PFB confessions...

[ForTheSakeOfFuck]

Just filled in PFB's "All about me" booklet for starting preschool in five weeks. It has a double-page spread for family photos - comfortably fits about four. I've painstakingly wedged in eleven. PFB grinning. PFB dancing. PFB shoveling food in his face. Then there're sections for writing about what PFB loves, hates, and is good at, word clouds to circle about his personality, tick boxes for how he learns/explores, all that kind of thing. Overall, I have pored over every question and written a carefully considered thesis. The staff going to take one leaf through this and make some (probably fairly accurate) conclusions. And yet, I cannot stop myself. In fact, I am ready to burst into tears at the very thought of taking him in on his first day with his little book all about him clutched in his hands.

Please cheer me up and tell me I'm not the only one who has done/is doing stuff like this. What's your most OTT PFB moment?

(PS. We have twins on the way so I imagine three years from now I'll be howling with laughter at my current self.)

I didn't take my PFB to toddler groups or anything similar until he could walk because I thought other people's devil children might squash him by the time we did go at 18mnths he was a massive bulky chap and never got squished . To be fair I've cried at all four of my children injections. Am I weird? Should it have stopped by now?

He in the second paragraph being the PFB - not the Burger King worker! I didn't handle that paragraph transition at all well.

Oh mummabear, without wanting to plagiarise an eighties classic, they're your babies and you should cry if you want to. I strongly suspect I would.

PFB is 3 yo. I still have her Angelcare baby monitor on the breathing monitor setting. I put it on religiously every night and find the bleep bleep bleep noise very soothing. Everyone thinks I am OTT. I know they are right but I still do it. PFB is moving into a proper bed soon. One of the requirements is the bed must have wooden slats so I can transfer the baby monitor.

That monitor will be under her bed when she's a teenager.

Aww, For you seem lovely. You have nothing to apologise for, I'm sorry for sidetracking your thread.

Another one who was worried about sun exposure. I had one of those parasols for DS pram, and would move it around to ensure no ray of sunlight managed to touch his precious skin.The parasol was huge - I was a complete menace to everyone around. (I am very contrite now.)

I would say being over cautious to the sun isn't a bad thing at all but then again ds 2 has Photo sensitivity which means he's allergic to the sun.
I have been to precious about all my boys but my first 2 have disabilities so I suppose you would be. I nearlyosteoporosis ds 1 at 8 weeks to meningitis and ds2 had to be resuscitated at birth as i gave birth to fast and he was in shock. Ds 3 thank God is fine.
I warm all ds 3 milk still and he's 2 and a half. I panic over every little illness and my kids probably see doctors way to much. I got called precious of friends for cutting there grapes up into quarters but news tells you this can only be a good thing. Ds 2 and3 both can't fall asleep cuddled up on the sofa and they are 2 and 3. And you know what I don't care what others think they will always be my precious little boys all 3 of them.

Whirl Grape/cherry tomato/little-round-thing slicing is the first of the Ten Commandments in our house. When MIL tried to give PFB unsliced grapes I lost my cool a bit and showed her the stats for the most common causes of deaths in small children. She still thinks I'm over-reacting but that's an immovable point for me. I choked once as a teen (my own fault, being stupid, laughing and horsing about whilst eating) and it is not something you gamble with. I also insisted that OH went on a half-day CPR course and took a ten week block of swimming lessons to improve. (His swimming is shockingly poor - somehow he fights the water like he's trying to subdue it?) I don't count either of those as OTT though. Both are vital skills in my view.

His swimming is still shit but he can at least now do two lengths of a pool.

I remember another one, when taking my year old to a cafe and asking how much salt was in the omelette and them saying they don't know as they order it in cue me looking horrified and walking out.

These are brilliant.

I'm sure I've done lots of mad things, but the one I really remember is reading in a baby book whilst pregnant with DC1 that a newborn should 'be introduced to every room of the house' when brought home.

My DP and I dutifully carried our sleeping 2 day old baby from room to room saying 'this is the bathroom, where we wash', 'this is the kitchen, where we cook'. Nuts.

I half remembered this when we bought DC2 home and managed a mumbled 'oh yeah, this is the lounge by the way'.

Zebra, totally with you on the breathing pad

please - that was from the baby whisperer book wasn't it? I remember the parts about the baby personalities. Insane.

My own pfb moments include

1. baby knee pads - in my defence we had stone flooring. No they didn't work.
2. sending my ds to mil with a pre cut banana. I don't know what I thought was going to happen with banana overload?

Will think of more I'm sure

I had to chuckle at the daftness of bumping your head to check how much it hurt until I remembered bopping my own head once with an object just to check.

That was with my third kid so doesn't make no difference what order they come in

I cried when PFB had his heel prick test, first hair cut, first vaccinations, first everything. The other kids' firsts I can barely remember!

DS is now 20.
I still run him a bath ever now and again and I check it with my elbow... He moans it's too cold, ungrateful devil!

A friend and I joked that it was a shame the breathing pad remotes didn't have a very long range, because we'd like to still be able to use them when the DC have gone away to University. Disclaimer: my DC are 16, 15 and 9 and I haven't used the monitors for years. Ish.

MIL looked after DD1 1 day a week when I went back to work. I wrote her a list of acceptable food for breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks. I found it in a file on the laptop recently. I was at myself.

I was very, very anxious about DS's feeding. He was bf and a fast eater but I was convinced he wasn't feeding enough and slowly starving to death. I'm a control freak by nature and small babies I discovered, don't really work with that, but to try and regain some control I did the following:

Kept a detailed notebook of every feed, time, duration and which boob he'd eaten from as well as the timing and content of each nappy change.

Set an alarm for every 3 hours in the night for a feed, when I would wake both of us up (including stripping DS off and wiping wet flannels over him if he didn't want to wake up). I genuinely believed if he didn't eat every 3 hours he would be too weak from hunger to wake me up by crying.

Bought my own electronic baby scales and would weigh him before and after every feed to try and gauge how much milk he'd had.

Eventually, still convinced he wasn't eating enough, I took my chubby little chap, who'd been stuffed to the brim like a foie gras goose to A&E where she dutifully examined him and then asked if he was my PFB. Double

edwinbear I think I love you. We took ours to weekly weigh-ins even when they started to really loudly hint that he was doing fine. Really. Very fine. No, seriously, look at the rolls on him. I look back at his pictures now and he was a teeny, solid piglet. We could've lost change in his fat rolls. Tbf, my paranoia was massively exacerbated by my MIL making non-stop comments about me not producing enough milk and saying how skinny he looked. We were clearly both off our rockers - her for saying it and me for believing it.

This isn't me, this is someone else...

When my dd1 was about 4, she and I were waiting in a dr's waiting room. The antenatal clinic people were also waiting and one of them had a dd who was about 18 months. Sweet little thing, wandering about in that jerky Thunderbirds way, picking up things putting them in her mouth, giggling, dribbling, you know the kind of thing...

My dd had a simple "sewing" set with her - really sort of string-threading - you know the things, punched holes, big needles. She was doing pretty well with it and feeling pretty proud of herself but she needed some help and direction.

The mother of the 18 month old cooed to her daughter, "Look at the little girl and her sewing! We need to get you something like that, don't we!" the 18 month old mashed two trucks together repeatedly and then involuntarily sat down really hard on her bum. I felt sorry for the life ahead of her of constantly falling short of her mother's expectations.

Then I realised that all hell was about to break loose when dc2 hit the world and the pressure was probably going to be off.

Kept a detailed notebook of every feed, time, duration and which boob he'd eaten from as well as the timing and content of each nappy change.

Recently discovered a friend of mine does that. Showed me the notebook - how long, which boob etc.

The baby has no feeding issues. And is 18 months old!

Whatever it is that parents do to pfbs, I have definitely done all the things, because my dc1 is the platonic ideal of an uptight, responsibility-ridden first born. I just can't remember doing it now.

Hmmm. I must be a shit mother as I can't think of any. I'm definitely on the more relaxed neglectful side of parenting. DH is definitely more pfb than me. Maybe its coz I've got a gazillion younger siblings or because I'm a social worker. Or maybe I'm just shit!

It must be pretty normal, for first injections I passed DS to DH, then sobbed as they did the injection part. I remember the nurse saying Mummy is more upset than you.

For DS's baptism it was all planned, the perfect event, DS bless him slept through, it was so sweet. He was about 2 months old though.

For DD's baptism we ordered the food instead of a mix of actual meals. DD wore an address, we didn't do a full CRB check on potential God parents, like we considered with DS. Well 'what if' they're a secret psychopath!