To be enjoying reading this 'Complete Babycare' book from 1979?

[Kayano]

I asked my mum a bit of advice (how old normally when they roll over) and she cracked out this gem of a book

I am reading it like

Some choice quotes:
'pregnancy can be a very enjoyable time for women, a time when one can make the most of long days at home and seek out pursuits such as sewing or dressmaking...'

:O

'most women have slight swelling of the hands and fingers in late pregnancy'

This wouldn't be so bad if not accompanied by a pic of a woman looking all bolted and sadly having to lay down her knitting needles. Really!

'rest periods are also ideal times for embarking on practical preparations, like knitting baby clothes'
Accompanied by an enthusiastic knitter.

'once your baby is born you will spend even more time in the kitchen.'

I never spend time
In the kitchen unless I have run out of chocolate and need to make
Some emergency cake mix. I don't spend time in the kitchen now! If I do the night feed damn straight DH is cooking and sterilising the bottles

Thank god things have progressed!

This book was an edition published in the 1980s but you totally
Wouldn't think so! It's from m&s too!

I've ended up with an old copy of Katharine Whitehorns 'How to survive children', published in 1975, I assume my parents were given it when I was born. I think KH has started doing a little sunday column for the Observer again actually.

'If your doctor thinks you ought to breastfeed and you don't want to, tell him you're a drug addict - you'd get the baby addicted too'.

'We found it essential to start drinking before the toddlers bedtime, and to let them have a bit of time to play after we'd left the room'.

'Parenthood is not what you ought to do; it's what you can stand'. Amen to that .

I had DS 1 in 1979 in Queen Mary's Roehampton. All the nurses and midwives wore full starched unform with frilly caps. We were encouraged to breastfeed and the normal stay in hospital after a 'normal' delivery was 8 days. I think the idea was to give you some rest and 'establish a routine with baby' (ha ha!).

My bible was the Penelope Leech book and also 'Breast is Best' by Penny and Andre Stanway - I believe this one is still in print? It certainly gave me the courage to defy MIL!

I also had one of those great, big coach-built Silver Cross prams (bought by MIL) and all 4 of mine slept outside for morning and afternoon naps until they were about 18 months old. I put them out in any weather, except fog. Many's the time I've had to brush snow off the cover! And, yes, I would do it again!

The biggest change I think is the putting babies on their backs thing - In 1979 we were told we must put them on their faces. It was down to Anne Diamond, after her cot death, who publicised the research from NZ which had found that babies placed on their faces were far more likely to succumb to cot deaths. I think her publicity must have saved a lot of babies' lives.

I have just, for purposes of this thread, had a look at Miriam Stoppard's NEW Baby and Toddler Book - my version printed in 1998!

It has a section on "backward babies" and what to do if your child is "backward."

When my eldest DC developed life-threatening allergies it was to this book I first turned for information and support.

She devotes a whole page to food allergies. She says that it is important to differentiate between allergies and intolerances. An intolerance, she says, "simply means that some food suits you less than others." Oh really? Even in 1998 I thought any competent Doctor could tell you that an intolerance is when your body is totally unable to digest a particular food, so it is ejected in a distressing fashion. She goes on to say that most "allergies" are just intolerances or a combination of a fussy child and a fussy mother.

Thanks a lot.

I have very much enjoyed reading this thread. I've no great gems to add really except that when my mam was born in 1954 my nan put her in an old wooden box with a mattress she made from a pair of curtains. She made a quilt from some scraps of material and a pillowcase. She had no pram and used to put the baby in the basket on her bike and wheel them down to the shop.

Someone mentioned twins with no notice above, this happened to my great grandma! She was 40 and thought it was "the change" when she first got pg, and the day she had the boys my grandma was walking home from work (she about 15) and one of the neighbours told her that she had twin brothers and Grandma didnt believe them!

The twins slept in bed with my Grandma and her sister. They had a twin each in their beds, and because my G Gma didnt think that rubber pants were healthy, every time one of the twins wet their nappy the girls had to get them up, washed, changed, themselves washed and changed and change the bed clothes. Every single night. This was on top of their day jobs/school. If you heard of someone making their teenage dds do that now you would call SS but thats just what they had to do.

'babyshock' was a book i enjoyed in the 1980s.
'the continuum concept', 'the family bed' and 'breastfeeding and natural child-spacing' were influential in my home.

My older brother slept in a drawer (but it wasn't still in the dresser !).
On the subject of washing nipples before and after each feed, the booklet I was given at the hospital post -birth said to do that, and so did the HV!
I did it maybe twice and then stopped, but felt guilty about it!

Thanks for that op i am lol

My daughter slept in a drawer when we stayed with my parents at Christmas, when she was five months old. That was only seven years ago.

It usually housed my dad's socks

Bogeyface, I'm surprised your granny had kids of her own after having to do that!

As for Miriam Stoppard, we had a babycare book of hers. DD1 had terrible colic, screaming most of the evening and some of the night. What was Miriam's advice? Not to bother with doctors or medicine, because most babies grew out of it at about 3 months. Can you imagine being in severe pain yourself, and thinking, "Oh, I won't bother trying to fix it, it will all be over in 3 months."

I had my first dishwasher in 1981 when I moved in with DH ( he was bf at the time) I was only 23, but I grew up with one, the first one I remember was an Indesit in about 1970, I was 11.

Gosh I'm old!

I used to babysit for a lady when I was 9, yes 9 years old and I used to make up glass feeding bottles and take the Silver Cross pram out for 2 hours whilst she had a sleep. The baby was 6 weeks old, me thinks she may have had PND, I did it every afternoon!

AllPastYears I used to know someone whose wife was a paediatrician. When they had their first DC, she had awful colic and my friend's wife felt terrible because of all the times she had told parents: "Well it should go away at about 3 months." With one of her own she realised what an unhelpful bit of advice that was!

I had my first dishwasher in 1981 when I moved in with DH ( he was bf at the time)
alibubbles I had to reread that a few times before I worked out that you meant he was your boyfriend at the time. I read it as he was breastfed at the time.

:o so did I Mrs!

In 1980 my best friends family had a dishwasher. But she was vairy posh - her father was an architect and they lived in a very fancy house he had desined himself. Didn't know anyone else who had one.

Found another good'un from the Chelsea Baby Club book. It recommended, from around 3 months, to give baby a tablespoon of vegetable broth and "small quantities of egg yolk may be given, but it is not uncommon to find the first trials provoke sickness." They also mention raw meat juice for the "delicate baby", but do not mention a recommended age.

They are also very keen on "adaptation" (hence the cages), so exposing baby to cold temperatures will make him/her hardier, eg. reducing the temperature of water at the end of a bath, or exposing baby's whole body to the open air immediately after a bath; and "fat babies" should have less clothing than "thin babies" because they are better insulated.

there must have been alot of cold babies in those days...

At the DCs nursery all the babies still have all their naps outside in big old fashioned coach prams parked in a special coach shed that is open to the elements. They thrive on it, seemingly. The older kids play out almost all day, every day, apart from coming in for meals, toilet and some specific play activities, and they are pretty robust as well.

at dishwasher. Still don't have one here!

My old neighbours were a German/American couple, he was German and she was American. His parents were aghast that the babies weren't being left outdoors to sleep every day, despite the fact that temperatures where I lived could get a long way below freezing for weeks on end in winter and way up into dangerously hot and humid territory in summer. Article on babies sleeping outside in the snow here. I think the heat would be far more dangerous than the cold.

When I had my first DC in 1988, all women were called 'Mrs' in the hospital ante-natal clinic regardless of their marital status. I found this hilarious as an 18 yr old sixth former, but staff explained that they 'didn't want to embarrass anybody". I was also repeatedly told that I could spot the symptoms of pre-eclampsia when I 'felt a tightening around my wedding ring'.

DP and I are sitting here giggling at all of these, though he is now claiming he'll "prefer bolognaise, but would settle for lasagne!" in the few days after any potential child of ours is born

I am going to start searching for these in charity shops!

My brother was born in 1978, and the midwife said 'Mrs Slattern, don't you think you've left if a bit late to be having your first child?"

She was only 26 FFS

My mum is also a bit obsessed with giving my DD extra bottles of water.

was told I could start weaning DS at 16 weeks in 2003,although I managed to hold out til 20 weeks.
My neighbour used to ff her DC the most filling formula every 4 hours and put them out in the pram in the back garden for their naps (snowsuits in winter). She also didn't approve of stairgates. This was in 2001-2007.
And, the woman I used to babysit for gave birth to twins without knowing in advance in 1998 ! She said she didn't bother going to any scans or antenatal, as she'd already had 3 DCs, although the youngest of them was 12 when the twins came along!
Thanks for starting this thread, Kayano :).

Slattern!

A bit old to start having babies
at 26?!

I'm 26 and the youngest of my friends to start having babies!

This thread is excellent!