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Pedicure: check. Hair extensions: check. Spray tan: check. Bikini wax: check.

Looks like you're ready to have your baby.

Welcome to the Delivery Day (D-day) makeover: Women are apparently going to great lengths to look like Paris Hilton the moment they bring precious life into the world – and get their first family portrait snapped for Instagram.

According to the Daily Mail's Clare Goldwin, with their infants still sloppy from being freshly born, new moms can now look like pristine, orange-tinged Kardashians in the delivery room.

"In the past, women accepted that the rigours of labour – which can last days and be physically demanding – were unlikely to leave them looking their best. But, increasingly, new mums want to look like they've just stepped out of a beauty salon instead of a maternity ward after they give birth,"Goldwin explains .

She reports on a growing number of salons offering "pre-birth" packages that include eyelash extensions, permanent blow dry treatments, shellac manicures and intimate waxing. Beyond a healthy baby, some women are also now praying they don't go into labour early, ahead of their spa days.

Is nothing sacred?

Apparently not. Moms like Kate book full days of beauty treatments ahead of their "big day": "I had a haircut and my roots done, a St Tropez spray tan, a French manicure and a pedicure, a bikini and leg wax, an eyebrow shape and my eyelashes tinted," the 32-year-old mom told the Daily Mail.

But the winner in the story is 29-year-old Heather Greig, who gets a full makeover and then applies another gooey layer of self-tanner while in labour. "Like a wedding, you can't go back and repeat the experience, and I didn't want to look as if I'd been dragged through a hedge in the first picture of me and my baby," she explains.

As with most depressing trends, celebrities get in on the ground floor. Beyoncé reportedly indulged in a D-day makeover before she gave birth to Blue Ivy in January. "I did have a fresh eyebrow wax. I got my nails done, I got my feet done, had my hair done, and I had my little lip gloss," she told People.

When the time came, Beyoncé allowed that it didn't much matter: "After many hours of labour, I couldn't care less about anything but my child. I didn't care how I looked."

Most readers have slammed the perma-tanned moms in the Daily Mail story for their vanity; others are lamenting that sexual objectification has arrived to the delivery room. A minority commended the women, arguing that if it makes mom calmer they should go for it. One reader admitted to investing in a pedicure as a consideration for the midwives, who get up close and personal.

Let's face it, midwives don't care. Scanning the Daily Mail photos, the moms done up in raccoon eyeliner clutching newborns with French manicured talons, the whole thing feels vulgar: Whose birthday is this anyway?

Parents.com blogger Patty Adams Martinez proposes a happy medium, suggesting that moms go au naturale for the birth and then get touched up as they're discharged from hospital, if they must.

"Waiting that extra day or two, mom and baby had a chance to bond, rest, and lose some of that blotchy colouring that comes with extreme labour pushes for mom ...That way, they had their (possibly cringe-worthy, but emotional) first photos for family viewing only, and then the glamour shots that were sent to everyone. It's the best of both worlds."

What do you make of the D-day makeover?

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