Mother and baby advice from 1960 - ask away!

[TerpsichoreanMuse]

I've been clearing out my father's house (he's sold it) and I've found the baby manuals given to my mother when I was born in 1960.

There are four: the "Glaxo Mother and Baby" book, "From Milk to Mixed Diet" (a guide to modern baby feeding), "Relaxation and exercise for natural childbirth" (1959) and "You and your baby," published by the BMA.

If anyone would like any advice (only 60 years out-of-date!) on this topic, please ask and I shall attempt to answer.

[Sweetpea1532]

I was a cloth diaper, plastic pants baby.....those plastic pants were lifesavers...literally...We went to a lakeside spot to have a picnic...before lunch mum and Dsis waded out into the water's edge leaving me to happily play in the sand...mum turned around for a few seconds to pin up DSIS hair and the next thing she saw was me, floating by her...I was face down in the water but didn't sink since the plastic pants were a flotation device of sort...she quickly grabbed me up, turned me upside down and slapped me on the back which caused lake water to be spit out....she said after that day, I always gave any body of water a wide berth...my poor mum must have had so much mum guilt over this..I try to reassure that she needn't have since I was an especially curious child and always finding ways to get myself in trouble

[Sweetpea1532]

With the cloth diapers the poo was flushed down the toilet and then put in the soaking bucket....there was even a special tool to hold the poo diaper since you had to immerse the diaper into the water and then flush...the tool kept your hand out of the pooey water and made sure the diaper didn't get flushed away....of course this helpful tool wasn't failproof (or a family couldn't afford one) since whilst driving through the neighbourhood you could spot the house who had accidentally flushed a diaper...it was a catastrophe of sorts since it meant calling in a plumber to dig up the garden to try and locate the blockage

On the topic of trying to hide your pregnancy...up until the 70s or 80s school teachers had to go on maternity leave when they started 'showing' so around 4 months...wouldn't want the students to think that their teachers actually 'did it' as teachers were held to a very high moral standard and showing a pregnancy would be a bad influence on the innocent children 🙄

[Deathraystare]

BarbaraofSeville Home or hospital. I was born in a hospital but my younger brother was born at home*


Same here! My brother was born in November 1965. That day dad made our tea. This was very unusual. We had jam on toast. I told my mum later that is was the best tea ever! (We normally had jam on toast for breakfast, never had it for tea before). Mum's face was a picture!