Your most batshit parenting moments?

When I was pregnant, I read that a drug addict had been arrested at 3am for vandalising a fountain in a nearby park. I vowed and declared that my pfb would never go to that park because of it.

The fact that it was 3 am, he had climbed over the fence to get in and that it wasn't done during normal park hours was beside the point.

Odd one this.
I was so worried Dd aged 3 months would NOT be exposed to safe bacteria, that asked my DH who is a doctor but was doing research at the time, to collect some ( v safe) Petri dishes of bacteria, so I could dot them round round her body and boost her immunity.
Yes, I too was diagnosed with PND ( +/- Bashir syndrome)

Having a massive rant at DH about putting PFB’s dummy in his own mouth to clean it after it was dropped, and then handing it back. Telling him that the spread of his oral bacteria would absolutely lead to tooth decay in my previous child, and that I couldn’t believe as a parent he had done something so terrible.
At this point PFB has exactly zero teeth.

When my DD1 was 3 weeks old I noticed a red raised rash on the top of her left arm. I put a glass over it and the rash didn't go away, so DH and I legged it to Childrens A&E totally demented and convinced our baby had meningitis.
Turns out it was a strawberry birthmark 🤦‍♀️
Then I cried because I hadn't noticed it before and thought I was a bad mum. Sleep deprivation makes you batshit!

wonder if people were fretting about these PFB sorts of things or anything equivalent in 1819 or 1919?

I don't know about 1819 but I've read a circa inter war years copy of Mrs Beeton housekeeping book which has guidance on exactly the food you should feed your children by age, and sample weekly menus. I think we would recognise the same worry over correct food for our children today (although we would probably not choice to feed them her father bland diet which lacks fruit but does include sweetbreads and brains for 1 years old and up!)

I think the internet gives us access to a lot more information which is both a positive but also when you are massively sleep deprived it can hard to tell what advice you're reading is worth comply and what is batshit.

Oh so many! In my defence, newborn DS nearly died and I had to resuscitate him, so it’s made me a bit twitchy.

When DS had chicken pox I used pox kin and got some in his eye. He screamed his head off so I had to put some in my eye too to check it was ok. He wasn’t even a baby at the time - he was 2!!

We had a wipe warmer too, but in fairness he was born in winter and would scream like a banshee if you used a freezing cold one on him.

I made all his food from scratch and had to introduce a new food every meal.

I was paranoid that my son would overheat at night. Once I put him down to sleep in a long sleeved baby grow and then hours later I CUT OFF THE SLEEVES WITH SCISSORS WHILE HE WAS SLEEPING

Mine are probably not as bad, just standard stuff, my friend bought my son a toy gun and when she left I removed it from us as I did not want to promote violence "shooting mummy" to corrupt his innocent mind. He also didn't taste chocolate until he was around 3 and no macdonalds until around age 4, didn't take the sides off his cot until he was 3 😬, would worry if he didn't finish his food, and would be obsessed with him starving to death. second DS, is wild, had his first nugget around 11 months old, courtesy of his big brother, in a lot more chilled out with him and I think he gets away with murder, I'm still over precious with my first born and he is 8 now. Why do you think we do this with our first and then chill out with our second?

I was worried about DS sleeping in his pram in the garden because a buzzard might fly off with him or might peck his eyes. I asked a naturalist friend of mine whether he thought it was safe
Much more relaxed with DD, even though she had a heart problem that we had to monitor with a stethoscope.

We did the no flushing the toilet once ds was asleep. If he was asleep downstairs at any time of the day we had to have the tv/radio silent.
If any visitors arrived and DS was asleep then we didn't speak to them, just hand gestures.( 'V'sign was what I really wanted to do). I would be fuming someone dared attempt a visit when my DS was napping. Very rude if them I thought.
If anyone arrived and DS was feeding I would make them stand in the hall until he had finished. ( This continued whilst DS was 18 months old and sitting with snacks in his high chair). Some people were standing silently in the hall for up to an hour😁.

When DS was about 4 we went on holiday to Menorca and decided to let him spend a few hours at the Kid's Club.
When we took him along there were only about 5 other kids in the group and 3 play leaders who announced they were taking them to the beach to collect shells.
DS was mad keen so we gave in.
We then crept to the beach and 'hid' so we could be certain they weren't going to take their eyes off him and allow him to be swept out to sea!

I was very particular about the steriliser. With PFB if I dropped a teat onto the perfectly clean counter top I would have to pick it up WITH THE TONGS and put it straight back in the steriliser to be done again.

DC2, the tongs were long gone and that teat would be straight on the bottle. I think the bottles were in the dishwasher ocassionally by that point too.

I do think it helps to have extra perspective, though. The most chilled out new mother in my post-natal group by a really long way was the social worker, who pointed out that she'd seen what actual neglect looks like and it isn't letting a baby cry for eight minutes while you have a shower or a cup of tea.

Dc1 - on going back to work after mat leave with dc2 i dropped him off at breakfast club for a trial run and then drove and hid in my car down a side street to check he was ok walking to school with the club.

Dc2 - i remember being hysterical one night when he was a few weeks old as his ears were different sizes and shapes. I even text my dsis and friend photos of his ears for comparison. He actually still has 1 ear smaller than another although it really really isnt noticeable - and i have since discovered that my ears arent identical either .....

I think once you know that these things are a potential danger you can’t ignore them when you are responsible for another human being. There is so much , a lot of it ‘official’ that is really hard to get perspective. Most of these are valid fears but just done really really thoroughly!

However, proper batshit is rememberBig when DS was about 4 months and I read a story as he had his bedtime milk as part of his routine. I was reading The wind in the willows and skipped the scary bit in the woods because I didn’t want to give him nightmares

I don't think I was too bad with my first, I'm generally quite laid back and had great support from dh and my mum. Ds, however, was a nightmare as he had sleep apnoea and so used to stop breathing at night, several times a night and every night. Incredibly stressful and took until he was a year old to convince the doctors (they just kept repeating 'babies don't get sleep apnoea' 😡 The extreme sleep deprivation caused issues. At one point I ended up taking him for a drive at 4am because it was the only thing that stopped him crying. I ended up sobbing on the forecourt at the petrol station while he screamed in the car 😵. A very kind policeman stopped to talk to me and bought me a coffee.

I used to walk miles as he would only sleep in the sling and if we were moving. I would drop dd at preschool and then walk for 3 hours covering about 8 miles every morning because 'sleep breeds sleep' and how would he ever learn to sleep if he was so tired? I was constantly exhausted 😂

I love this thread: It makes me feel
more human and happy that I am not the only mum who has irrational thoughts about wobbly pathways but it also demonstrates clearly how much love we have for our children.

I also remember taking the same child as "wobbly path-gate" to A&E when his umbilical cord fell off and when I came home with "medical talc" (that you can buy off the shelf from Tesco's) I looked deep into the eyes of my MIL with a hard stare and said "See I told you it was an emergency" ...

Have a great weekend all!!

sunnyside Dd is 15 next month!!
I’ve also got an almost 11 year old, who managed to escape the batshittery!

I wonder if people were fretting about these PFB sorts of things or anything equivalent in 1819 or 1919?

I think people absolutely worried about their newborns to this extent in the past, it was just that it was a much more 'justified' worry as the chances of losing them were so much higher. I wonder if part of the issue here is that we have such a strong natural drive to protect a small baby but we're in such a relatively safe world now that it's hard to know where to 'put' that and so the anxiety gets attached to objectively silly things.

There are some theories that that's one reason why anxiety is so high in modern life - it's not that we have too much stress it's that we're built to deal with struggling to survive and freed of that worry we attach it all onto other things and so feel overwhelmed by things that aren't objectively very important.

I've just thought of 2 more!

PFB was exclusively breastfed and for the first 6 weeks of his life I meticulously logged every single detail of his feeding, right down to the minute, on my phone. For example: "right side 3:09am-3:17am."Every. Single. Feed.

We'd also read somewhere that it helps with newborns digestion if they are held upright / not laid down for 15 mins after a feed. So every single time we'd sit and hold newborn PFB for exactly 15 mins after a feed. We used the stop watch on my phone. Even when it got to 13 mins we'd sit there some more until it got to 15 exactly.

Cringing writing these! Will never do any of this stuff with future children!

Just catching up this morning and some of these have me in tears. The love is something else.

I have health anxiety and PNA since Dd was born. I still freak at temperatures water and her. I tend to be seen scanning her head a couple of times a day and her bath is exact. I have. Groegg in most rooms.

I am getting better but it sort of offers me some reassurance to have control of those external things when I can.

I also wrote a feed and sleep diary till she was about ten months old.

These are lovely, but re-reading the all, I do feel slightly sorry for those of us in the new generation of parenting. As slightly more serious perspective (sorry), do these sorts of behaviours suggest that we as a society have lost our minds about what should actually be a very natural and normal transition with lots of family and community support. Various well recognised factor have disrupted all these "natural" support systems and we are now very isolated, and we have over complicated it to the point where the anxiety is ridiculous and the pressure to do the "right" thing is insane. I wonder if people were fretting about these PFB sorts of things or anything equivalent in 1819 or 1919?

OMG, I think I probably did most of these.
Also rinsed all the pans and utensils I used to make the first batches of initial organic food mush in boiling water to "sterilise", despite the fact we have a dishwasher. And one inexplicable and shameful sunny afternoon, decided it was better to let PFB scream with thirst for 20 mins than give water from a plastic bottle that might have pthalates or microplastic contamination.

My son is adopted, he was just shy of two when he moved in.

All young children benefit from skin to skin contact to form good bonds, feel safe etc, not just new born babies.

For about 3/4 weeks I wouldn’t let anyone touch him unless it was directly on his clothes. One friend still takes the piss out of this, he (rightfully ignored me) and if we were swimming etc he would hug, carry him the pool etc so ignoring my clothing only rule. I still sometimes try to defend my batty rule as my son had lots of skin to skin with him and their bond is as secure/strong as my bond with my son.

My mum offered to look after ds1 when I returned to work. She asked me to write down his routine. I gave her a multicoloured spreadsheet to follow. Which, bless her, she did!
DH was very fussy about food. Leftovers from yesterday that had been refrigerated straight away? Not "safe for bubs". Meanwhile ds has crawled to the cat bowl and eaten a kibble.
I was much more paranoid about ds2. He was a month early and we both had nasty infections. I was terrified of anyone getting near him. Didn't help he didn't sleep and couldn't be put down. I was on my knees with exhaustion but didn't feel able to ask for help.
I was obsessed with bathing him and using lavender baby massage oil. It has to be done in a very exact way starting with his feet. I bought the sucky tube thing from a chemist as ds1 gave him a cold. It was utterly gross and probably didn't help at all.
Nowadays - he's five and I struggle to remember how often he has a bath. Probably not often enough. Colds? There are the tissues.