be led by compassion rather than judgment, and it goes both ways. I should be compassionate and not judgmental towards myself and towards the object of my discomfort too.

This is just one of the many things I have taken out of Brown’s chapter on parenting. For more, do check out her book.

 

Baby pictures I could never hope to take myself

Abi Hortin is a friend of a friend of a friend who recently started a photography business at White Tulip. I was lucky enough to take part in a free baby photo shoot she hosted a few weeks ago to get some practice. The results are seriously awesome and I can wholeheartedly recommend her. Below are a few of the shots, and let me tell you, my two girls are seriously photogenic.

My bed never looks as cozy as this.

My beautiful girls

Isn’t she precious? This is my favourite picture.

You can’t take the French out of her, no matter what!

And finally, the comedy shot!

The Cool Baby Dribble Solution

Being new to this baby malarkey, I have very little idea as to what exists to make a mum and a baby’s life easier, so it’s always fun to discover new things. That’s one of the reasons why baby cafes, Mums & Tots groups and the like are great; you get to meet lots of new mums from all walks of life and sneakily check out their baby accessories for ideas. I do anyway (and also for the cake).

One of my friend’s baby was sporting the coolest bandana ever, grey with pink skull and crossbones. These bandanas are not just like any other bib, they are designed especially for dribbly babies; they are double-layered, with a funky upper layer and a fleecy bit on the other side in a coordinated colour. No matter how dribbly the baby, their clothes and body stay dry! And in the winter, I guess it can also act as a scarf.

You can find them in Sainsbury’s, like the one in the picture below, but my favourite is the Funky Giraffe website; not only has it got loads of great designs, but the more bibs you buy, the cheaper they are, what’s not to like?

A very dribbly bear

Cool Baby Bibs

Being new to this baby malarkey, I have very little idea as to what exists to make a mum and a baby’s life easier, so it’s always fun to discover new things. That’s one of the reasons why baby cafes, Mums & Tots groups and the like are great; you get to meet lots of new mums from all walks of life and sneakily check out their baby accessories for ideas. I do anyway (and also for the cake).

One of my friend’s baby was sporting the coolest bandana ever, grey with pink skull and crossbones. These bandanas are not just like any other bib, they are designed especially for dribbly babies; they are double-layered, with a funky upper layer and a fleecy bit on the other side in a coordinated colour. No matter how dribbly the baby, their clothes and body stay dry! And in the winter, I guess it can also act as a scarf.

You can find them in Sainsbury’s, like the one in the picture below, but my favourite is the Funky Giraffe website; not only has it got loads of great designs, but the more bibs you buy, the cheaper they are, what’s not to like?