Most batshit thing you did with your PFB

[Eastie77Returns]

Chatting to friends today about the funniest/craziest/omg what was I thinking things we did with our firstborn DC.

When DD was a few months old she fell out of a small ‘smart’ baby swing that gently rocked her and played music. It was a very small fall onto carpeted floor and she didn’t even cry. I screamed in panic and took her to A&E. But before leaving I took a video of the smart swing so the doctors could see exactly how it rotated and I measured the distance from the floor to the rocker so they had that crucially important information as well. At the hospital I think I asked more than once if she needed a brain scan and huffed and puffed when the nurse gently said no😭 No-one was interested in watching the video either!

I don't think there's wrong with doing a bit of a schedule. Perhaps not in quite so much detail 😁 But my kids did better on keeping roughly to their usual routine, and never just napped when out in their stroller as MIL seemed to think they should. If the kid is happier then surely the carer is happier?

Tbh that is not so surprising.
I had 37w DD with jaundice and midwife suggested to keep track on feeding habits so I don't forget to wake her up.
Emailed myself with filled in info every 3h around the clock.
After a 10 days or so she got better and started getting weight so I eventually stopped.
I still sometime open these emails ❤️

Not me but a friend - bathed their baby in Evian in case they swallowed some :)

The midwives explained I should keep an eye on how much DD was feeding and weeing/pooing when we first took her home to make sure she was hydrated.

Cue weeks of coded notes in my phone calendar: 2am right boob 10 mins, 2.10am left boob 15 mins, 2.30am small wee, 4.30am bigger wee, right boob 5 mins etc 🤣

I also noted how long she slept and when, no idea why.

Sometimes I read them back and recall how absolutely essential it felt to have it all recorded accurately at the time.

With my PFB I followed the baby booklet given to me by the hospital. I couldn't breast feed (didn't want to anyway) so she had a bottle of formula every 4 hours exactly, even if I had to wake her up to keep to the schedule!

Cried a lot because I cut their finger a little bit while clipping their nails and it bled for too long. Which is not like me at all!

Yeah there’s certainly a place for monitoring input/output in some cases. But in the case of my perfectly healthy 91st centile, born at full term with no health or feeding issues and continuing it up to 6 months old it was definitely a symptom of some pretty bad post natal anxiety!

This is very sensible tbh, there are too many kids who have choked on uncut grapes. Not OTT at all.

I did this too!

They're the worst kind of grandparent carer though as they seem to think they can disregard all childcare advice that's changed since they brought their own up. My MIL brought up 4 kids, did an ok job but there were definitely some things she could have done better. I was nervous about letting her mind my 3 month old overnight because I'd seen her feed chocolate to her other grandchild from the age of about 2 months, give a lump of carrot (not puree) to a grandchild that was still on milk only, and the worst was letting her other grandchild suck on meat even though their parents were bringing them up as vegetarian. Another time she offended one of her DILs because she cut her kid's fringe.

Just because someone has brought up 4 kids themselves doesn't make them an ideal carer of children. I mean, Fred West had 5 kids....😬

As it happens when we relented and let MIL mind our 6 month old overnight, we got there in the morning and she told me that DS was having a sleep upstairs. He was well out of earshot and she wasn't using the baby monitor which we had given her (she poo-poohed it and said she didn't believe in them and that he would still be asleep anyway). I went up to check on him and he was absolutely wide awake and looking bewildered and all alone. Probably wondered why he'd just been left. The worst thing was that there was a pillow in the cot. I mentioned it to her and said the SIDS advice is not to use one. She poo-poohed that too and said she'd used them for all her own kids and the grandkids.

Needless to say we didn't let her have the babies overnight again till they were much much older.

You’re not an expert because you’ve had two. You’re an expert because you’ve had one, and can look back at your madness. Parents of one child can look back and see they were over the top.
People are allowed to laugh at their own behaviour!

I also made detailed notes of which boob DD fed from and for how long. On one occasion I forgot and when it was time to feed her again I was so stressed as I didn’t know if I should start on the left or right boob…

😂

I'm swayed between agreeing and thinking these are mildly funny.

On the whole I think this is fine because people are poking fun at themselves.

I do agree though that I hate seeing mums being told they're being PFB on here just when they're trying to navigate the whole thing.

I've been sneered at on here for my parenting, and I haven't done anything remotely like anything on this thread.

Someone has already referred to this story 😂
I do recall reading it at the time! 👏😆

I think I read that thread years ago. One that sticks out is the OP who used to sing a specific lullaby to her baby to get her to sleep. OP forced a babysitter to sing the song in front of her so she could ensure the sitter had the right pitch, intonation etc😂

That is hilarious 😂

@Mummyratbag

I also broke down when a leaf fell in his pram .. I couldn't find it. Yep he can't lift his head, but he definitely ate that leaf

😂😂😂

Not sure if anyone's mentioned this, but on a similar thread years ago a poster said she'd squirted baby shampoo directly into her own eyes to check that it really was 'no tears' and gentle enough for the baby!

I didn't have a clue. Friends told me not to buy first size as baby wouldn't be in it for long. So I trotted off to mothercare and assumed first size was 0-3 months so I bought 3-6! I did realise when I opened them that1 there was no way baby would be that big and got some 0-3m which drowned him. Tiny baby and I were in hospital for a week (standard after a c-section then), luckily SIL came to the rescue with a selection of small clothes! And those3-6 month babygos I'd bought came in handy when he was about 18 months old. He's adult now and still small

I also agree @MaraScottie uncut grapes are an awful choking hazard. A child died in a restaurant near to me after choking on a grape just so terribly tragic. I have enjoyed the other stories on this thread. When I had my PFB I maybe naively thought we were both pretty invincible.I was relaxed in the extreme during pregnancy and beyond. However my mother was the same with us as babies and children. If I needed any advice I asked her. Of course this was over thirty years ago.There wasn’t the excess of information there is nowadays. If I were a young mother today the sheer amount of information available would probably cause me to do many of the things mentioned on this thread.

Just spat my tea out reading that 🤣🤣

I was about to post the same thing! I also cut the "skin" off strawberries because I thought the tiny pips would be harmful 😂

When pregnant I called dominos and asked what temperature the pizza would be cooked at as I wanted pepperoni and was worried it would not be fully cooked and could potentially harm my unborn baby ! What the actually fuck!

I did that in the 80's with mine when they were just over 4 months as they just seemed permanalty hungry. I had checked it out with the health visitor and was told it was fine. It is so different now , we were told to introduce cow's milk diluted with water at 6 months, no strawberries until a year old. and I can't remember the rest of the advice but I followed it religiously at the time.

I was gonna say nobody is batshit to do this, I did laugh at a friend who was the first to teach me but then I heard of a little one choking on one and I couldn’t stop apologising still do this for my 2 yr old now grapes cherry toms etc all sliced