to think that i have been a very bad mum

[onetoomanytoo]

ok, this is a bit tongue in cheek,
but here goes

the bad bits :
i smoked( 5 a day) while i was pg
i drank, ( one very rarely) while pg
dd was born weighing 6 lb 4 oz
was told she was very small and would always be slightly under the norm
i formula fed
no brest feeding
she slept in her own moses basket and then cot from birth,
we didn't do, baby wearing, blw or ec
if she cried we left her too it
she had baby rice at 3 months
she was left to sleep in the car if she happened to be there, ( always one of us nearby)
at age ten she was ridng her pony on her own, in the woods,
at ten she was crossing a busy main road, on her own to get to said pony
at 12 she was riding said pony on the roads ( having passed her riding and road safety exam)

the good bits :

she is now 18
is she beautiful
she is taller than me and i am 5ft 7in
she is at college doing a science based diploma
she is going onto uni next year to do a science based and very hard degree.
she is clever
she is sensible
she is road smart
she is people smart
she excels in her chosen very physical sport
she has no allergies
she has no food tolerences

so, my observations, did the good bits happen because of or inspite of the bad bits?

none of this is stealth boasting, i promise you, just some musings from my odd brain

Can she spell and punctuate?

Some of the responses on here are grim.

I think the OP is making the point that we have less control over outcomes than we like to think we do. My mother (who was a bad mother....unstable alcoholic) drank, stuffed herself with junk food and smoked like a chimney right through her pregnancy and I turned out to be a ridiculously healthy baby and child. This was followed by TV from birth, formula feeding yadda yadda but I still did very well academically (a first and a PhD from a good university). I'm NOT saying that my upbringing was good or that things like breastfeeding or not smoking during pregnancy are insignificant, just that there are lots of factors at work in how babies and children turn out, some of them (luck, genetics) completely beyond our control. There is a whole perfectionist narrative out there telling parents that a few bacon butties in pregnancy or half an hour of Peppa The Flipping Pig while Ruin Your Child's Life.

But it sounds like the OP is bragging about doing all of those things and having her daughter turn out well.
18 years ago people knew that smoking in pregnancy was bad, that you shouldn't wean before 4 months and that breast is best. Lots of people also didn't leave heir babies to cry, my mother didn't. It's like the OP looks down on people for 'mollycoddling' their babies thinking we're neurotic when all they are doing is what is best for them.

I gave up smoking when pregnant, waited till after 4 months to wean, breast fed and tended to my babies cries, not because I am a neurotic but because I want to give my baby the best chance in life.

The simple fact is that if you do the better things your kids chances are better. If you do the worse things there chances are not.

Its not rocket science. If you smoke during your pregnancy your baby may be fine. If you don't smoke they might be ill. But their chances of good health are better if you don't. Same with all the rest of it.

Nobody really gives a fuck what any individual did, but trying to claim some kind of insight from doing stupid things and getting lucky is quite irritating.

No, you're just proving that being from a posh background is able to override many mistakes people make in life, which everyone should know already, because privilege begets privilege. Crossing a road to get to her fucking pony. Vomit. No doubt she'll continue having an easy life while children who didn't have rich parents but are brighter and better end up being screwed over like always. You don't deserve what you have, I hope you've taken that lesson at least from your life.

But hardboiledpossum, the guidelines are now that you should wait for six months before you start to wean, so by today's advice, what you did was wrong. That is the point. Advice changes all the time and just because you follow the advice of the time doesn't mean it's the right thing to do in the end and it generally doesn't matter.

Sorry, let me try again. I misread what you said. Ok, so now it's six months to wean, maybe next year it will be eight months.

Oh dear.
Sorry OP - don't take some of the posts here to heart.
In answer to your original question, nothing happened JUST because of / in spite of the bad / good bits you list there.
I wanted to say "nice try" but unfortunately it didn't turn out very nicely...

its been six months for a decade, don't be giving it the "always changing" excuse. It doesn't change all the time, it changes occasionally and only based on solid scientific research.

And smoking when pregnant has always been a stupid idea.

Kinda get OP in the sense of just do your best it'll probably turn out OK

but it is a game of chance isn't it?

Weaned ds1 at 3 months advised by Paed due to FTT and now having huge problems with allergies, all hail the God of anti histamine at the moment in our house! never smoked, absteined all through pregancny from alcohol: low birthweight baby. now ahs ASD.

It's a game of playing the odds. Had I smopked or drank in pregnancy I suspect I might not have ds1 here at all. I didn;t know I would develop eclampsia and a baby with IUGR though, so following guidelines was best bet...

And that's all you can do, place your best efforts / bets and hope like hell.

Mrs DV hugs

It really hasn't changed that much. 25 years ago the advice was to wean at 4 months it was like that until it changed to six months. It's not completely clear cut on weaning between 4 and 6 months but it is before 4 months and it has been for a long time. But it's the smoking that bothers me most. Why boast about taking that risk with your childs health. I would be ashamed of myself.

Look it was OP's implied criticism - that everyone who does adhere to the 'new crazy rules' such as not smoking - is overly intense that got people's backs up.

(And smoking while pregnant is a shitty thing to do)

Oh thats lovely for you.

It's nice that you're so proud of your daughter, OP. I read your original post as a sort of paraphrase of what my sister (midwife and mother of four DDs born in the 90s) said to me when DS was a newborn and I was fretting about something 'If you saw the way some kids were dragged up you wouldn't worry so much about the little things.' And you're both probably right, DC2 is due next May and I hope I will be more relaxed and enjoy the early days more as a result.

But as NinkyNonker said, your follow up comment sounds like criticism of other parents' methods. It didn't sound 'tongue in cheek'.

Also, cory 'like' your post.

Also, I'm 42 and my mum gave up smoking during her pregnancy because she knew the risks.

Also, riding a pony doesn't make you posh.

Not read whole thread yet, but my view on this is that some people will turn out perfectly fine almost in spite of what their parents do or don't do. Those people are fortunate. Otoh, there are some people who will develop problems in life. When you are pregnant, you don't know which kind of baby you are going to get - a fortunate, healthy one, or a baby with some health concerns.

So, your responsibility as a parent, is to stack the odds in your child's favour, by doing everything you can to give them the best possible start. It may help your child to be healthier than they might otherwise have been. if your child is born with some health concerns, then following current advice, may reduce the risk of adding to those problems.

I think that smoking during pregnancy is a vile thing to do. I am very judgemental about that tbh.

Where current guidelines are unhelpful is in the fact that they seem so changeable. For example, dummies being frowned upon in the past when now people think they may help prevent cot death.

Some people can't stop smoking. They try, they try really hard but they might have other issues that make it very very difficult and ok, some people will persevere and manage to stop but others won't and so a thread like this is helpful in my opinion because it says just do what you can and don't worry about what you can't, there isn't a right way, it will change anyway. The guidelines for caffein in pregnancy have changed within the two years between my pregnancies and alcohol has not been proven either way (in moderation) to harm a baby. people don't all like making guinea pigs of their children and people don't all like filling in surveys about them so research is rather thin on the ground. If your baby is constantly hungry at three months and you just can't give any more breast milk, there is no more, you have to do something and weaning them might just be the only thing you can do.

when I was born the advice in pregnancy was 1/2 pint stout a day, liver regularly, for iron levels or something my mother tried valiantly but did not as she just could not stomach it my mother never smoked anyway

she was advised to lie a baby on tummy to stop them choking on vomit, to FF to add rice to bottle at night to move to separate bedroom asap and to wean at 3-4 months by 9 months just 1 bottle of milk at night, it was normal to leave your sleeping baby in pram outside shops and to leave in garden with cat net ( in case cat jumped in and smothered baby)

this is not best practice now and i would never advise doing that but that's what happenned then and 99.9% of babies survived no problem, the rate of cot death has gone down etc and that is very good

it is helpful when we get scientific advice but not all advice we are given is scientifically proven and because the governements have been known to lie about stuff; adjust advice when medical theory does not fit in with their agenda , people stop trusting the advice

Starrywillow, everyone can stop smoking some people just choose not to. I think it's an incredibly selfish choice to make though. There is a right way and you can be pretty certain that the advice on smoking will never change. I had/ have a very hungry baby (98 centile) I would never have started him on solids at 3 months, unless you have been given medical advice to do so it's irresponsible.

It is the second post by OP that talks about "mollycoddling" that puts my back up and makes me view the first post less indulgently. If not leaving your baby to cry and bf is mollycoddling then god save the molycoddlers.

I breastfed dd for 6 months.
She failed all her gcse's. She can't spell for toffee and has a shit work ethic.

Oh the injustice.

I wouldn't assume everyone can stop smoking. If someone is very depressed, they might not be able to stop smoking. If someone has other things to deal with, they might not be able to. That, to me, is like saying no one needs to be overweight. It's a nice idea but it just doesn't always work like that. We all have our own personal circumstances and until we've walked in another's shoes, it's very difficult to judge. My brother was on baby rice when he was about three weeks old and at the same time he was constantly at my mum's breast. She couldn't have fed him more, he was just an extremely hungry baby.

It's still a choice. You can be depressed and still care about the health of your unborn child. I think that's pretty insulting to depressed people actually.

By feeding your brother baby rice your mother was probably making him more hungry, baby rice would fill his belly but not contain the calories that he needed so he would need to eat more and more to get the calories. At three weeks some babies do feed CONSTANTLY and he was probably still trying to establish your mums supply. It's ridiculous to think that a three week old baby needs baby rice. Your mum just needed better support so hat she could continue to exclusively breast feed.

I would have thought it's an odd position to assume that I know what's best for someone else, to be honest. I didn't say depressed people don't care about their babies, I said some might not be able to cope with stopping an addiction at the same time as coping with their depression. Sometimes you know what you should be doing, but it doesn't mean you can, for whatever reason, get yourself to the point that you can do it.

Why do you think baby rice doesn't contain calories?