This is the worst thing about being a new mother. It affects ALL of us… but no-one ever talks about it: KARA KENNEDY

I was just four months pregnant when the requests from friends started. At first I had no idea what they meant. Even after further explanation, I was bemused – and, secretly, more than a little appalled.

I’d heard of creating a gift list ahead of wedding, but a ‘baby registry’ before the birth?

This is a new craze for sending out a begging list to your nearest and dearest of all the baby-related gifts you desire.

Can’t afford the latest ‘it pram’? Get all and sundry to pitch in. Hankering after the latest designer bassinet? Simply request it in the rather anonymous fashion of adding it to your baby registry. After more and more people started agitating for my list, a friend shared hers as a template. Sure enough it was a staggering catalogue of crap totalling more than £7,000.

My introduction to the baby registry came after I moved to Virginia in the US the year before, after meeting and falling for my husband. But beware, just like baby showers and gender-reveal parties, this oh-so mercenary new craze is heading your way fast.

In fact, these Instagram-perfect baby wish lists are already infiltrating Britain via social media.

It’s enough to put you off reproducing entirely. Or, at least, very determined to avoid baby-registry-wielding friends.

Because a baby gift should be a thoughtful surprise, not a given. Remember when people went to real shops, browsed actual shelves, selected beautiful things with their own hands, wrapped them and presented them at proper celebrations?

There was genuine anticipation, real surprise. If you received duplicates or something absolutely ghastly, you’d quietly return it and never breathe a word.

Today’s baby registry is emailed to friends, family and sometimes mere acquaintances, as a digital link – usually, depressingly, to Amazon.

The ‘BabyBjorn BounceAbout’ sits alongside the ‘Graco Pack ‘n Play’ and something called a ‘Boppy’. The ‘gift’ you purchase may never be acknowledged as coming from you. It arrives at the recipient’s door in Amazon’s signature brown packaging, as anonymous as junk mail. Charming.

These parents-to-be don’t actually know what they’re requesting – they simply tick boxes on pre-populated lists that some algorithm has determined they need, thoughtfulness and creativity be damned.

When I confessed that I would not be compiling such a tacky list, and that the gifts I would most gratefully receive (if any) would be hand-me-downs from their toddlers, the response was tellingly silent.

The people who did listen to my request came over to my house with bin bags full of old clothes and nappies they never got around to using. It was wonderful. The mothers, after their initial embarrassment, admitted that most of the items from their registries lay unopened in their basements.

It didn’t take long after the birth of my baby for the registries to start swarming in again.

When I attempted rebellion by purchasing a beautiful collection of poetry for a writer friend’s new baby – something personal, meaningful, lasting – it felt revolutionary. My friend loved it, but it was clear that it was unlike anything else they received.

And the system fights back with increasing aggression. Recent registries have landed in my inbox with stern warnings printed in bold capitals: ‘PLEASE DON’T BUY ANYTHING NOT ON THE LIST’. Some even include notes about returns being ‘difficult’ for time-strapped new parents.

The economics are equally absurd. Because friend groups tend to reproduce in clusters, the same people end up buying each other gifts in endless cycles of reciprocal consumption. Cathy spends £130 on Emma’s ‘Miracle Sleep Machine’ in February, then receives a £120 ‘Wonder Bounce System’ from Emma in June.

Most people try to even out how much was spent on them by how much they spend on others, to the pound. So essentially you break even and needn’t have bothered at all.

Trying to navigate these registries provides the final insult. By the time you get round to accessing them – usually after receiving multiple reminder emails – all sensible items have been claimed by quicker relatives, leaving you to purchase increasingly bizarre offerings.

I once bought just the handle of a portable changing table for £10. I was so mortified by this absurd transaction that I sent it anonymously, which defeated the purpose of gift-giving.

The tragedy isn’t that Americans wanted to make gift-giving more convenient. It’s that in their pursuit of efficiency, they’ve eliminated everything that made gifts meaningful.

Traditionally following a birth, families gave silver spoons that last lifetimes, christening gowns passed down through generations, or savings bonds that mature when the child turns 18. These are connections across time, investments in relationships.

Receiving the odd eccentricity that we want to hide away is a small price to pay for living in a world where people actually think about things, rather than simply clicking ‘add to basket’ on someone else’s algorithmically-generated wish list.

Britain, don’t say I didn’t warn you.