AIBU to be sick and tired of people telling me what to do with my baby???

[MOB247]

Ok so I'm a second time mum - you would think that people would just let me get on with it but no!

I have a 4 month old who is ebf and admittedly not a great sleeper up quite a lot at night.

For the past few weeks my mum, MIL and random friends have all told me to switch to formula because it will make him sleep better. I appreciate that they want to help me out but I've politely declined each time and they keep bringing it up EVERY TIME I see them

Now a lot of my family are saying that I should start wearing him early to help with his sleeping! In their day it was 3 months when you stated weaning! My MIL tried to give him some yogurt so I had to get tough and she was a bit taken aback when I said no and made a mad dash for the spoon of yogurt she was about to give him!

They just don't understand that I am just trying to do the best for my son - and these comments are undermining my confidence as a mum.

Has anyone else had this?

Are you me?!

The exact same thing is happening to me, got a 5 month dd.

Had all the same comments as you and even 'were worried because you haven't started feeding her properly yet'

Everyone has had that and has done since we had a way of communicating.

One of the nice things about being a GM is that I can enjoy my GD without these sorts of issues and I make sure that I let my DD offload about other people's opinions and back her up.

You have to put your foot down. As long as baby is happy and gaining weight you are doing a fab job. I would have loved a 3 month old that slept through the night but breastfeeding was more important to me than getting him sleeping through the night. Stuck to your guns!

I am afraid this happens to all parents for ever! Opinions are like arses - everyone has one and everyone thinks everyone else's stinks!

Yup. I'm on no.4 and still got people asking why i STILL wasn't in a 4 hour feeding routine. Why i STILL hadn't started weaning by 5 months.

sigh.

You have to just get snappy in the end and say you're happy, baby is happy, you'll do it your way ta.

We had a baby who hated the pram. Fine with me - was happy to have her in sling instead. But my family went collectively insane about it. Every conversation: "Have you got her in the pram yet? When are you next trying her in the pram? You should try her in the pram!" Wouldn't accept it when I insisted I was fine with the sling - used to call DH and ask him if he knew what I was so worried about with the pram and how they could talk me round. At one point they insisted on a group of us going out with weeks-old DD in pram, DD started yelling her head off as usual, and several relatives actually bundled me into a shop to stop me picking her up. "Just walk away, she needs to get used to the pram!" BACK OFF, ffs.

I am sure they were just trying to help, but it was maddening and weird.

I'm sure that there were some Victorian grandmothers saying " why are you so worried about putting a bit of gin in her bottle? ".

My husband thought I had to be exaggerating about how many strangers give 'helpful advice' when I'm out with our 2mo. Wasn't until a drunk man literally lying in the street told us the baby should have a hat on that he believed me!

I had the same with my sister... She listened to me rant about all the helpful advice I got, took my son for a walk one afternoon and got stopped three times by random strangers offering wisdom! It is so annoying.
My favourite one this time is people (ladies of q certain age) saying how sad it was babies grew up-becausethere would be a pretty abrupt end to the human race if that happened.
Smile and nod!!

I had the formula milk thing with all my children. So much so, I switched to formula to stop the constant "you are killing your baby, your milk is no good" remarks (relatives, not health care professionals). (I also had PND).
I've also caught people feeding DS1 icecream at 1 month old and get all hurt when I told them off!
Stick to your guns and tell them where to go. Your baby, your rules type thing. Anyone who defies them loses cuddle privileges!

Unfortunately the more you share, the more opinions you will be offered to 'fix' your problem.

My advice? Lie

Say he slept through. Say he feeds the magical 4 hour intervals. The more you share the more judgements you get.

Other than that, tell them you are happy and so is baby so no need to fix what isn't broken.

I would have gone mental at your MIL for feeding yoghurt and dictating weaning! Those situations will need a tough response. Others might just need some little porky pies to keep things fluffy

The problem is, it isn't really about any "problem". It's about people wanting to feel their own parenting actions were right, and that their experience means they know best. You see it on the threads here all the time, too.

You are doing the right thing - this is about best current evidence for your child's health and they are wrong according to that best current evidence. They have no right at all to ignore you and try to feed anyway and you are completely right to stand up for what you are doing.

TBH a lot of parenting involves the uncomfortable saying of things people don't like hearing. One of mine has additional needs, and it's horrible having to be "that" parent and push for extra help from limited school budgets, or argue he shouldn't have to do something other kids all do, or, or, or... it's no easier now. But knowing your baby and child cannot fight their own corner and rely on you to do it does help IME. And you really are doing what is, as far as we can know, the very best for your baby. So your parenting confidence is justified and they should bog off.

Yep. My 4 month old DS is ebf and not even close to sleeping through the night. I've been told by various people to switch him to formula, to wean him early (MIL tried to give him scrambled egg FFS!), and to stop 'pandering to him' and let him cry it out.

Would I like a baby that sleeps for eight hours straight? Of course. But he's in a sidecar cot, it's not a massive hardship to shimmy him over to me to feed him a couple of times in the night and he goes straight back to sleep. If I was severely sleep deprived I'd think again but I'm fine and DS is happy and thriving which is the most important thing.

I'm usually just politely blunt that I want to do things my way.

It is frustrating and some of the advice I got from strangers was just bizarre. Luckily, they were one offs I could mostly brush off.
Someone I met at a first time parents group was insistent I was so wrong to exclusively BF until 6 months.
We did BLW and I got annoyed with people wanting to 'pop some food' in her mouth and just not getting that she could manage just fine.
I also discovered how obsessed people were that you have to give a baby a dummy.

I'm a bit worried about this as the advice has already started...I'm due mid April.

Conveniently I have a tonne of early education qualifications, so can rebuff most things with 'actually recent evidence is that /nhs guidelines state...' But obviously the problem is then that I sound like a massive smug twit

My response these days is 'why?' and get them to explain their mad reasoning.

My MIL says I will create a nasty needy child by constantly cuddling them. She's two weeks old, will be my only child and I will bloody cuddle her as much as I bloody well want to.

Also, people are insistent I'll have more kids. Absolutely insistent. Both of us nearly died... I'm not going through that again. That and I don't want any more. But no, I'm wrong. And soon I should have another!

Just ignore them. Honestly. It happens in every walk of life. I got told how to run my own business for years. You just smile and nod and file it under 'nutter'

It's a shame because you feel you can't talk about how much they woke in the night... I learnt to shut up about it with certain people, as I knew what their solution was! Whereas I just wanted a bit of empathy!

It doesn't stop . I had my DM on and on at me to "get that baby into a routine", and to make sure she had a proper bedtime. As she was my 5th and DM only had 2 I could just calmly say "I know what I'm doing, thanks".

But the first one we had weeks of hell trying to put her down when she just wanted to be held .

This drives me crazy and our baby hasn't even been born yet!

A few weeks ago I had a family member ask me if we have everything ready for the baby. I said we did, and she immediately followed up by asking if we have enough bottles and a steriliser. I said no as we're planning to BF so we would only buy numerous bottles and other equipment if the baby needed formula, or if we needed to feed expressed milk. Cue relative looking absolutely horrified, then laughing and saying "of course you'll need to bottle feed, don't be so naive." Thanks so much for your faith in my ability to feed my child the way I'd prefer to!

Another relative told me that if we follow the NHS advice of having the baby sleep in our room for the first six months then we'll "never get a moment's sleep." Apparently as advice on sleeping changes from time to time we should just ignore the NHS guidance and put the baby in another room so we get more sleep. And, this was backed up by saying you don't need to put babies on their backs to sleep as her babies used to sleep on their tummies and were fine.

I try to see it as well-meaning advice, but it's difficult when it feels like people listen to what you plan to do and then take it upon themselves to tell you why your choices are wrong and their ideas are the right ones, even if they happen to be decades of out date!

I found that hissing "If I hear another word about how I feed my baby from you then you will not be seeing her again" worked quite nicely.

Doesn't matter what you do, someone will comment.
Ebf- they need formula to settle
Ff- you've destined them to every ailment going.l

Pushchair: you'll make them lazy
Sling: you'll make them clingy

Dummy: they're speech will be slow
No dummy: they'll suck thei thumbs

Early weaning: they'll be obese
Blw: they'll have no table manners

Reusable nappies: they'll get nappy rash
Disposables: cost the earth.

Etc... It's all nonsense.
Raising kids is tough. They're all different & we do what works best for our families. Sometimes it's best to just not mention your woes to certain people (though some will give advice anyway).

The real minefield is trying not to become one of those people.

I had this from several people but especially my Nan.
She hated that I was ebf for some reason and every time I saw her would ask if I'd put him onto a bottle yet and why not. Then it was why wasn't I weaning him, and how ridiculous the 6 month advice was.

DS was 91st percentile born but dropped to 7th over several months, although didn't lose weight, just was very slow to put it on. Health visitor and Dr weren't concerned as he was feeding well, was very active and meeting all milestones.

But you can imagine this just fuelled her fire, she was convinced I was starving him and would tell anyone who would listen this was the case and it was why he was such a bad sleeper. It got to the stage that I avoided going to visit

Also, he was my DC3 so it wasn't as if I didn't know what I was doing!!