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…)

Of course she did. We all go around talking about ourselves to our patients. Either you or your friend is telling porky pies

So you think calling the health visitor a jobsworth for completing mandatory paperwork, and then mocking her for asking questions about benefits and calling her stupid " because obviously I live in a 500k home' is ok? Like I said in my post, many people who live in so called grand homes are entitled to benefits if their income is low enough. Much of that post was scathing and unnecessary

Do you think they’re robots and don’t speak? Interpersonal skill… heard of that term? Why would you get so wound up over random internet posts, as a pp pointed out, you’re coming across as vexed and defensive. Shes certainly hit the nail on the head, judging by your posts!

My friend told me the situation as I described, so I shared it on here and now you’re arguing that it can’t be right - aye ok then 😂

I am not the poster who met the HV with the C&G bag. I am just talking about them.

And no, my household doesn't consume cow's milk (obviously!). I haven't for over two decades. Because I am not a calf.

You seem obsessed with something I haven't actually said (re other mothers, or superiority to them etc). The whole point is it's not just a simple choice for an individual parent to make.

Capitalism makes you think it is, because there's just a tub on the shelf in the supermarket in front of you. They don't draw your attention to how it got there, and all the harm it's doing in various ways, and their tactics for normalising it, etc.

And when someone else does, the reaction is to hate them for it. They've done a very good job on their marketing, when ordinary members of the public defend their business interests for them.

Actually, if the HV had been able to define her role and confirm I had no obligation to accept her services, I'd have told her there and then that her services weren't required and she wouldn't have had to complete her paperwork, which was dine in a pretty mindless way.

She could have provided her services more empathetically than she did as I'd been quite unwell with mastitis and had been messed about unnecessarily by community midwives, the GP oractice and a locum doctor. But she didn't, she had neither the experience, aged 23, nor the competence.

You comments about assessing someone's financial circumstances might bear some weight if that's what was happening but taking into account the inadequacy of the visit, I very much doubt that was the case. If it had been or she was interested to find out, she could have asked some open questions rather than reading "deadpan" from her clipboard.

In relation to your point about some women starting their families very young, let's analyse this. Certainly a 16 year old could have a baby, followed by another at 17. Depending upon which school year those babies were born, the mother would have had to achieve good enough GCSE results to progress to A'Levels or give birth in years 12 and 13 and get good enough A'Levels to progress to a nursing degree and pass it with placements for which childcare would be required and then complete the post grad hv course. Nowadays I think the earliest would be age 24 because there is a minimum of one year's nursing prior to the hv course. It's rather unlikely that a teenager could both procreate and qualify at the same time even if they had incredible childcare in place.

General nursing has various transferable skills that contribute to health visiting. Health visitors although not medical persee are often approached with health problems before attendance to a GP. I agree they could do hv on a more targeted approach, that way eliminating people who find them an annoyance rather than a benefit

Of course we use our interpersonal skills. This is usually "Doesn't the garden look stunning today" when you first walk in or showing empathy when a patient is talking about their situation. What we dont do is talk about our age or our family status. Your friend is likely exaggerating her story to make herself sound better.

But let's pretend this did happen. Your friend being "amused" about someone trying to do their job is patronising. I hope when your Dc's start work, whatever they choose, that their patients / customers / colleagues are not 'amused' when they first start out in their early twenties. We all have to begin somewhere

I am not saying you dont have some valid points. But calling her stupid and a jobsworth is not on.

Indeed we do but the point is, a mother who is on their 3rd/4th baby isn’t likely to need the support of a newly qualified HV. She’s been there, done that and got the t-shirt.

What’s the big issue pointing that out? It’s not a compulsory service. It’s as if you think I’m being disrespectful, but I’m not. They absolutely have their place and are valued in society of course they are and they will be invaluable to some Mums, particularly new first time Mums.

Why? She was stupid and a jobsworth. I am saying it as it was. She couldn't assess a situation, she didn't show any empathy or respect and she was unable to accurately record information. That extrapolated to incompetent and her manner indicated stupidity.

That my 98th centile baby was overfed and didn’t believe I was exclusively breastfeeding him.
I was totally mortified at the time.

I was also the slimmest I’d been since my teens because he fed on demand constantly, as I’d been advised he should.
He’s now a ripped 6 foot 7 that we can't fill up with enough food and convinced he’s too slim (he is not!)

If you went to a human mother who didn't live in that society and asked if she'd rather breastfeed her baby (or ask a friend/relative to do it), or sexually assault some cows, kidnap their baby, steal their milk, send it to a factory and add a load more ingredients (potentially including bacteria, melamine, or heavy metals etc), send it halfway across the world, and feed it to them from a plastic bottle, she'd look at you like you were mad. Because you would be.

Did you actually, really, type the phrase 'sexually assault some cows'? And did you actually manage to do it with a straight face?

Yes I do. And I think the same of you for blindly defending such ignorant behaviour.

I love “sexually assault some cows”, what a great way to convince people that you have a sensible argument and are not just a nutjob 😂

I think there can still be value for more experienced mums too. One of my best friends has 4 dc's. The first 3 were not always easy as babies but she coped. The 4th baby screamed every half an hour for the first year of his life. She was on her knees with exhaustion. It was the health visitor who sourced 2 hours support twice a week so my friend could sleep.

Also as health professionals we have to maintain a cpd file to demonstrate we are keeping up with current research, legislation etc. So there might be something a newly qualified health visitor might know that could potentially be useful, even to a more experienced mum.

You think I am stupid for pointing out that paperwork for health professionals is mandatory or that living in a big house doesn't always equate to a healthy income? Says more about you to be honest.

I am not negating anyone's experiences with some of the poor health visitors but to call someone stupid and a jobsworth for doing what they have been told to do isn't on. A health visitor may actually be the first person to spot if a child is being neglected or abused. Their role is important.

@sandrapinchedmysandwich I think you are ignorant for continuing to ignore the main points of that posters experience. You may think it ‘isn’t on’ to call someone a jobsworth, but who are you to police that? In my experience HV’s are jobsworths who have contributed nothing of value and seem woefully under educated.

I am sure there are people out there who have had better experiences. But this thread is literally asking for peoples experiences of poor advice from a HV. So if you are going to attempt to police it and get offended by those experiences, it seems nonsensical to me why you wouldn’t just scroll on.

You still haven't explained why when I asked her her role, she couldn't define it and when I asked why she was instructing me to attend a baby clinic and I said unlikely, she repeated the instruction rather than telling me it was optional. I regard that as both jobsworthy and stupid.

She did, however, tell me it was her role to make sure my baby was vaccinated. In the absence of a court order, I think that was my role. Hers was to.facilitate if I wished her to.

You know as well as I do that I was unlikely to be cash poor. She was in a well furnished house, recorded my then occupation as Investment Banker and I believe was aware that my dh was a barrister. In those circumstances I think she had to be exceptionally stupid to ask me if I needed benefits or help claiming them. Either stupid or taking the piss.

You and I can argue about this for as long as you like but I was there.

I am afraid she probably did! Imagine her shock on discovering that humans throughout history, from all over the world, have been 'sexually assaulting' cows and drinking their milk for many thousands of years, long before infant formula existed, and the idea to exploit these poor defenceless bovines didn't originate with the evil formula manufacturers!

Mine was absolutely wonderful. Checked my stitches, baby’s weight and general health and just reassured me. She had her own views of course, but was very well informed and wasn’t pushy. I don’t know if it makes any difference, but she was German and had trained there.

That was the best laugh I’ve had in ages (when I read the original post about the cows). I assume she’s vegan, though one of my BFs is vegan and has never described milk as a sexually obtained bodily fluid.

It's the second time in two days I've seen a poster blithely post a causal reference to sexual assault or rape in a way to try and discredit other posters.

As I said to the other, do you think posters who do it, engage their brains and actually think about what they are saying for a split second before they do it?

Here's the thing - HV who spout bollocks or judgmental shit are more likely to lead to a woman disengaging and then no longer attending a clinic. And at worse can do actual harm by giving poor advice. There are far too many examples of that on this thread.

I personally disengaged after they kept saying DS wasnt following his curve correctly but they couldn't give me an answer to how much expressed milk he should be drinking. They had assumed it was the same as formula, and didn't actually have figures for breast milk. I had found this out from a reputable website. They just kept telling me to top up with formula. On top of this he WAS following the curve for his centile for children in Norway (which has a taller population who aren't as overweight and much much higher breastfeeding rates)!

I felt like they just didn't know what they were talking about and the repeated scolding was harming my mental health by making me ridiculously stressed despite the information I had sourced.

So I disengaged and felt better for it.

If I had been underfeeding DS and done nothing they'd have been no follow up either though. If they thought I was getting it so wrong, why was there no follow up? Or was it just them being particularly over enthusiastic about formula milk?! (Which is completely the opposite to so many other women's experiences!)

It seems bonkers that given that they are supposed to be encouraging breastfeeding there was such a degree of lack of knowledge about it. I expressed instead of using formula because we had problems - in theory this should be the second option after breast feeding, but they didn't know anything at all about it.

It stuck me they had such a narrow view on breast feeding - scolding those who didn't get it right for going to formula, but also not having enough knowledge to encourage different ways to support breastfeeding either.

I totally do not blame women who don't - it felt like our entire system was geared up against supporting women with breastfeeding and instead had high moral opinions about it without anything actually bloody useful. Of course women are 'going to fail' , they've been set up to 'fail'. And it's not their fault. They've eventually realised that both their mental health and their child getting some food is better than torturing yourself trying to breastfeed without adequate support.

I was lucky and was able to continue. And I do consider myself lucky. I got support from a neighbour at just the right time otherwise I'd have given up. DH was amazing with finding information to reassure me I wasn't going mental and supported me with expressing when I felt like I was going mad. So many women just don't have the benefit of that and they do the right thing by switching to formula due to the circumstances.

I should add to this, I got pissed off at DSs 1 year check up when the midwife told me it was about time I started weaning him off breast milk even though that's not the recommendation! I was perfectly happy with it, and it wasn't a problem. Why on earth did she tell me this when we were happy continuing and WHO say until 2 years old if both mother and child are happy with this? If we were struggling, or there was a problem, fine but it was unsolicited, unwanted and poor advice.

This is what does my head in. The bad advice and the lack of support. And then scolding when you don't follow their shit advice or don't have access to the support you do need.

The amount women are infantilised and treated as if they are stupid throughout the system but then abandoned when they do ask for help IS one of the issues here. Women who are unable to decide what is good and what is poor advice are particularly vulnerable too because they end up getting treated like shit by a bad HCP on a power trip and who doesn't know what the fuck they are talking about themselves far too often.

I sometimes wonder for every woman they help, how many they end up being a problem. Which really does bring into question their effectiveness - even with safeguarding concerns.

So sorry ☹️ that sounds horrible. I do think I was told in the birth centre that the midwives had to take a really accurate record of any marks before we were discharged as any marks appearing later on could be a social services referral. I think bloodshot eyes may have been mentioned specifically but I was insanely sleep deprived!

I BF my fourth child for two years and was met with disbelieving silence when the HV asked about her diet when she went for one of her later vaccinations. People used to make jokes about going in to school during the dinner break to feet her etc etc but she was happy and gave up BF herself at 2.
My huge, very hungry second child gave up on me before he was a year old as he preferred to drink fast from a spouted beaker and to share dinner with us in the evening.
I was told that my first child was overweight when she was solely BF at 8 months.
My experience of HV has been that they never realise that every child is different, and that use of centile charts should be sparing unless there are obvious problems.