To not understand why people are so obsessed with how/ what I feed my baby?!

[PurpleBlossom]

DD is 5 months old and ebf. I'm sick of random relatives telling me what I should be feeding DD and need a rant!

-When she was two days old I was told (by DP's Aunt) that breast milk was not enough and I needed to top-up with formula.

-BIL mocked me wanting to do BLW.

• My Mum is sure that formula before bed will help DD sleep better.

-MIL is insistent that DD needs baby rice and this is why she has stopped sleeping through.

Do people really think that DP and I are so thick that we wouldn't notice if DD was starving?! It's up to us what we feed our baby and when. Her weight is perfectly average and she is thriving, surely this is what matters?

And yes I AM sure that she doesn't need any 'cooled boiled water' GO AWAY!

AIBU to tell the next well meaning relative to stick their advice where the sun don't shine?!

I've had some random lady on a bus tell me that DS must be grumbling because he's too hot. Nope, he was tired.

Some old lady told me that I should put him on the floor and let him crawl around as 'that's what he wanted'. He couldn't even crawl.

I bit my tongue but what I wanted to do was say 'thanks for your advice, it's good to know you know my child better than I do'. Next time I will.

Next time just calmly say, current guidelines say that babies shouldn't be weaned until six months, until then he will be ebf and that's what we are choosing to do. Leave it at that.

YANBU. My MIL seems obsessed with cooled boiled water & tries to convince DH that DD needs it. I just smile & nod then do my own thing!

She is normally fab, just has a thing about giving advice from the 1960s which is quite entertaining most of the time

I blame Hillary Clinton. It takes a village, does it?

Remember, free advice is worth what you pay for it. Smile and nod.

And, when desperate, what waffly said.

You will unknowingly be encouraging a lot of this behaviour by chit chatting about your baby and what she eats etc. If you don't talk to them about certain topics, and NEVER show any signs of weakness the majority of it will stop. Occasional "put a hat on that poor cold child" will always happen though.

Don't mention food, weight, sleep concerns or anything. If you get asked how well she's sleeping - "Wonderfully! We're doing something right!", same with food "She's very content at the moment, but we'll start weaning when she needs it - probably not for ages yet".

Give them no reason to give you advice.. If they counter with "Oh, she should be doing X by now" --- just say well you could do that, but it's against government guidelines and she's already a happy baby.

As a new mum, I was interested in everyone's point of view, and occasionally followed it.Not everyone spouts nonsense! It is only natural to want to pass on advice about something that you yourself wish you had known. My mum turned out to be right about a few things. It is sometimes helpful to have a fresh perspective.

It's weird - I EBF, never gave anything other than milk until 6 months (to the day!) and nobody ever volunteered an opinion on feeding or indeed anything else. Perhaps I'm just lucky that I have pleasant in-laws, but I think it also comes down to not discussing things with people unless I genuinely wanted their opinions. That and not using public transport it seems as that's where they gather...

We had the water thing too. I'm guessing it was once the done thing.

My mum was really the only one who dared give an opinion on anything, she breastfed 4 kids in a 3 hourly schedule and only for 10 mins each side, I don't understand why on earth im overweight now :o
She was obsessed with cooled boiled water too.

As for BLW I tried it and it didn't work for us, but id never mock someone who did it, just tell BIL to stop being a prat.

I eventually told mum to give over, in a nice way, she still gets her iqr in at times but I smile and agree....then ignore.

When you have kids you need a thick skin because everyone always has an opinion purely to validate their own choices. . Unfortunately you may do it someday too :o

Every baby needs one of these...

www.cafepress.co.uk/+my_mom_doesnt_want_your_advice_infant_tshirt,495296766

*oar

After a goodish nights sleep and on reading the replies I do agree that I have (sometimes) encouraged the advice by saying that DD has stopped sleeping through.

Even though to me I'm just venting and happy to feed DD at night when she wants, obviously people are going to try and help and give me what they see as a solution. So I'm going to stop moaning and just get on with doing what I think is best.

Thank you for a bit of prospective

OK, I admit to doing the 'that baby is underdressed, it must be freezing, what are the parents thinking' thing, but in order not to impose my idiot unwanted views on the actual parents I just bore DH or my older sister (who does it too) with my latest exposed baby sightings. (Shocking one in Camden yesterday, sub-zero wind, tiny baby in no coat and no hat held in mother's arms not in pram with a foot muff, I ask you).

We've all got our hobbyhorses with baby rearing. You will too, you wait. The trick is not to speak your obsessional parenting assertions out loud. Some people do have problems with this (there ought to be therapy groups, really). It is hard when the advice addicts are in your immediate family, because they are the people you do want to share your endless proud retellings of baby's progress with. If you can't tell your own mother baby isn't sleeping through without being pitched into gratuitous parenting advice hell, who can you tell?

No real advice here, I went into Kevin the teenage mode when my mother did this, which was not only very unbecoming in an older mother (40s) but not very effective.