If you’re a new mum in the Philippines and have spent time trawling the internet for stockists of recommended brands/products for babies, you’ll probably have some difficulty. They’re either unavailable here or are being sold at exorbitant prices.
My options were to get a relative flying over to purchase the item and bring it back for me, or annoy a new found expat friend who wouldn’t mind going out of their itinerary just to pick up something on the way – which I usually avoid since I hate inconveniencing other people.
Step in babymama.ph. As all things online in this country go, I was pretty skeptical. How legit could this website be? But after looking around for alternatives and finding none that worked, I decided to give it a shot.
Ordering from them was extremely straight forward. Just add items to the cart and hit checkout. They’ll ask for basic information such as name and address (which a check-box option to create an account), and then direct you to their payment options. As usual, I went the PayPal route.
Delivery was one day around Metro Manila (for orders placed during business hours) and around three days outside of that. I paid, received email confirmation of purchase and since I’d ordered outside of business hours, I didn’t receive my shipping confirmation until the next day.
Delivery arrived the following day after, straight to my door in a bubble-wrapped package as per below.
My products were in great condition, well packaged and they even included a thank you note with return information and another with instructions on using their breast pumps (which was the reason they set up shop in the first place – to bring better quality breast pumps to new mums without the super hefty price tags).
Overall it was an easy, problem free transaction.
Some notes:
Stock runs out fast and I’m not sure how long it takes for them to restock, but there was a cream I wanted that ended up being sold out. My second choice of cream also went out of stock right after, so it does sell fast. It’s been a month and they haven’t restocked on either product yet. You can leave your email so they can contact you when stock comes in.
Pricing after factoring in convenience and delivery and currency conversions were decent for some of the items. Like all things, take time to research the different options before purchasing. An example is the milk band I bought. It’s cheaper overseas by a few dollars, but I’d need to get someone to either purchase and post to me, or fly it over. It was better just to pay a few extra dollars to purchase from babymama.ph
Delivery is based on weight and added just before payment, so you won’t see how much delivery is until you’re at the checkout.
They do have a bricks and mortar store, and appear at the baby expos, but I haven’t visited them at either of these places so I can’t comment on how they are.
expat manila 