to really dislike the term PFB?

[Hoebag]

I thinks its a bit snide and rude to people who are just want to protect their kids

its normal to be more clucky over ther first surely as your learning on the job?

whats the line between normal protective parent and PFB-ness??

Chaos? You're reminding me of a malfunctioning android.

PFB is very descriptive. I can think of so many moments friends have had e.g. little x will only ever eat organic.

So, Chaos, what do you think about it?

The majority of the time I see posters using it of themselves. It's a useful shorthand for a whole observable phenomenon.

To answer your OP, I don't think YABU. When it's used to put new mothers down I think it's really cruel.

Maybe I am just soft, but to me the idea of two parents going to do nappies together, cutting out labels so skin doesn't get scratched, it just seems quite nice. I didn't do those things, but they don't make me think 'PFB'.

Hell I was very PFB with my first. I really tried not to be but I couldn't help myself. I had to try and hide how I felt as I knew other mums wouldn't appreciate it. I just thought the sun shone out of sons bottom and he could do no wrong. He is now aged 9 and still all the things he was as a toddler - bright, chatty, well behaved, great fun, good appetite for good food etc but he is really very far from being perfect. He has two much younger brothers now.

I'd have liked to know what Chaos thought of this too. But in the meantime, I don't think it is an unkind term. It's perfectly descriptive though. I also agree that we've nearly all had pfb moments but it's knowing that you have which makes all the difference.

I don't think its that snide - it is as other people have said a very descriptive word and when you hear it you know exactly what people mean.

No-one is suggesting that you shouldn't do the best for your baby or be extra careful with it but a friend of mine used to insist that her baby had 45 mins of classical music played in its vicinity every day - the baby was 3 weeks oldto be that is classic PFBness.

I like the term! We've all been there, and can chuckle at the silly things we've done.

The first time we went on holiday with our pfb (8wo at the time) we almost packed our WHOLE house. We had to borrow a friends camper van to fit it all in . We were so scared that if we didn't have the bouncer, the moses basket, the toys, 10 different types of blankets/sheets, twenty seven different babygros, 5 different sleeping bags for different temperates, pram, pushchair, 2 different slings,2 giant packs of nappies, 6 packs of wipes etc etc etc our PFB might not sleep/settle. The only solution was to take our whole house with us!

When we first went away with DC2, we took a travel cot, a couple of blankets, a couple of babygros, a pack of nappies and wipes, a sling and a pushchair.

Describes it perfectly, I like it. Punctures pomposity, very necessary IMO.

LetsKateDown
I don't think it is generally used to put new mums down, is it?

It is more: OH. GOD. I remember I did stuff like that. Why did no one tell me??

think it's a great term - fits most first babies down to a tee!

think perhaps you don't realise how apt it is until you have a couple of kids who are out of the baby phase and you spot some nervous newbie parents? I don't think it's ever meant maliciously, just a bit of gentle joshing

my best pfb episode was when i spent the first week of his life changing his whole outfit when he had a dirty nappy.... soon stopped that when i ran out of clean babygros!

chaos come back, we want to know what you think.....again...and again....and again

TheEternal
I'm probably a little over sensitive because I was described as being too PFB by some people in the early days when I was still feeling very vulnerable.

I do laugh at myself now though when I remember some of the things I did.

I think that it is a great term! It really should be PFTP as in precious, first time parent. Usually most parents can have a good laugh at themselves later.

Maybe we need to differntiate betteen PFB and OTTPFB... you know the type :o

Errr - I don't think the paediatrician was advocating dropping babies out of trees. He was just reminding a new mother that we are not so far removed from our simian ancestry and that babies are surprisingly tough and not made of porcelain.

YANBU. When I use it I mean it in a very snide way.

(Is the chucking them out of windows the same as chucking newborns into the baths to see if they can swim?)

(apparently if you want to kill cats (I am an animal loverand most definite catwoman but...) you have to chuck them out of the 4th floor. Any lower or higher and they sort themselves to land paddy-paws down. 4th floor though and it's mince.)

(have never tried)

That is a shame, Kate. But says more about the people saying these thing than you, or the PFB label.

I think, as with other things, there is a danger that someone can use PFB the wrong way, and be snide about it.

And of course, if someone had said to me that I was being PFB, then I would - at the time - have been upset. It should really only be used in retrospect, imo.

lol at Bucharest's cat killing tips.

It is perfectly possible to be PFB about baby no. 2. It just describes parents who have gone into parenting overdrive, where logic and sanity are spread very thin indeed.

I've not heard of that expression before, but it's true. That's exactly how I was with my first. Cringeworthy, lol.

I think it is a nasty term - nearly always used in a sneering way IME. As if the older mothers have forgotten the sheer terror some of us feel at being a new mother (especially if we have had no other experience of babies). I think it is an unsympathetic term, also my dc 2 is just as p as my fb!

And to add; lots of people are anxious by nature, which isn't a happy thing to be, so being accused of pfb behaviour doesn't help!