To ask what you've done in the past as a parent and now cringe about

[CherryChasingDotMuncher]

We've just celebrated our son's first birthday, he's our 2nd baby. We had a lovely chocolate cake made for him and of course plated him up a little slice. DH reminded me of our PFB DD's first birthday. We did the same - had a chocolate cake made for her 'party' (parents and siblings came round) which we dished out to everyone, except DD. Then we produced a sugar free disgusting muffin for the birthday girl herself as we didn't want her having any chocolate until she was much older what a pair of wankers. She's 4 now and today she had 3 Freddo's.

We also took her to the doctors when she was eight months old - because she shivered. It was January in northern England, and we'd just returned from living abroad, in the desert. Idiots

Took my newborn ds to out of hours because I thought he had diarrhoea... turned out my milk had come in
The doctor was very nice incidentally.

When MIL looked after 11mth old DS for the first time which would involve putting him to sleep, I perched my phone on a shelf in his room and recorded myself rocking him to sleep, then made her watch it.

However clearly I didn’t think that was enough, so I also demonstrated his rocking routine on a giant Winne the Pooh teddy bear. She then practiced on the bear. Good god I’m cringing, she’s had 3 kids for crying out loud!! She must’ve thought I was a right dick.

My DS bum shuffles and is still not walking (that’s a whole different thread). Over Xmas we went to the supermarket. It was only supposed to be a quick trip so I took him with me alone (usually DH and I go together), I figured he’d just sit in the trolley for 10 minutes. After 5 minutes he started to thrash about in his seat so I thought i’d carry him for the remaining 5 minutes as my trolley wasn’t heavy so I could push it with one arm.
Nope, he didn’t want to be carried, he wanted to bum shuffle, on the supermarket floor, in full view of everyone. I had no choice, he was thrashing in my arms so much I had no choice but to put him down, he then proceeded to scooch on the floor weaving around people’s legs and trollies, pulling things off the bottom shelves (we were in the biscuit aisle) refusing to be picked up. Nobody smiled, everyone frowned and looked at me in disgust that I could let my son shuffle about on the dirty floor, I felt like an awful Mum and just cringe thinking about it!

Cried and got very upset when he refused to breastfeed at four months

Showed MIL how to put a disposable nappy on DS ( her first grandchild) because she had used terry nappies back in the day and not changed any nappies for the last 24 years. The cringey part is that it was not time for a nappy change before we were going out, so I demonstrated the technique on a soft toy !

MIL quite rightly verbally slapped me down for that one. Told me not to patronise her.

I played all the baby singalong crap in the car for first child. Got bored with that after DD came along. By the time they were aged 6 and 3 they were getting Eminem in the car ( with all the parental advisory explicit lyrics) and DD in particular was word perfect at way too young an age.
She loved seeing him at Leeds Festival last year !

My lovely dsis has just had her first. She was really relaxed with my dc and I thought she’d be a really laid back mum. When we stayed the other week we were told if we wanted a shower or to flush the loo it had to be done before 6.30. Then absolute silence and pitch dark upstairs. There’s only one bathroom, it was grim by morning. There were also sharp intakes of breath followed by desperate shuffling to the door to see if little nephew had woken every time I accidentally cleared my throat or raised my voice above the quietist whisper.

Not me but my sister asked me to babysit my nephew and when I arrived over one of her kitchen walls was covered in post it notes categorized ie) sleep information, feeding information. It was like a scene from the shining. I think 19 year old me asked her had she lost her f'ing mind. Twenty years on we kill ourselves laughing at it!!!! I have lots of stories about her, I reckon that's why my eldest never really suffered from pfb syndrome.

I'm the opposite. Embarrassingly so.
With Ds2, who didn't sleep, I gave him to my sil, (with admittedly tonnes of stuff -not as bad as the pp who needed her Dh to drive behind in the Second car though, but close) with loads of pumped breast milk. And left.

Without a backwards glance.
To dh's best friends pub. Where we were staying in the hotel room above the pub.
And we went out for NYEve and I drank and drank till I announced to Dh that I needed to go to bed, and promptly did!!

With pfb I decided that he should not have any plastic eating or drinking implements, so it was all little glass bottles of pureed food, clay bowls etc. Until he got old enough to chuck them around and I realised why plastic is quite convenient for children.
Can I just say tho that avoiding sugary crap and junk food is quite a good idea?

I love this thread 👶

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Dc1: i didn't want him to have anything that resembled a gun, i agonised over a water pistol when he was about 7. DC3 was pistol whipping the other kids in the park with his Nerf gun aged 2

I got so paranoid about all the advice regarding not overheating my newborn at night. The first few weeks he slept totally under-dressed next to an open window.

When he did get to sleep I was constantly getting up to poke a finger down the back of his neck to check his temperature and kept waking my DH to give me a second opinion. I’d then climb back into bed under a thick duvet because I was cold because the window was open...

I had THREE room thermometers of different brands side by side and took the average reading multiple times during the night to then look at the baby sleeping bag guidelines to make sure I wasn’t over dressing him.

I still feel SO SO bad that his first nights in the world were probably so cold and unfriendly for him!

I spent hours googling “my baby won’t sleep” etc etc Then my mum told me very firmly to put an extra vest and blanket on he slept so much better!

I still feel terrible and so crazy and stupid!

Not me but another parent who texts me before Halloween asking if her DC can call on me for trick or treat, saying that she’ll provide the sweets and will be bringing them round in advance. The child is 11.

Wow - to be fair the advice makes it really clear that they/the room should be a certain temperature so that's totally understandable, we did similar but then realised that when DS1 was at my mums he always slept through, it's a much newer house and so much warmer.

I had a clipboard on which we documented every wet or dirty nappy

Dressed ds1 up in lots of expensive French outfits and sailor suits. We aren't French nor do we live near an ocean. He looks pissed off in all the photos.

Was at a friend's child's party with my pfb when he was 6.5 months old. She offered him one of those Heinz biscotti things, which I think say "from 7 months" on them. He was about 10 days shy and I politely declined because of that

I babysat my niece who must have been about 3-4 months old at the time. My sister was going to have her fringe trimmed at the hairdressers, which was going to take all of 5 minutes. Including the drive there and back, no more than half an hour.

I was left sitting on the sofa with the sleeping baby. She was almost hysterical by the time she left the house and I was instructed to sit like a statue and not move under any circumstances. I was also given a list of numbers to call, should the worst happen and the baby was to wake up. I had: her mobile number, the hairdressers work and mobile number, her husbands work and mobile numbers!

Ds was very prem. which hopefully explains the following. I kept to a strict routine when he came out of hospital and wrote everything down. I even carried on doing the two hourly obs and recording it 🤦🏻‍♀️. I greeted every visitor with "the bathroom is through there I have done nice antibacterial soap to wAsh your hands with" then I'd get them to use that horrible hand sanitizer to make doubly sure. Tbf to me he'd spent so many weeks in s sterile environment I just tried to carry it on. I wrapped him up far to much poor thing. There is a great picture of me in a tshirt on s lovely spring day holding him in s snowsuit. Oh when he was transferred between hospitals the sun kept shining through the window into his eyes. I'd read somewhere that premis need dark rooms as their eyes were less developed than a ft baby and I kept going on and on to the midwife with us that he would end up blind. Looking back now I think she gave me a head tilt with a smile. I could write a book seriously. I can't even put some of it on here it's far too embarrassing and I'd get ripped apart.
Second child born full term and was a little girl. I spent a ridiculous amount of money on clothes for her. She was dressed beautifully. I was almost obsessed. Every morning from newborn she was in coordinated outfits before taking ds to school. And matching blankets. I EVEN IRONED HER SOCKS🙈. Her first Halloween we were in the US. A relative wanted to buy her a Halloween baby gro. I said no because it wasn't pretty.
Moving onto last child. I'm totally chilled. She always has cleAn clothes but often from supermarkets or wherever. Don't spend a fortune at all. And she's certainly not co ordinated and I defiantly don't iron her socks !! God that was long. I have a lot to cringe over

Made an emergency drs appointment for my baby DD when she came out in a horrible rash all over her legs.

Promptly cancelled it when i realised it was marks from the floral pattern on her tights.

Walked about a mile pulling the pram backwards instead of pushing it because I didn't want PFB to get the sun in his eyes.
Was horrified when someone asked what 11mo DS's favourite TV character was, as if they thought I might be the type of terrible parent who would let an under 2yo watch television (he's now 20mo, runs me absolutely ragged, and can name every character in Hey Duggee and the Go Jetters...)

I spent the first night Dc stayed with his GPs clearing all objects from shelves in the other side of the large bedroom he and I woukd be sleeping in. The shelves had been up for ten plus years without a wobble and are still up now 5 years on!

This is the thread that keeps on giving

Ken “god no! only organic”haha

When we had our pre-reception home visit, after offering our home baked smile cookies, I started sobbing
to the teacher “she’s a really wonderfully natured child, she’s so caring, it’s such a huge school, what if another child hits her?” the teacher just said “well, that might happen but we’ll deal with it, ok” as she awkwardly patted my hand .

I still feel like a knob.

Fast forward to DD now 8 - full of sass and mouth and I often feel she’d do well with corporal punishment

Omg I love this thread