The much anticipated week 37A was upon us.  About mid-way through, shrieks of laughter and girlie giggles were heard coming from room 130. Sounds of crying, coughing and cooing could also be heard as the Virtual Babies were being introduced to Year 12.

I had seen these "babies" im my two previous schools and knew through word of mouth of their success.  When I joined Imberhorne I endeavoured to put into place an ImberExtra bid for one virtual baby, believing this experience would be invaluable to our students, particularly if they didn't enjoy it and it put them off having children for at least 15 to 20 years.  After all, we may not have won the football world cup but if there was a world cup for the number of teenage mothers in the UK, we would be strong contenders.

But as the saying goes "be careful what you wish for", so when I heard my "Imber-Extra" bid had been successful I was told we would be getting two babies!!

Although relatively 'normal' looking and weighing in at 7lb each, each "baby" came with its own bag and set of accessories needed to care for it.  The students opt in to this program and with parental support take them home for one night.  During this time the baby is programmed to cry when it needs its nappy changed, feeding, burping or is just being plain fussy along with other new born care requirements.  The "baby" has inbuilt sensors that respond if the head has not been supported or if rough handling has been carried out.  Each "baby" can be programmed to require different levels of care and has 15 possible programmes that are easy, medium or hard. (ThereÕ's scope for differentiation everywhere!!)

We piloted this with last year's Year 12 students and aside from a few teething problems (pardon the pun), like one girls program being accidently reset so that nothing happened all night and two girls going home with each other's baby bag, it was generally successful. This year we rolled it out again (the program not the baby!) to Years 10 and 11 and now we are currently in the middle of the Year 12 program with all 20 Health and Social Care students having signed up.

If this programme encourages a small group of students not to have children at too young an age, then we will have done a small bit in helping to lower the country's massive problem of teenage pregnancy.

Student's comments:

"This baby was very demanding! It was very hard work and all that excitement soon turned to resentment of the baby at 3am!! It just proved how difficult it is and how much support you actually need. It was a very interesting and off-putting experience".
S. Reynolds, Year 12.

"I found the experience rather challenging and realistic, I realised that it is not as easy to look after a child as I thought, especially during the night! I thought the experience was well worth it in persuading us to not have our own child in our teenage years!

Overall I think the experience was very useful and enjoyable to try and look after a baby, although I would not want the baby back!".
L. Hunt, Year 12