What year do you think this baby safety advice is from?

[RubyDarke]

I found this in some family documents. Anybody want to guess what year this advice comes from? I will come back later....

Text on image:

MY SAFETY IS IMPORTANT TOO

Give me my own place to sleep in.
I must never share your bed.

A hard flat pillow is the only safe kind,
a soft one may suffocate me.

Please don't leave me alone with my bottle,
hold me safe in your arms to feed me.

Put me over your shoulder when meal time is
done. Rub my back gently and firmly from
bottom to top, till I bring up my wind.

(At the bottom of the leaflet is the address of RoSPA)

On the front of the document is a genuinely terrifying picture of a baby I may also share later.

I'd say 70s

86

definitely before the Back to Sleep campaign

1973

1970s

Out of interest - anyone with a fairly recent baby - does this advice still hold good?

I'd guess late 80s because of the use of a pillow and no mention of lying on their back.

Not the pillow and not really the bit about bed sharing. The rest is fine although winding isn't really safety advice per se.

My DH has one of these, he was born in 1971.

1960s? Its a ROSPA advice leaflet?

Interestingly, the RSPCA was founded (1824) 60 years before the NSPCC (1884.)

FFS

Fairly sure the pillow advice must have been around when I was born (early 70s) because my mum was fanatical about making me sleep on a flat pillow, long past when I was a baby. I had to plead for a padded one when I was about 9!😃

Mostly, advice is no pillow now and winding isn’t considered necessary for safety. There is a push for health professionals to teach how to safely cosleep.

Late 80's or very early 90's

Late 60s/ early 70s. The font is the same as Mum’s copy of The Dairy Book, which had all kinds of useful stuff from recipes to how to do laundry. She would have got it when they were married in the late 60s.

Late 1950s through 1960s, mainly because co-sleeping wasn't a trendy thing in those days, babies usually had their own cots.
When DS was very tiny, he slept well swaddled in a large drawer beside my bed!

Only the pillow is an issue.

But because of the lack of cot death prevention advice this is before Anne Diamonds campaign.

1960s

between 65-73

It was 1969.

I didn’t know what the advice was then so found it fascinating. It does explain why my mother was obsessed with winding and was always anxious when my DC were babies because I never did it.

Ah, I have found RoSPA's current advice:

https://www.rospa.com/home-safety/advice/accidents-to-children#suffocating

I read to the end of the thread and was about to make my guess but OP had updated on the final message!

I was feeling certain it dated from mid-80s - I am sure I remember the font/colour and style of the leaflet from my DM's baby literature form my mid-80s birth.

My DM would do cat-bum-mouth when I didn't wake my BF baby to wind him after he fell asleep on my boob. He winded himself by wriggling and wiping his face back and forth on my shoulder mid-feed!

I think winding was a much bigger issue back in the day as bottle teats weren't so advanced. My 2 were born 20 years apart and I noticed a massive improvement second time round. There's nowhere near the same level of vomiting up milk (choking risk) with modern bottles.

I remember my brother’s flat pillow. He was born in 1970 so that makes sense. Also the simple SW1 postcode would have had extra digits/letters by the 80’s so had to be earlier.

@RubyDarke what was the picture on the front

Year I was born. When I was pregnant my mum gave me a cot set I’d used as a baby, I was surprised that it had a tiny pillowcase.

I've been in childcare in one way or another since I was 12..(earlier if you count helping my Mum with my brother as she was very unwell)
I've collected lot's of 'Baby Care' books from 1900 onwards...The 1955 book encourages sun bathing! I kid you not...