to leave my baby in the garden to sleep?

[SashaFierce99]

With three older siblings, it's difficult for baby to nap uninterrupted at the weekend/in holidays. She's just over a year old so still needs at least one long or two short naps per day. When her siblings are off we tend to walk/scoot/skate/bike to the park before her nap and she falls asleep in the pushchair on the way home. I then leave her in the front garden in front of the kitchen window and DCs and I paint/bake/draw in the kitchen so she's in sight at all times.

Today we did the above but there was a knock at the door ten minutes after we arrived home. It was a neighbour advising me that it's too cold and too dangerous to leave her unsupervised outside. I explained that I can see her and she's well wrapped up (full body vest, outfit on top plus jumper, double socks and full snow suit and hat) so she's fine but the neighbour kept saying I should take her inside. I politely declined and said I needed to get back to the other DC. She muttered about how I'll end up 'getting reported to someone'...!

AIBU to leave her outside?

I think what op is doing is fine though I would personally prefer the back. We have a cat next door so I don't do it myself.
Wrt the neighbour, perhaps she thought you might have forgotten your dd? I went for a walk with a friend and on return she left baby outside asleep. I left for home a few mins later and he was still there. 40mins later when I got home I had an image of him outside and just to be safe gave her a call. She was inside getting dinner on with two other DC and had forgotten him/thought she'd wheeled him into the hall. It was dark and getting colder at this stage so she was glad of the reminder!

Something else that always interests me is this idea of 50s mothers leaving their babies in the garden so they couldn't hear them cry. In the first place, how big were these gardens? And in the second- how come 50s mothers were all fine about their babies being left to cry for hours and we aren't? How are we so different? My mother, for example, was a mother in the late 40s, 50s and early 60s. She never left any of her babies to cry- although we all slept in the garden, (and she once did forget me when it started to rain- cue family myth about why I have red hair!). She was utterly horrified when she first heard about controlled crying from a friend of mine when my dad was a baby and had to pretend she needed the loo so she could leave the room while the friend described what she was doing.

We talk about people in the past as if they were a different species. I remember someone telling me that they didn't care about their children as much as we did because infant mortality was so high- but if you read diaries and writings from what my ds used to call "history time" they obviously cared just as much...........

Also older people would often stop and talk to babies left outside shops in prams. I can imagine the threads on here now about that common practice.

"Dd was a baby" obviously, not dad. That would be wierd.

Yes Bertrand, agreed. Not sure if this was every really a "thing".

Also older people would often stop and talk to babies left outside shops in prams

Its quite sad that people seem to get hysterical about this these days. I've never seen it but there are always threads on here about people freaking out when a stranger dares to look or speak to their baby. A lovely older couple distracted my crying ds for me while I packed my stupidly big shop in Asda one day I was so grateful.

I know a lot of mothers from previous generations who were certainly told that they have to leave babies to cry, must not pick them up, must feed on schedule etc. Most of them rebelled and did what they felt was right anyway.

Your baby could end up as dinner for a fox. - you did read that in this particular (and still investigated case) the baby was actually sleeping inside the house?
So condisering there have been NO cases of babies attacked by foxes when sleeping in the garden, and there is an alleged case of baby attacked while sleeping in the cot, outside seems certainly safer.

Well I must be getting old. I talk, make faces at and speak to babies in shops all the time, also still slip newborns a penny into the pram. Clearly where I live is much less suspicious as I've never had a dirty look etc.

I also bought a toy at Christmas for a random baby in sainsburys - was obviously feeling full of the Christmas spirit! I saw a young couple in the toy aisle during the sale picking up some stuff for their baby for Christmas - they clearly weren't well off and were debating between a couple of small things - they were only a few pound each in the sale. Anyway I popped the other one in my basket and paid for it and left it at the till for them.

Something else that always interests me is this idea of 50s mothers leaving their babies in the garden so they couldn't hear them cry. In the first place, how big were these gardens? And in the second- how come 50s mothers were all fine about their babies being left to cry for hours and we aren't?

I must admit, Bertrand, that despite being born in the early 1970s, I believe I spent large parts of any dry day at the bottom of an extremely large, sloping, heavily-wooded garden, where I was completely invisible and inaudible from the house. I don't think Dr Spock - the childcare guru of the moment, generally thought terribly daring and modern - recommended it, but I think my mother wasn't coping, and was being told by the older generation around her (she married into a household consisting of my father, his brother, his widowed father, and his great-uncle) that this is what she should do. And the tragedy of my mother is that her entire life has been spent doing what other people tell her, often accepting incredibly poor advice. Apparently, she decided to stop doing it after a baby died suddenly (presumably SIDS) next door, but was persuaded to resume.

Our two children were both left in the back garden to nap. Our youngest is 20 months and still naps in the garden. We make an exception only for heavy rain or strong wind, not for the cold.

My wife has pushed for this, despite my occasional concerns. She cites the scandanavian culture. I must say, both kids have been terrible night sleepers, so I can't say I'm persuaded by all the arguments! And I do worry when he wakes and when I pick him up his hands or face are freezing. But both did sleep longer outside than indoors in a pushchair, cot or bed.

And when I analyse it, I realise that I wouldn't think twice if we went for a two hour walk and he fell asleep in the pushchair. Nor if we were shopping or at the park, or otherwise outside. And it's kinda the same.

How come 50s mothers were all fine about their babies being left to cry for hours and we aren't? I suspect it is because Truby King (who I think was a NZ paediatrician) was a child health guru, and he advocated four hourly feeding and not picking babies up every time they cried. I think the idea was that you trained your baby into a four hourly feeding pattern.
There was still an element of this when I had DS1 in 1975. Certainly we were told not to feed more than every three hours. By the time DD was born in 1976 things were beginning to change to a more child orientated view.
To modern mothers the Truby King view seems cruel, but it was what my mother and mother in law were told. I don't think they were 'happy' to leave their babies crying though.
I know someone who, in the late 60s, was told to tie a transistor radio to the pram handle so she couldn't hear the cries!
It seems strange to us now that health care professionals held such sway, but according to DM they did.

Something else that always interests me is this idea of 50s mothers leaving their babies in the garden so they couldn't hear them cry

I've been thinking about this Bertrand because we were definitely "left to cry" and we were parked at the end of our large garden - fields beyond.

However, you're right - I don't think our mother was typical. She was a Truby King fan and by the late 40s his methods had largely fallen out of favour. Unfortunately for us, Mum had seen the system "work" for her older sister and decided that it would work for her too.

Apparently an elderly neighbour came round once to say she could hear the baby crying in the garden and mother told her briskly that it wasn't time for our feed. Mum thought that she was being modern and scientific - and she certainly implied that the elderly woman was old-fashioned because she believed in lifting babies and cuddling them when they cried.

It's hard to imagine that a mother could hold her child close to feed her and then, after a quick nappy change and re-swaddling, place her alone in the pram for another few hours, but that's what happened. I'm pretty sure the breastfeeding was all part of the science - it was good for us, so she would do it, but on her terms. We were certainly not allowed to nuzzle and stop/start as small babies do - she was appalled when she saw me feeding my own first baby.

We had a huge falling-out, needless to say.

I suppose it isn't so strange that baby experts held sway- the Gina Ford aficionados in my generation were pretty committed. It's just that i suspect it was a minority who were really and truly dedicated followers, and just like us, most people just bumbled along, doing what felt right. I remember my MIl picking dd up and saying "Ah, you can tell she's used to being nursed. I always nursed my babies" And certainly my own mother could no more have left a baby to cry than fly. She was born in 1920, and as I said, had babies in the late 40s, the 50s and the early 60s.

Also, I suspect that people read the "baby care" books for each era and assume everyone followed them.

Another reason we were left to cry out in the garden was because our mums had such a lot of housework etc do. They really did just have to let us get on with it while they got on with being all they had to be.

I can still remember my mum doing the washing in a single tub machine, then she'd rinse it and run it through the mangle upteen times. Monday really was washing day and it took from early morning till late afternoon with everything else having to be done whilst one load was washing etc.

It must have been a bloody nightmare.

"Another reason we were left to cry out in the garden was because our mums had such a lot of housework etc do. They really did just have to let us get on with it while they got on with being all they had to be."

Surely not for many mumsnetter's mothers though? Grandmothers, yes!

Surely not for many mumsnetter's mothers though? Grandmothers, yes!

Jeez, that question is just so wrong on so many levels.

I guess you just didn't realise there are loads of us Mumsnetter's who's mums it would apply to.

"that question is just so wrong on so many levels"

Sorry? Don't understand.

Well done nananina for talking sense. That other social worker is scaremongering.

I'm not quite ancient (49) and we had a single tub washing machine with a wringer when I was young - we eventually graduated to a twin tub but as a family of 9, we still had to go to the launderette as well. My Mum and dad both worked, dad did nights and mum did days and my mum made all our clothes. tbf my mum has said that there was less to do back then in some ways as she only had a two bed flat and we just didn't own as many things as we do now - no carpets to be hoovered - just a sweep round and a quick going over with the manual carpet thing on the rug. Bath once a week for kids, less activities and more just playing out and no catering to different food needs- a pot of something was made and we just got on with it. We drank water or tea or milk. 7 kids so someone to do the dishes each night - she wasn't daft my mother! :o

I used to leave DD to nap in the garden. I suppose I could keep a better eye on her there than upstairs in her cot, in her room with the door closed but it just seemed common sense really to leave her if she'd conked out in the pram rather than wake her to put her to bed. I had a sort of net thinger that could go over the pram to keep bitey insects and cats off. Sometimes I'd attach the baby monitor to the pram, sometimes not.

My friend always used to leave her baby in my garden to sleep when she came round too. Don't think either of us ever really thought about it much...

My MiL's fave parenting story was how a friend of hers used to leave her baby in a car parked at the end of her field so she couldn't hear it crying

I am 50. When we were very young washing machines were too expensive and there was no nearby laundrette. So my mum used to wash all the clothes and sheets in the bath. Shopping involved walking to the shops and carrying shopping back. There was no nursery provision for under 5's, and only a few playgroups for activities. No dishwasher or tumble dryer either.

shopping was put underneath the pram in the shopping tray and toddler was plonked at the babies feet. On arrival home, shopping and toddler would be dragged up to the flat and baby left downstairs to sleep/amuse itself for a bit..

My mum had a downstairs neighbour that would shout up that she was nipping to the shops and leave her baby out in the drying green and then sod off into town for hours!