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…)

This is some time ago. I was newly arrived in England and had no idea about Health Visitors, as they were not a thing in Australia.This lady just turned up on my doorstep. Turns out she was the Health Visitor come to check on my thirteen month old. I also had a 2 year old and a three year old, but she was just there for the baby. Said baby was sitting quietly on the floor doing a jigsaw puzzle. It was only a 9-piece puzzle but it kept her happy. When HV found out that baby rarely spoke (she had two very vocal older siblings who did all the necessary talking) she told me to prepare myself for the fact that baby was probably mentally retarded.. She then drank her tea, gobbled up her cake and left. Last HV I ever saw!

Well if the a and e doctor thought it was needed why didn't someone in a and e do it as part of a safe discharge plan?

They do have more saturated fat though per 10g. She's literally right 🤣

@Plastictreees I think you’ve tagged the wrong user. As far as I’m aware I haven’t complained..

That I shouldn't breastfeed past 6 months because this poster says 'breast milk only until 6 months'.

I tried to point out it meant no solids until after 6 months, not stop breast feeding at 6 months.

She also said I had to book another appointment in a months time because 4 month old ds has failed his 6 month 'test'. Said hes 4 months not 6 months and she said he needed to 'pass' before being 'signed off' . I said if I came back in a month would she have time to improve her knowledge on breastfeeding so I could pass her? And flounced out with my failing baby.

I did complain as well. Got some waffle saying I had misinterpreted what she said. I didn't go back.

Thank you for sharing this. It’s so interesting and fits with my DS’s profile of baby eczema and then peanut allergy.

I’d be interested to read up on it.

Unlikely to be a HV at 22 and having several children doesn't automatically make you an expert on parenting.

To be honest i’m still shocked that health visitors are actual nurses. Based on the ones i met i had assumed its a volunteer role with minimal training. I’m still shocked nurses can be so clueless in regards to everything (even stuff like chickenpox!)

Not a HV but a GP (sorry but this thread triggered the memory). I was worried my son might be dyslexic (he was 7, we were there to get antibiotics in the days when you actually could see GPs). She said “oh carting a child around to different assessments was a form of abuse and some children are just thick”.

No, they don’t? Pom bears have 2.6g per 100g, a Big Mac has 3.8g per 100g.

I realise that arguing with a monomaniac who refuses to believe in the scientific reality that some women are genuinely unable to breast-feed for medical reasons, and that was still the case before formula milk existed, is futile, but this post is so ridiculous that I just can't leave it unanswered.
You speak glibly of creating powdered milk using human milk, I note your use of the euphemism 'powdered', despite what you describe being a variant of formula milk, but based on human milk rather than cow, goat, soy milk or other alternatives, because, I realise in your mind 'formula' is a synonym for poison, but you are, in fact, advocating a new type of formula milk.
Anyway, semantics aside, I assume your assertion is that it would be simple to engineer a human-based formula milk and that it is 'big formula' who, for some mysterious but doubtless nefarious reason, are holding back on the development of such a product, which would not make much sense as surely such a product would be highly marketable.
I assume that you have little or no actual knowledge of the complexities and practicalities of developping a human-based formula milk along the lines you have suggested and this is merely blue-sky thinking on your part.
If it turns out you are, in fact, a bio-chemist with years of applied experience in this field then I apologise. However, if, as I strongly suspect, this is just a nice idea you have extracted from your fundamental orifice, with no understanding of how your proposal would work in reality, then your suggestion has about as much validity as me asking why 'big pharma' haven't just invented a pill that magically cures all cancer yet, and then sitting back and awaiting the Nobel Prize for Medicine for my ground-breaking discovery!

I suppose that one problem (apart from retirement) is that these older, more knowledgeable HVs may well be promoted out of their community jobs, in much the same way as competent social workers and more experienced midwives are. What they say is irritating but possibly useful to first time mothers who might put their bouncer on the table or whatever. They also often know quite a lot about BF, certainly more than young HVs who have had no BF training and have no personal experience of it.

Actually, the A&E doctor told us to not offer any more cow's milk and to see our GP for a referral. The GP told me it wasn't their job and I had to see my HV. 🤷‍♀️

The HV also said she'd probably just give him a yogurt and see how he got on with that. He's 13 now and still can't eat dairy yogurt, although he's had a couple of milk challenges at the hospital and can now tolerate processed milk products. It turned out he also had sensitivities to certain tree nuts, which we only discovered through blood tests and later skin prick tests.

I had HV and MW visit at the same time when I had my second son. I was asked if I had any ‘questions’. I mentioned I noticed he had a very slight bloodshot eye, they both looked at each other awkwardly and the midwife wrote something down. She then looked at my son and said ‘no there is nothing there’ (there was). I asked her what she wrote.. and she refused to tell me.. I insisted she told me as I was worrying there was something wrong and she said that it’s an immediate referral to social services if a newborn has a blood shot eye. I was absolutely horrified, felt like they were accusing me of hurting my son, my hormones were all over and it ripped me over the edge I cried for days and was so paranoid someone was coming to take him away. The eye went back to normal in a few days, and a friend who’s a HV told me it can happen during birth due to the pressure. I was made to feel like I was the worst mother in the world still don’t know if this is true what they said but it still knocks me sick when I think about it.

I have an inverted nipple and was advised by almost everyone that I should bottle feed. As I am a bloodly minded determined person I ignored them all and did, eventually, manage to do it. I have four children and I always had a problem initially establishing BF but eventually managed, to the extent that I BF for almost two years with my last daughter.
If I'd listened to professionals my children would have been fine, but I wouldn't have felt good about it,

My first baby was born in Germany. I was told to feed my baby every four hours on the dot. It was so stressful as my baby was crying for her milk earlier than four hours and I was walking the floor trying to make her wait. When I took her for her first check up at three weeks she'd gone from 8lb to 11 lb and I was questioned about feeding her too often.

DD was 4 weeks old when I told my HV that I felt dreadful and wondered if it might be PND. She agreed then helpfully told me that DD 'would know that I wasn't a normal Mum.'

Jesus fucking Christ! Then again she also pronounced hospital as 'hospickle' so she clearly wasn't all that bright.

I'm not advocating it, per se. Actually powdered specifically might not be necessary at all. But for babies who can't consume breastmilk in its default form (who are now given specialist formulas), breastmilk could be modified to make it suitable for them (e.g. low PKU). Which would require far less processing than cow's milk does now, to be turned into formula!

You can call it a formula if you like, but it's not the same as following a recipe to put X, Y, and Z ingredients together to make something new, which is what the word formula means. It's just modifying something that is already almost suitable.

Anyway, that would rarely be needed, as almost all babies can consume breastmilk in its standard form (obviously!).

And the vast majority of mothers could breastfeed directly in a non-sexist society, which truly understood and supported our physiology at all stages of life.

When they couldn't (which would be rarer than it is now), there would be easy alternatives that don't involve formula (including options we have always had access to, e.g. someone else nursing the child).

The entire point is, nothing related to infant feeding should be "marketable". So no, they have no interest in centering women and children's needs over making profit.

They want breastfeeding to "fail", and for women to hate each other if they suggest it doesn't have to be like that. Because that reinforces the "need" for their product.

Whilst not actually a health visitor but in fact a GP actually told me it was common for an early 30 year olds period to suddenly stop if she hadn't had a baby!!! Totally missing out that I actually had a tumour growing on my Pituitary Gland!

Put milk onto my baby's eyes to cure an eye infection . I didn't BTW!

What makes an expert on parenting then? A very newly qualified Health Visitor, with very limited hands on experience at work and no personal experience certainly doesn’t hold the title of expert.

One told me I could 'get away with' putting my mixed race daughter down as white British on the ethnicity questionnaire. And then assumed her Dad was not present in her life, she asked if I had support from my mum, friends? I said they had all popped around since her dad's paternity leave ended, and he took over as soon as he came home from work. She had to correct notes she had already made, unfortunately I can read upside down. The student with her was red faced and quietly apologetic.
I took everything they said after that with a pinch of salt. I listened smiled, nodded and did what I felt was right for me and my child

Breast milk? Colostrum possible effective, hind milk minimal evidence but unlikely to harm so probably worth a try!

This is pretty common - I was told by a dr to do this...

My HV told me my eldest showed signs of a specific syndrome that in the days before internet I'd never heard of and organised the most ridiculous referrals to multiple depts at the hospital to be told that there was no evidence at all. Apparently this syndrome occurs very rarely - like 1 in millions and none of the consultants we saw had seen a case (and a couple had never even heard of it and had to look it up in a massive dr style bible) I refused the HV for subsequent babies.

Not to let the baby sleep on its side because babies grow when they’re sleeping and she’d grow one sided 🙃