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 don’t understand? Cut v shapes in what direction? Like down into the nail so the V points in towards the finger? Or cutting the sides so there’s a pointy V sticking out so the baby can do a better job at scratching themself? How can nails be too tight?

I shouldn't be giving him food at 11am because when he started school, lunch is at 12 and he'd not be in the right routine...he was 7 months old at the time!

Was told to give my 9 month old full fat coke after they had a nasty norovirus

Oddly smoking is a risk factor for Crohn’s disease, but lowers your risk of ulcerative colitis!

very random info and not at all relevant to health visitors in children.

Mine suggested I do my own referral to paediatric clinic….because I am a health professional and can access a system she can’t!!!

wild - I am this child’s mum not her health professional.

My HVs were lovely but not great at breastfeeding advice. They admitted they didn’t have much experience of it as most mums stopped after a few weeks.

God some of them are literally useless aren't they!
My son had a severe milk allergy, it took 12 hours a day to try and get a bottle into him, countless doctors visits and whenever they HV came she would be like 'eee I'm sure everythings fine, have you got a cup of tea I can have'.
Absolutely waste of time having her in my house, she was there for tea and biscuits, I got sooo much more help and info from mums net!

Brilliant response!

My very young dd just had a dc.. HV told her she can't get pregnant now because she is breastfeeding... So no worries about contraception..

Thankfully even at 18 dd knows better.

Yep, same advice from the hospital about eating something is better than nothing.

DS is 22 this year and has made it to this age on chicken nuggets/strips, sausage rolls, grapes and noodles. He has started to include omelettes now he is at uni which is huge! Unfortunately he is still underweight and uses food as a survival or existence tool.

Yep, same advice from the hospital about eating something is better than nothing.

DS is 22 this year and has made it to this age on chicken nuggets/strips, sausage rolls, grapes and noodles. He has started to include omelettes now he is at uni which is huge! Unfortunately he is still underweight and uses food as a survival or existence tool.

Not me but a friend. She asked the HV whether her reception-age child might benefit from speech therapy. Obvious response would be to ask would be ‘what’s worrying you’. Instead the HV observed the child repeating the text of a favourite book about dinosaurs including all the dinosaur names [for the nth time that day], and said ‘of course not, he can pronounce all those long words’. Child diagnosed with autism in his teens.

Irrelevant really ad they didn't have humans either in dinosaur times. Perhaps Fred and Wilma tried to invent it and made God so angry he sent the Asteroid to wipe them out. I can imagine HV's believing that 😀

I was a social worker sat with parents of a new baby who’d had a very serious injury, they were rightly very anxious about her and I was pleased to see them responding to her quickly and lovingly.
The health visitor came round and told these parents not to pick baby up too much when she cried and asked them if they’d seen Romanian orphans, they didn’t cry because no one picked them up, so it does work.

As a former HV (went on to CP and then public health), I really loathe these HV bashing threads. I also think that many of these ‘my hv said to give little Johnny whisky, mine encouraged me to smoke, mine suggested weaning at 3 months, my hv said my baby had a low IQ and now he’s 13 and at Cambridge are made up bullshit from posters looking for a cheap laugh.

Like any profession, there are good and bad. They are qualified, experienced nurses who go on and do further training and need the HV qualification in order to practice. Many have huge caseloads, including families where there are special needs and/or issues (abuse, neglect, poverty, disability, illness to name but a few).

Those of you who don’t need them are lucky- as there are many (children) who desperately do.

Not my own experience but a friend gave birth to her third child so she had plenty of experience. Then knock knock and in enters a newly qualified 22 year old HV. My friend was quite amused with the HV trying to tell her what she should and needed to do 😂

Oh and another one told a good friend who is very clearly anorexic that she has fatty breast milk, it was so obviously the wrong term to use, she could have said she was feeding her baby well in a million other ways.

That I would eventually have to leave my dd to cry herself to sleep because that's what everyone does in the end.

Placing my few weeks old DD on a cushion on my knee while she was on her back and holding my hands could lead to her rolling off and dying and I would be prosecuted. She was relatively new and young but it was a jaw dropping moment.

That my 17 month old DS wasn't walking yet as he was obese - he was visibly tall for his age and clearly slender/slim but on the 90th centile for weight. He walked a month later and is still skinny as a rake at 12 years old. And still a cautious child he likes to be sure he can do something safely before trying it. Hence the late walking. Oh, and DH is 6" 6".

I was also told I was overfeeding my 2 month old DD during the day - again, not a fat baby by any stretch - and that I should feed her less. Even though she was sleeping from 10pm to 7am and clearly thriving. Yeah, ignored that too.

I was told that because I had given my baby formula milk, I had damaged his health.This was at about 7 , 8 months and I had breast fed the first months.

I gave formula instead of cows milk after my child turned one because she liked it and the extra vitamins.
The health visitor was not impressed and said it’s like giving a child a thick milkshake every night!

Reminds me - at the other end of life - when an Epsom social worker, who'd hey! just popped in on us at the care home, no warning given - advised me that the reason Mum wasn't given enough to drink is because my sister and I were there giving her drink. And if we didn't come so often then naturally the staff would step in.

Likewise a fellow from the corrupt Care Quality Commission regulator saying we should film Mum not getting drink as the care home would be 'in breach of contract' and we could sue.

Didn't occur to me quite at the time that they'd placed Mum on the equivalent of the then illegal Liverpool Care Pathway and that they were quietly murdering her. Most likely hoped to talk us out of turning up each day to give her drink.

Almost technically impossible to have 22 year old HV

@SunSeaSangria- your ds likely has ARFID. My son is autistic and a restrictive eater, now diagnosed with ARFID. 'Living with ARFID' is a supportive Facebook group.