A mother’s grief and Facebook’s abject lack of humanity

Nest-making for a new child is the most joyful, exciting and natural project for any mother-to-be. Decorating the baby’s room, buying the cot and the mobiles to hang above it, the pram and soft blankets — it’s a time of unbridled optimism at the prospect of the new arrival.

But tragically, for more than 3,000 British women every year who suffer the horror of a stillbirth, all that hope turns to ashes. Without a child to take home, with no little arms and legs to pop into those gorgeous babygrows, every thing they’ve painstakingly prepared becomes a hateful reminder of who they’ve lost.

Few have suffered more than anna england kerr, 30, who was 38 weeks pregnant when her baby Clara was stillborn. Yet her heartbreak was made so much worse because on her arrival home she was bombarded on social media with adverts aimed at new mums.

an ad for a baby toy made her ‘feel like someone has shoved a knife inside you and torn it through you,’ she said. ‘i thought i’m never going to buy that for Clara...it sends you into freefall.’

Despite contacting Facebook directly to say she had lost her baby, still the torment poured in: a promotion for post-maternity clothes, another asking if the ‘little one’ had started weaning. seven months on, Facebook says it is still trying to resolve her ‘problem’.

i’m sorry, but it is not anna who has a ‘problem’. it is Facebook and the utterly heartless world of social media.

a world where companies hellbent on making a quick buck harvested private data with such precision they knew exactly when anna was expected home with her baby — and yet were so callous they couldn’t even be bothered to find out whether her child was alive.

it’s a world where people have been replaced by computer programs and algorithms, a world shorn of all humanity.

What makes Facebook’s behaviour even more unconscionable is that its boss mark Zuckerberg has spoken movingly about his heartbreak over the three babies he and his wife Priscilla lost before they finally had their longed-for family.

Perhaps this Christmas he could apply a tiny part of his huge brain on how to stop his company inflicting agonies on people like anna through its greed and lack of compassion.