What’s the most unhinged/blatantly untrue thing you’ve been told by a health visitor?

[claudiawinklemansfringetrimmer]

Inspired by the health visitor who confidently told me yesterday that “Pom bears have more saturated fat than a Big Mac” and the ones on a birth preparation course who stated “breast fed babies are 70% more intelligent” and “they didn’t have formula in dinosaur times!” (The latter is technically true I suppose…)

I hope AI doesn’t replace them. I still think it’s worth a decent HV actually seeing mother and baby.

My HV and my GP told me the reason my baby is so unsettled and crying for 6 hours regularly is because he's picking up on my mood as I had PND.

Anyway, turns out he has severe learning disabilities. No one believed me until he was about 3 or 4 when appointments suddenly turned into "oh his behaviour isn't normal is it" 🙄

There was also no humans in dinosaur times

Years ago, my mum was struggling with my sister who was one of those winging babies who cried continually. The HV advise was to put her in her pram bottom of the garden then forget her leave her to cry as much as she wanted. my parents were appalled and dad asked if she actually had children herself. she admitted she was unmarried! needless to say her advice was ignored

My HV stank of smoke. After she came in the bedroom the cigarette smell lingered for ages. And our new baby was sleeping in there.

The problem with your statement is the words 'decent HV'.

Sadly there's far too many who actively seem to cause harm and mark women more stressed, anxious and guilty as well as giving incorrect or even dangerous advice.

I think I got to the point of thinking HV are only useful for a welfare check to identify those at real risk and we'd be better if services were focused in this manner potentially paying more to attract women who arent feckless idiots or on a moral crusade.

That it was my fault my baby had reflux 😳 It didnt help that i already had PND and a baby that wouldnt feed or sleep because of the reflux

They also said this to me. He cried because he knew i was stressed 🙄3 months later he was finally diagnosed with severe reflux at a&e!

Wow thats a you problem!! Little miss judgy pants

I worked in hospitals during the LCP and after. The LCP states to withdraw IV fluids, not oral. The reason for withdrawing IV is the organs start to shut down and you could visually see the arm/body swelling from the iv fluids, adding to pain.

At no point did I ever see anyone on the LCP being denied fluids to drink orally. Of course I believe some of the media stories I've read but in those cases the doctors/nurses were not following the LCP but by this point the name had been tarnished and change in how families were involved had to happen and having a one size fits all policy was a bad idea.

But families would demand we push food and fluids via tubes into their 99 year old grandma dying of cancer. Understandable for their concern, but it's not going to prolong her life but it will definitely lead to suffering.

Finally I am sorry your mother had bad care. Some nursing homes are horrifically understaffed or have poor training/care.

I would kill my baby by co-sleeping (there was no other choice with Velcro DS)

That he would sleep on his own if I just fed him more (refused a bottle and breastfed on demand)

That I could drink as much wine as I wanted while breastfeeding but vodka would go straight through to the milk (I hadn't planned to main line vodka but thanks!)

I opted out.

The programme "There She Goes" with David Tennant about a family raising a child with severe learning disabilities could have been about us as well. Going to all the mum groups comparing my baby to others and seeing it clearly but medical professionals couldn't.

Gaslighting constantly about how our son would catch up eventually until like turning a switch, he reached a magic age of 3 or 4 and then the next appointment was "well we should order tests then" like no shit Sherlock.

Blood tests, a neurologist, hospital paeds, psychiatrist and psychologist, and a CT brain scan after a hospital admission later - they believe us now.

Reported me to ss as my husbands English was not his first language !

My health visitors were absolutely lovely. Very supportive, very emotionally intelligent and very well informed. Reassuring where they needed to be, informative and making further referrals where they were needed. Bloody amazing actually.

😂

I’d also like to defend the health visitors I saw. One seemed, at the time, weirdly obsessed with me ‘getting out and going to baby groups’ but in hindsight could probably see I was a massive red flag for post natal depression. Another, when I told her I was worried about my second percentile baby’s weight gain, pointed out he was perfectly tracking the line in the chart from birth, and looked all 8 stone of me up and down and gently asked me what sort of size child I expected to have.

One health visitor told me I should always breast feed standing up! I didn’t even ask her why, it was my third child, so decided just to not answer!!

Admittedly this happened over 40 years ago now, but when at senior school, us girls has a “talk” from a health visitor. I appreciate that back then HVs were possibly not required to be qualified nurses or midwives. This HV actually said that during a visit to a new mum at home after the birth, HVs were doing various things (& I promise I am not exaggerating) including checking that the skirting boards had been dusted etc.

At that age (must've been around 13 or 14) I still assumed that I would at some stage have children and vividly recall that I made the decision there and then, that when I did have a baby, I would never under any circumstances allow a HV into my house. I also believed then (& still do now) that the £ resources expended on HVs would be better spent on assistance elsewhere. I also made sure that HVs actually have no legal right to enter someone’s home and so there is no legal obligation on a new mum to let the HV in.

I fretted over our house being messy for HV visits. She put me at ease by saying, "your house is fine, or I wouldn't have taken my shoes off."
One of the HVs was off work with stress. "Not all babies are born into happy places like yours," the replacement told me.
Being an HV is not all roses.

Nearly 20 years on I'm still bitter at the emotional blackmail "if you don't care what's best for your child" relating to breastfeeding. My boob was literally grabbed by her and shoved in baby's face. My children were eventually bottle fed as they weren't getting enough milk from me Luckily an older, wiser, no nonsense health visitor told me that it doesn't make an ounce of difference if you bottle or breast feed, just do what works for you.and the baby. Looking at my two radiant young adult children, that wisdom was true.

I had a health visitor call around when I had just moved to a new place. I had a five year old and thought they didn't call after a child was four but assumed it was a different health authority. After a short talk she asked me how my pregnancy was progressing as I only had a couple of months to go.

I was not pregnant and, what is more, I was as lean as an ironing board!

She, apparently, thought I was the person who lived there before.

I cant rememver why but I took my 5month oldish (I guess) baby to the Dr.

He told me to stop breastfeeding her and start giving her orange squash. It would be ok as long as it was heavily diluted apparently.

I was too shocked to challenge him. I continued to breastfeed and didnt give her any squash, heavily diluted or not.

told me I was paranoid and that my child just had 'toddler diarrhoea' - that was without looking at a single nappy.
Maintained this stance, which as a FTM, I believed even though I had nagging doubts, and was told not to bother the doctor with something so common.

the result. A child undiagnosed until nearly 4 with cystic fibrosis, and as a result significantly malnourished due to malabsorbtion. She was atypical as she didnt have chest infections

I was told by an obese HV that stunk of fags, that my chunky little baby will be like her and put on a pound just by looking at a cream cake.

It was really upsetting at the time.

as an aside I didnt let her near my son when he was born. I had to see her once when he needed weighing, and I told her how her mistake left her undiagnosed for so long.