To think my health visitor is evil?!

[anicecupofteaandsomechocolate]

Bumped into hv today - she actually checked to see if my ds could breathe! He was tucked in under the footmuff with his comforter over his head (which is how he likes to go to sleep!) but it's cosy and keeps the harsh wind off his face and of course I make sure that he can breathe!! She just always manages to make me feel like an un-fit mother! She has previously told me off for having infacol in the front room where 3 year old dd could reach it, told me off for not strapping ds into his bouncy chair, been horrified at dd answering the phone and the front door (not unsupervised)!! It might just be me but she really makes me grrrrr! I do wonder if she is actually human! Thank goodness dmil has the dcs now so I can try and chill out!

My HV is nice and means well, but she does dish out rubbish advice.

DD had colic in the first few weeks. My HV advised me (as I was bf) to cut out some foods from my diet. So:

No fruit or fruit juice
No tomatoes
No peppers
No beans
No cabbage
No broccoli
No dairy
No fizzy drinks (incl sparkling water)
No tea or coffee
Nothing remotely spicy

I was skeptical but tried it for a few weeks and it actually seemed to make DD worse (or maybe she just seemed worse because I was caffeine-deprived).

Then I researched it and it confirmed my suspicions that her advice was nothing more than old wives' tales.

She did mean well though, shame she wasn't trained properly...

Thank-this is were they cannot win, though, i followed that guideline and my DD's cleared up in three days. That advice is backed up by research, it just doesn't work for everyone.

No fizzy drinks (incl sparkling water)
Ahahaha! :) My MIL was a midwife for 25 years and she is the worst for old wives tales. She told me no fizzy drinks too and I asked her 'Are you seriously suggesting the carbonated bubbles are actually going around my bloodstream and making it into my milk?'

OP, I totally agree with you.

If you bumped into your HV and do not ask her advice, she is just another person and should mind her own business. What a cheek!

I did not see how old your DS is but if his nose was free, where is the suffocation risk? When they are in their cots, they can pull their sheet over their head if they want to.

It is incredibly difficult to keep all medicines out of the reach of children all the time and most have child proof locks on them. Obviously, there are some very serious medicines that you have to be very careful with but Infacol, give me a break. And, as for opening the front door when you are around, again, I can see nothing wrong with it. She is hardly going to be left alone at that age.

I am just amazed how many people think the state have a right to interfere into what is clearly a perfectly functional household. The HV is there as support if the parents ask for it.

My HVs told me that changing my diet would make no difference and it did. Different things affect different babies though.

Birdsgottafly That advice isn't backed up by research though and it's not NHS guidelines nor the advice of any BF support charity. Removing dairy might help (if baby is sensitive to Cow's Milk Protein) and reducing caffeine can help (if baby is sensitive to caffeine, not all are) but that is it. There is no one list of foods that cause colic and formula fed babies get colic too - no-one wonders what the cow ate that caused it! :)

My HV is great :)

And babies should NOT be able to pull blankets over their heads Larry that's why parents are advised to feet to foot & ensure blankets are well tucked in. Ever heard of SIDS?!

I once had extra strong garlic rice (it was literally seeping out my pores) and my baby was NOT happy!

Scherezade,

Yes I have thanks. A lot of it is prevented by sleeping on back. Smoking is another huge factor. In a complete neonate, what you say is probably true. As soon as they can roll over and wriggle about, it is pretty meaningless. Even in a newborn, when did you last hear of one suffocated by a breathable blanket? If it is a risk factor, it is vanishingly small.

Sensitivities to foods can start at birth. If you are bf it makes sense to consider what you are eating. Colic was once thought toonly effect ff babies,until it made sense that the mothers diet could be a factor. I wish that i had that advice given on my second, perhaps she wouldn't have suffered, it took till my third, it works for some, i would rather not eat a few foods than go through colic whilst ex bf feeding on demand.

Unless you live in a one room bedsit, medicines and harmful cleaners can easily be kept out of reach of toddlers.

HV get notification when accidents occur to their clients, so they know the real 'accident' rates and are only trying to prevent your child from being harmed. However they should be tactful about how they do it.

Larry-that's the point, you won't hear,even when accidents happen, parents don't tell everyone how it happened, but the HV will be informed.

I think most of the remaining SIDS deaths are due to RSV bronchiolitis and other breathing problems, together of course with parents who do smoke and some who put their children down on their stomach to sleep, which is sometimes necessary for other reasons.

Bronchiolitis (and other breathing problems) can come on frighteningly quickly and may not be noticed by parents.

Maybe, Birds, you can inform me of how many newborns get suffocated by modern light breathable sheets/blankets?

YABU to call her evil. She just sounds mildly annoying but none of the advice she has given is particularly outrageous. You should strap the baby into the bouncer, she may not have known that infacol is practically harmless, if you were not around when your DD answered the door/ phone (eg if you were in the baby's room changing a nappy and asked her to go open the door or if it took you two minutes to come to the phone after she asked for you) - these are all things I can see why she might be concerned about.

birds I am glad cutting out foods worked for you and your DC :)

What I meant by old wives' tales is that although food intolerance exists in some babies it is very rare, and therefore cutting out a long list of foods like I was advised to do is not very likely to work (although in your case it did).

I was disappointed because the only 2 things which helped with DD's colic (massage and seeing an ostheopath) I found out on my own. When I told my HV about it she was a bit dismissive and still maintained that my diet must have helped.

Again, I don't think it is really her fault, just poor training.

Larry- all my point was is that HV's and those in childrens health etc get first hand experience of the (mainly preventable) accidents suffered by babies and children and are giving out advice because they don't want your child to be a victim, it's just advice, you can choose to ignore it and if your child is injured or killed then at least the health professional tried. Unless you work in social care you don't always have much knowledge outside of your own circle,you can see that by the amount of posters who know nothing about SN's etc,they are sharing the knowledge..

Healh professionals have hands on experience with lots of different types of families, sometmes in different areas, but seem to be shouted down on MN when they want to share it.

I agree with some SIDS sometimes being other lung conditions. We had a SID death in the family that also had a question mark over it. It was only because a specialist was requesting to do extended autopsy's in new borns at Alder Hey and found that the baby died from a rare form of bronchiolitis. He is still formulating his research and findings.

Birds,

When our second son was five weeks old, he suddenly was struggling to breathe. He ended up on CPAP in intensive care for a couple of days. They never found out what was wrong (was not actually bronchiolitis in the end). The scary thing is that it was not obvious at all that he was ill unless you observed his chest without his baby grow. I just noticed his cry was off and instinct told me something was wrong. My wife thought he was just sleepy and needed a cuddle. Had it happened at night, who knows?

The point is that I think HVs are there to offer advice when asked, other than in family's who really cannot cope. They are not there to make new parents struggle more than they already are and feel bad about themselves. Is it worth warning about what is realistically a 1/10,000 risk (at most)? I am not sure. At some level of risk, it is a balancing act between encouraging parents to have self confidence versus allowing them to take too much risk. And, if they offer that kind of advice, they should do it politely and point out that it is a miniscule risk and for the parent to decide what to do.

i bet you don,t do this all time i bet it,s the healthvistor catching you out at a bad moment your not a bad mum we all make mistakes.

Rates of SIDS have gone down 75% because of government guidelines being implemented by parents following HV advice. I would hate to think what it would be like if there.was no HPs in the UK following up on babies once they've left the hospital. Some countries insist on New parents having a nurse at home 24hours for the first week!

There are good and bad ones, as.in any profession, but I'm pretty sure HVs are qualified first as nurses and midwifes, and provide an essential service. Plenty of people on this thread have pointed out that they have hardly seen the HV past the first apmt, so they obviously ARE leaving those parents to it, so your (ridiculous) point about them making it worse for parents is redundant. Those HVs have obviously assessed the patents to be confident.and competent and left them to it. You don't HAVE to see one if you don't want.

Anyway I'd best go, as my HV is due here.at 12, she comes to check up and support me as I have bad PND. She's given me some wonderful advice which makes my 4month baby sleep 12 hours through the night (exclusively bf) and never cries anymore, I am indebted to her.

Hey ThankGodforCaffeine, if what worked for your baby was massage and an osteopath, it was highly unlikely that it was colic that caused the problem. Sounds to me like the baby had some skeletal or muscular discomfort. Not colic.

Colic just means long periods of crying - it's a catch-all diagnosis, there isn't one cause.