My mum told me something that made me a bit sad recently...

[sushistar]

I'm still breastfeeding my 9 month old. My mum said I was a very 'difficult' baby, and I bit her when I was about 4 months old when she was feeding me, so she put me on whole cows milk and weaned me onto solids. I've always been told stories about how much I cried and how I had awful colic, and now I wonder if it was because I was fed on cows milk. I know babies are not supposed to have cows milk as their main drink until one - what's the reason? Would it cause tummy pain in a baby? Maybe that's why I was so 'difficult'. I don't think my mum meant any harm,. I just think she didn't have access to good information.

[TotalChaos]

sushi - when I was a baby in the 70s, I had boiled cows milk from 6 months, my mum says (and I have no reason to disbelieve her) that was the usual practice then.

[belgo]

Don't feel sad about it. I was weaned at 10 weeks onto solids, and I was born a month early. My mother was just following the advice given at the time.

I have a friend who was fed carnation milk from as soons as she was born. Also just what they did at the time.

My dd1 had awful colic and cried for hours, evn though she was breastfed and not weaned until five and a half months.

[TheCrackFox]

My mum stopped breastfeeding me at 5 months and gave me cows milk (1970s) on doctors advice. He got all his new mums to do this.

Most babies were on solids by 3 months.

Colic normally stops at 3/4 months. Sorry, but you were probably a "difficult" baby and you need to give your mum a break. She tried her best. When we are grans the advice will change again and our GC will be brought up totally differently.

[nickytwotimes]

i'd second what the others said. The advice then was so different.

Just think of the awful things we must be doing to our kids now, lol!

[bogie]

My brother was weaned at 8 weeks we have video of him.
Things were done differently before now, Your still here and ok now so don't be upset about it.

[VoluptuaGoodshag]

Don't be sad - my mum smoked throughout her pregnancy with me and bottlefed me right from the start. I don't hold it against her or feel sad. She did what she needed to do at the time and information was a lot different then

[zippitippitoes]

i wouldnt worry about it you are here and fine

i dont actually remember how old my kids were when i started solids

[MrsMattie]

In the 1970s my mum gave us freshly squeezed orange juice at 3 months on the advice of the HVs. We went straight from the breast to cow's milk at 6/7 months old. Advice changes. I'm sure your mum meant well.

[chunkychips]

you were probably lucky to have been breastfed at all if you were born in the 70s. My mum did us, but said she was the only one of her friends. Wasn't 'fashionable' then and babies were weaned a lot earlier.

[TheCrackFox]

Oh, forgot to mention my mum also told me that she found it very relaxing having a fag whilst breatfteeding. She was also advised to drink a bottle of stout a day to keep her iron levels up!

[MrsMattie]

lol@relaxing fag!

My mum also drank plenty of Guinness during both her pregnancies. This was still advised in the late 80s, as I remember my aunty doing the same.

[kiskidee]

Sushi, I was bf at first but i am sure my mum weaned me from the breast early too. On what, I have never asked. She did also say that I cried a lot as a baby and I think right into toddlerhood. I can remember crying myself to sleep and waking up with dry sobs so I don't doubt her.

Interestingly I also have dairy intolerance so I am not surprised that I was a baby that 'cried a lot'. DD has my temperament in many ways and I was only looking at her sleeping tonight and thought that if it wasn't for the instant nipple to plug her into, she would do a lot of screaming waiting for a bottle of formula and also has, guess what, a slight cow's milk allergy.

[sushistar]

at the fag! My mum said the mw suggested she drink guiness too, which she didn't do! I'm not blaming my mum at all, I just felt sad because she and my dad often takl about what a difficult, grumbly baby I was, and I feel sorry for them, and sorry for me as a baby iyswim, and I felt sad that maybe a lot of that might have been prevented if my mum knew more about how to feed me. I was born early 80s.
I have never been tested for allergies, but I avoid cream or full fat milk - it gives me an awful headache. It doesn't affect my life in any way, and I'm not one of those people at dinner parties with a million 'intolerancies', but when I hear my mum talking about me screaming and holding my legs up to my tummy in pain, I do wonder if it was the milk.
I know there will probably be things about the way I look after ds that will be 'wrong' in the future when the advice changes again!

[Acinonyx]

There is something distressing about hearing your parents talk negatively about you as a baby. (My mum said i was a nightmare todder.) You can never know the full story and whether they were really coping. It hits you particularly when you have your own dc.

[Ledodgy]

My mum always told me she didn't breastfeed because I wouldn't latch on she's was all for it but got no help at all. She was large norked like me and in those days they neevr told you abut the rugby hold position etc and I know none of my babies have latched on the 'normal' way as it were.

[MrsSnorty]

I think becoming a Grandma brings up a lot of memories and some regrets. My mother recently apologized to me for having done controlled crying with me (!) but, agree with Acinonyx, I don't think she did cope well as was very isolated when we were little.

[EyeballsintheSky]

I've grown up in the knowledge that I was a nightmare whingy baby. It's only now when my mother has seen what an unhappy, demanding handful DD has been for the first six months of her life. She has realised that I wasn't nearly as bad as she thought I was.

Oh and born in the 70's and ff as well!

[lilolilmanchester]

When my PFB was weaning, my Mum told me my first finger food at 6 months was bread and golden syrup. I made some (probably nasty) comment about how bad that was which led her to say "I must have been a really bad mother" which made me feel awful. Things were different then. Ideas move on quickly even now - DS (now 15) started on solids just before he was 4 months and DD just after she was 4 months. But that was "OK" then. So no doubt they'll be horrified about that at some point.
(My DS also had colic whilst he was totally breast fed.)

[chipmonkey]

My boss, who a lovely lady was apparently a nightmare baby, so much more that her mother didn't have any more children which in Ireland in the 1960's was unheard of for a mother-of-two! Her mother now reckons she was just hungry!

[ReallyTired]

I think its wrong for us to judge people who only had the infomation available to them in the 1960s. As mothers we do the best for our kids and I'm sure that in the 2020 a lot of our parenting practices will be comdemmed.

I believe I was weaned at 6 weeks which is what was done in the 1970s. I never had any breastmilk as my mother had such appauling support in hospital.

I feel sad for her having such poor support from health professionals. I certainly don't blame her in any way.

As mothers none of us are perfect. We just try our best.

[AMumInScotland]

I went straight onto silver-top from the doorstep, and my first finger-food was madeira cake. But I wasn't a difficult baby, and have no allergies, so I don't think it was so terible. A lot of the current advice is to reduce the probability of bad reactions to things which were not necessarily that likely anyway - of course we all listen to the advice, and do the best we can for our precious little ones. But most of us did ok without all the current advice when we were tiny.

[maidezmoi]

I was born in 1977 and I was never breastfed as I was adopted at birth. I was fed on Cow&gate formular and then onto silvertop and random finger-foods at about 4 months. Today I have zero allergies or food intollerances and am never ill.

[chapstickchick]

my dh when he was a baby was 'topped up'after breast feeds with carnation evaporated milk

[Elasticwoman]

A newborn baby went straight on to silver top from birth and survived?

I understood that before formula milk was introduced, any baby not breastfed, either by mother or wetnurse, died. 99% of foundlings (who were unlikely to get a wetnurse) in the 19th c died.