to HATE all this new fangled, internet baby advice stuff

[LeBFG]

Of the sort:

breastfeeding necklaces (like this) give baby learning opportunities and stop them from getting brain damaged

lack of ''tummy time'' is to blame for all sorts of things from cognitive development to ability to read. I mean, really? We are damaging our children for life if they don't spend 10mins a day on their bellies?

And tons of others, including my old favorite, the BLW fad where babies practice their fine motor skills, jaw muscle movement and coordinating swallowing, which is helpful because otherwise they would never get a chance to do these things with purees and finger food.

All of these ^ things are good ideas, so why don't they just stop at that. Why do they have to tack on life-altering, super-duper brain development shit to sell the idea?

Bloody bollocking tummy time was the bane of my life with DS1. I never could convince him it was anything other than torture.

Forgot to do it with DS2.

I think FTM have enough to worry about without the added pressure of bf necklaces, tummy time etc.

My LO is 18weeks, hates tummy time....keeps rolling onto his back everytime I try! As for weaning, some people tell me 4 months, HV tells me def not before 6 months.

The pressure on me to breastfeed my LO is horrendous. I'm lucky that I've never had any problems bf LO, but god forbid I want to give a bottle to give me a break!

At first, I looked up every little thing... LO has a cough, LO poo is a different texture, LO scratched his head! It drove me mad. Now I go n instinct and do the best for LO.

No YANBU

FTM? Full time mother? So all mothers then, yes?

Breast feeding necklaces should be advertised with their real purpose

stops baby trying to tune your other nipple to radio 5 and reduces all manner of maternal wincing

YANBU. Our PFB is due in December and it's completely overwhelming with so much conflicting advice out there. I'm sure there is a lot of valuable advice but there's also a lot of rubbish and being completely new to this I'm not always sure how to tell the difference.

Ffs. DO NOT, I repeat DO NOT shut down Mumsnet. No amount of googling advised me how to get my baby back to its original colour. You lot did though once you'd all stopped pointing and laughing

BLW is the bollocks. With twins it means that I fire food at their high chair and let them get on with it. The eating the same meals thing is a little way off but I like that they are eating carrots and fruit in their natural form, and not having eg peas, courgettes and brocolli all smooshed up together which I would never make.

And frankly seeing my DTS demolish half a mango with only two bottom teeth is amazing! Nappies are horrific though! Also less mess than my mates who are purreeing - and who end up giving their babies a bit of toast to distract them so they can shovel the purée in. Seems a bit counter intuitive to me...

I actually meant first time mums, although it does apply to all mums I'm sure. Never meant to offend. Sorry tee

The marketing was the scary thing.

We didn't have money (and still don't have a lot!) when I was pregnant with DD1. DH bought me one of those baby magazines and I started crying at all the stuff I imagined we needed.

I never read another one!

Luckily I have a sensible mum who reassured me that it was a load of old bollocks

Well I personally think googling is a LOT better than asking Mary down the postoffice or Betty over the back which is what previous generations did.

Google can reveal Cochrane reviews and academic papers as well as other evidence. If you know how to filter ideas and evidence and pick what suits you it is FAR BETTER than the gossip among other women in your baby group or street.

Now this is bollocks:

KissMeHardy
Oh God - I must be old !! We didn't have: tummy time, BLW, growth spurts, sleep regression etc. etc. in my day. We just got on with it.
It was called "bringing up a baby" !!

Of course you bloody did - it was called sleeping on their front, giving them a crust of bread to chew on, growing, and bad sleeping.
Y'know, normal baby stuff.
Just because it didn't have labels doesn't mean it didn't happen. What the heck is wrong with labelling things anyway? Most of my friends and I had little or no experience with babies before having our own, so these labels come in handy when trying to figure out what fresh hell our DCs have plunged us into.

I've known a few flat headed babies whose square noggins were apparently caused by too much time on their backs. There is a point to tummy time, it's not just there to fill leaflet space.

We're all just doing our best, there's a huge difference between the offensive shit on that awful necklace link and normal chat between mums using shorthand-type labels for common experiences.

Sorry OP - of course YANBU.

Funnily enough, I couldn't wait for DS's head to flatten a bit. His head was wide like a button mushroom. It's fine now.

Why on earth would a baby get a flat head if not given tummy time?

DSs head was quite asymmetrical at one stage - he always slept with his head to one side! I ended up turning his head every time I checked on him.

Tweasels - from too much time laid on their back with their head in the same position. Some babies are quite static, and their soft bones are easily moulded, so if they don't move their heads enough they can get flat at the back.
This is how it was described to me anyway by the flat headed babies mums!

Tummytime - DS learned to roll from his front to his back (the more difficult way?) very quickly. I would studiously put him on his front and he would roll onto his back and giggle. He could see what was going on so much better on his back - why waste time looking at the carpet? Apparently it was better sitting up though, which he learned to do pretty early. He was then quite a late walker - as why bother if everyone brings things to you anyway....

Surely though, aside from being asleep, they're not on their backs that often. Being carried, fed, in a sling, bouncy chair etc.

That might just be mine though could never put the buggers down, never did tummy time as they hated it. Both sleep on their fronts now though oddly.

Longtailedtit- I think that's the point isn't it? None of this stuff is new! It's just the same old rebranded stuff to sell products/freak new parents out.

I've been away from new babies for 13 years, and I've come back to a world of reflux and tongue tie. I don't dispute these things exist, but they can't be new, surely? What was the solution 5, 10 or 20 years ago?

I think also in those first 12 weeks you are at your most vulnerable in terms of believing any old shit. I was never off the Internet diagnosing DD with non existent reflux every time she spewed up some milk.

MN was invaluable to me when dd1 was born.

My mum had dementia, and none of my friends had babies at that time.

The local community has almost disappeared and so I turned to the nest of vipers to get me through. I learnt more than I could ever list and I wouldn't be the kind of mum I am today without it.

I am now pg with dc3 and smugly confident that I know what I'm doing. But when it goes tits up at 2am, all I have to do is switch on the laptop and there you all are, ready to soothe me/slap with me a wet fish* *delete as required.

Don't knock the internet, knock the rip off sales people exploiting first time mums. And they have always been around, in one form or another, the internet has just made them more prolific.

The solution to tongue tie and reflux was bottles and leaving them at the end of the garden to cry - DS had two TTs and would have been fine on formula but I wanted to persist with BF so we got it diagnosed and sorted.
From my mum's descriptions it sounds like I had reflux, she FF me and left me to cry a lot.
They're not new, just dealt with more effectively now, and have picked up names/labels along the way.

And of course none of it's new, but my point was that it's really not on to claim "We didn't have in my day", when of course they did, but it was not recognised or dealt with the same way.

The stupid stuff is as OP says, when they add a load of scaremongering on to pressure you into what you'd probably do out of instinct anyway! I must say, I would NEVER buy a product from that BF necklace company having read that tripe on the product page.

I had my dc before the internet. I had a couple of baby books and one about pregnancy, plus advice from the HV. My dm had already died. I got unwanted advice which I ignored from my MIL and grandma. I wished there had been more breastfeeding support and people to turn to in general. There were quite a lot of leaflets of advice provided by ELC, Mothercare, etc. If the internet had existed I'd have been using it a lot. I thought there would be support from professionals as someone was supposed to call on a new mum daily for up to 3 or 4 weeks after birth (health visitor? I can't remember) but they made excuses from the beginning and dropped me from the lists after about 2 weeks. I would have liked the support of someone coming in regularly. It was really just me and my OH and there was no one to give good advice most of the time. I think I'd have liked the internet.