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Original poster

Batshit crazy parenting advice

49 replies

NameChangedNoImagination · 30/05/2019 20:59

Sighhh...

My MIL has just told me if I stop breastfeeding my child for one night then I can never breastfeed again or my baby will die. She was HORRIFIED to see me breast feeding DD today having bottle fed her last night.

Someone please tell me I'm not alone receiving batshit crazy 'advice?

OP posts:

anitagreen · 30/05/2019 23:46

My dear nan telling me not to let my baby at the time look at herself in the mirror or she'll cut her teeth on the cross? What does that even mean ???

MitziK · 30/05/2019 23:58

All of it.

The most obvious were that breastfeeding was unnatural and child abuse, especially when done after 1 week and that the way to toilet train a two year old was to smack them every time they did a wee or poo in their nappy.

Howzaboutye · 30/05/2019 23:59

Cutting teeth on the cross means they arrive not in the 'right' pattern of bottom 2, top 2 etc. My dd cut on the cross and did have alot of teething pain. But nothing to do with looking in mirrors!!!

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Breast & bottle feeding Families

PennyMordauntsLadyBrain · 31/05/2019 00:06

My otherwise sane SIL is convinced that putting butter on a bump on the head will 100% stop it turning into a bruise.

DD hit her head when we were up there last and she offered to get the butter. I politely implied that rubbing Kerry Gold onto this particular pissed off toddler’s head was unlikely to work.

ladybirdsaredotty · 31/05/2019 01:06

Suspicion that a baby could get enough nutrients from 'just' breastfeeding, because you needed to dissolve rusks in their bottles. DD was around 10 weeks old (This from DMIL.)

ladybirdsaredotty · 31/05/2019 01:09

...also that 'baby' would be very dehydrated without water to drink (along with breast milk). On and on and on about that one. (I have nothing at all against FF, BTW!)

RaptorWhiskers · 31/05/2019 01:16

I’ve heard the one about shoes too! DM has insisted DS needs shoes since he was a few months old, and is convinced that he started walking late because he didn’t have shoes. Now he has his first shoes at 15mo and she’s obsessed with him wearing them constantly, even indoors, to help him to walk. The fact he’s barefoot most of the time is shocking to her!

Graphista · 31/05/2019 02:20

Not mine but eons ago (I may have still been just lurking) a poster on here was told by mil not to hand washing as stretching up would break something and cause a mc

Myself I've had over the years (dd now 18)

Staying veggie while pregnant - baby will starve, be ill, won't develop properly, be premature etc - loads of people passed comment on this one. Then dh and I had a massive row about it. Midwife (also veggie with 4 of her own!) put him straight.

Not to feed her to sleep - "rod for your own back" well I'm not feeding her to sleep now 😂😂

Not to co-sleep - as above but also "you'll suffocate her!" I stopped when she was about 13/14 even doing so occasionally for my own sake as she's a restless sleeper and I'd get battered and bruised!

To wean her early as "she's clearly hungry" - now know she was unsettled due to issues relating to her disability, which also meant if I'd weaned her early I could have caused her major stomach issues.

To not bf past 6 weeks/3 months/6 months - rod for own back, no nutritional value to doing so, was only doing it to exclude then dh...

That she should only have milk to drink until 2 or else she'll be malnourished - during a bloody hot summer in her 2nd year where she was much preferring cold water at the hottest part of the day (she has a tendency towards high body temp - again a factor in her at that time undx disability)

Graphista · 31/05/2019 02:21

Gah autocorrect!!

HANG washing - apparently it's the stretching up breaks "strings" keeping the baby in the uterus

Original poster

NameChangedNoImagination · 31/05/2019 12:13

anita I got that one, too.

OP posts:

Original poster

NameChangedNoImagination · 31/05/2019 12:14

graphista bloody hell

OP posts:

MummyParanoia101 · 31/05/2019 16:14

@Singlenotsingle I used to drive around with DS in the front seat, aged 3. I don't think we had seat belts then either, 31 years ago. He didn't come to any harm! ( Not that I'd dream of doing it now of course!)

If you'd had an accident or a heavy emergency stop he would have done!!!!!

MitziK · 31/05/2019 18:08

Oh, I had the don't lift your arms above shoulder level or you'll miscarry from the then MIL. Shrieked at full volume. Even brushing or washing my hair would cause it.

I wrote it off as the poor woman had miscarried at 20 odd weeks several times and desperately needed to protect any pregnant woman she saw in case it happened to them. It was only much later that I thought she must still hold herself responsible for those losses - and that her mother/sisters had told her the same. Horrible woman, ultimately, but to carry that guilt (which was utter bollocks) for thirty years? No wonder she was horrible.

ALongHardWinter · 31/05/2019 18:15

A 'friend' told me (back in 1983) shortly after I'd had my Dd,that if I gave her the occasional formula feed as well as breast feeding,that I would 'make my baby ill'. She said I should either entirely breast feed or switch totally to bottle feeding,it was 'dangerous' to mix the two.

CoraPirbright · 31/05/2019 18:33

Can i add in a pre-birth one? My mother told me that under no circumstances could I fly at 5 months as, during take off, the baby would be sucked out!! I did point out that, if that was the case, everyone would be made to have a pre-flight enema otherwise the mess would be awful but she didnt appreciate that!!

DisgraceToTheYChromosome · 31/05/2019 18:37

We had the once-weekly bath comments with DD (from DM) and DGS (from her MIL). Apparently they're not supposed to associate water with fun, or they'll run into rivers and drown. Well, yes, but it also means they don't scream the house down when they get their hands wet.

SimonJT · 31/05/2019 18:50

My son is adopted, a friends ‘slightly’ odd sister said I should only dress him in my dirty clothes, as that would make him smell like me when he is a teenager/adult. I did offer to skin myself and have him wear a suit of my dead skin (like a lamb), oddly enough she didn’t appreciate that comment, but it shut her up.

MrsDilligaf · 31/05/2019 20:33

My mum told me off for stretching up for something when I was pregnant. She said that it can cause knots in the umbilical cord

GETTINGLIKEMYMOTHER · 31/05/2019 21:00

I had some good ones from Mediterranean neighbours when living abroad.

If I kept on carrying toddler dd while pregnant my baby would be born with a broken arm.

If I went swimming while pregnant, my bones would open and I'd lose the baby.

If I took my newborn baby out after dark I must cover its face with a blanket - never did quite find out why but I think it was to keep the forces of evil away. Many of those mothers would pin a little crucifix plus one of those blue evil-eye repellent things to their babies' clothing all the time.
Or maybe they thought the night air carried diseases - as I believe was often thought in the UK in the past.

More prosaically, I must ditch the nappies and start potty training at 12 months.

ReginaGeorgeous · 31/05/2019 21:05

That I shouldn't be bottle feeding my newborn daughter on demand because she would 'get fat' and was apparently only crying because 'she wants a little drink' and I should be giving an ounce of water instead. From my mother, who, after three days of me ignoring her advice and telling her she was taking shite, then voiced this opinion to the community midwife while she was round my house one day. Midwife promptly also told her she was talking shite .

Mum also thinks it's disgraceful that my DD was nearly three when she potty trained, apparently I was dry at 17 months. She still refuses to accept that an adult shoving a potty under a toddler every few minutes is not the same as a child being toilet trained.

MrsJBaptiste · 31/05/2019 21:05

Yeah, my MIL also told me not to hang the washing out when I was pregnant as it could cause a miscarriage. I let it go as she had a couple when she was young so was obviously just worried about me.

Breezy1985 · 31/05/2019 23:00

Another one I had alot was it's bad to show a baby it's face in the mirror till they turn 1 because it'll make them cross eyed, this is also the case if you stand behind them so they look up.
Co sleeping because they'll always want to, alas feeding them to sleep

I'd like to point out said DC are now almost 15&14 both sleep perfectly fine alone without being fed and both have no eye problems

BalloonSlayer · 01/06/2019 09:18

My Mum is very sensible* and she did say that the only "old wives tale" she obeyed was not stretching up massively to hang out the washing (she said that raising your arms to hang normal washing was fine it was if you had to really stretch). It was apparently that if the cord was round your baby's neck it could cause them to be strangled in utero.

I was close to someone else who told me the same thing, their baby was stillborn due to "cord round its neck" and she obviously felt it was her fault - my quotation marks are I because I have read recently that women used to be routinely told their babies had died because of the cord round their neck to stop them blaming the hospital for mismanaging the birth.

*Having said that she did buy me a cat net, although we don't have a cat.

MitziK · 02/06/2019 21:04

My mother was given a cat net when he had her first baby - and she actually used it. For a day.

She came back into the room to find the cat sleeping in her new, comfy hammock. After that, she took it off and the cat went back to sleeping at the foot of the cot/pram, nowhere near my sister. None of the cats she had did anything other than curl up in a little ball nearby with any of her children as babies.

My two female cats sat beside the cots and supervised until respective DDs were asleep and then came back with an air of 'well, my job's been done for the night'. My male cat waited patiently until the eldest went into a bed of her own before deciding to relocate permanently at night to sleep beside her. Within a short time, she'd get ready for bed, give him a look and say 'well, are you coming then?' and he'd follow her.

I had a kitten at age 5 and she slept on me every night until I left home. I didn't suffocate. DP's DD decided she liked my fluffy DTwatCat and would carry her upstairs like a toy - the idiot animal adored it.

So my final nomination for Batshit Crazy Parenting Advice is the random people who say

'You're pregnant? Have you got rid of the cat yet? They kill babies, you know'.

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