To wonder how we got having a baby years ago.

[IsItSummerYet2018]

This is totally light hearted.
But reading some people on other sites/ threads/forums saying about things for example : perfect prep machine for milk.
Saying how they couldn't live without it. When its 3am boiling up a kettle is a faff etc.
Don't get me wrong it is and time Consuming when you have a crying baby and sleep deprived.
However they haven't been around forever and everyone just got on with it before hand.

please note I'm not Having a dig it's just a general wondering

Can anyone think of anything else that we have now but didn't before... But just can't live without?

shell my mother thought that it was fine to leave a 5 year old relative supervising 2 year old relative playing by a river while she was out of sight but within earshot. She fully and bitterly blamed the 5 year old when the two year old fell in the river and had to be pulled out by a very luckily but coincidentally nearby gardner - it couldn't have been my mother (who had offered to babysit the children that afternoon)'s fault, because she did that with us and we're all still alive.

She was most upset when I muttered more by luck than judgement"

perfect prep machines aren't even safe
the water needs to be boiled
the filters get mildew
yuk
better to boil water
fill flask
fill another bottle to leave to cool to room temp
then when needed to make s feed in night
add enough boiled water to a bottle to dissolve milk powder
add milk powder
top up with cooled water
hey presto
safe
ready to feed bottle
of course there is a more instant version called breast feeding
lol

excellent comment here by diego mara donna

There are many things people believe they need with a new born and these things are untouched after about 3 months. I look at certain items and think, I can’t believe you bought that.
Muslins for example. But they are good cleaning cloths now.

books

In terms of things that people "can't live without" that they actually could live without (i.e. not actual life and death things) my grandmother is amazed by pushchairs. She said nobody had pushchairs in her day. She just carried the kids everywhere or made them toddle once they got too heavy.

I lived abroad a few years ago and in some ways it felt like going back in time. Stuff was harder and took more time but you really do just get on with it when you don't have a choice! It becomes the new norm. People did have it harder back then and I bet they would have loved all our gadgets and time saving ways. But we should still be allowed to moan in 2017
One thing though, I always make my bottles in advance.. make with boiling water and put in fridge. No problems with both babies.

She also said the cloth nappies she used to use were only absorbent enough for one pee, so with a newborn she had to wash and dry 10+ nappies a day by hand. She said when it was cold she folded them up and put them in the oven to dry.

People didn't know any different that's why!

Carried all my babies in the 70's in a shawl (siol fagu) as did all my friends in Wales. Still carry grandchildren and other random babies I look after like this - I end up tying myself in knots and half strangling them with a sling. I remember terry towelling nappies and no fabric conditioner - they were as hard as boards because you dried them on the guard around the fire or later on the radiators. Nighties not baby grows and the ribbon through the neck that always came out so that they were worn sort of off-the-shoulder, plastic pants which had elastic that went brittle and acted as a sort of tourniquet around the baby's legs, romper suits for boys where you buttoned the top to the bottom but the buttons always came off. And a 'transporter' for the carry cot that was a metal cage thing with no springs and hard wheels pretending to be a pram - the vibrations would have rattled the baby's teeth out if they had any.

The ONLY thing I remember with affection was my massive, second hand, Silver Cross pram I could barely see over for baby #4 and #5. I could put a week's shopping, a toddler, a changing bag and the kitchen sink in it with room to spare. And they slept outside in it in the porch in all weathers for a large part of the day or positioned under the washing line to watch the clothes blowing for hours. A kind of early mobile.

I had a pram seat, which fixed on the apron part of my coach built pram, so at one stage I had a baby in the pram, 2yr old on the pram seat and 4 and 5 yr olds holding on each side. We never bought any bottles, I just assumed I would breastfeed.
With respect to feeding being a class thing...with my 1st and 2nd we were living in a small village in the North-east, and I was the only breast feeder there. In fact my doctor asked me why I had chosen to breast feed, and I said, "That's what I thought you did." I was a Londoner and my mother had breast-fed both myself and my younger brother, my best friend's mother had fed her two late additions, and my uncle was concerned when his new-born son wouldn't latch on and had to have a bottle.
This made me wonder, if rather than a class thing, it was a North/South thing. Also I married a bottle-fed Northerner.

Muslins? Really? They were one of the things that were useful. If you have pukey breast fed babies they save changing your own clothes after every feed... They are endlessly useful as make shift changing mats, sun hats, wash clothes etc when on the move with only a baby in a sling and a small bag...

Baby baths - those are pointless. Tbh carry cots and Moses baskets are useless too IME. All bulky, expensive and pointless but all existed and were bought 40+ years ago as they are today.

I reckon the number one thing our ancestors would have snatched out of our hands, is the washing machine.
Other items we can easily do without, but when they were using terry nappies, a wahing machine would have made things so much easier for them.

I agree about washing machines. Nobody in their right mind would choose to raise a clutch of children without a washing machine.

How long ago was it the norm not to have a washing machine? I'd bet more households had one than didn't even 40 or 45 years ago, and most did by the 80s...

Yes the washing machine has been a huge advance. Other “stuff” not so much. It seems a little harsh to judge earlier generations for not having car seats when car seats didn’t exist.
I think you can only judge the success of your parenting when your children become adults. I think I got lots of things wrong, but I am very proud of the adults (and parents) that my children have become.
Every generation thinks they know better than the one before. I know I thought that. Now I think that they did the best they could given the conditions at the time.

I think there were lower expectations.

Older kids / other family often looked after smaller ones. There were no play dates, toddler groups, pressure to buy lots of toys.

I am nearly 50. When I was a child age 6 I walked to school and back with my 8 year old brother. I then played outside until dinner - in the road with the other kids. No bedtime story. Hand down clothes.

My mum worked while we were at school. She got us up. We made our own breakfast. Then she cooked dinner. Then we went to bed straight after. So I do more work looking after my child than she did.

I had my babies in the 80’s so had an automatic washing machine which I bought with my superannuation money. I think I probably had more time than many modern mums. There are definitely more ‘things’ to buy for baby nowadays but it’s not necessarily easier for mums. I’d wish I could gift a few bottles of confidence and relaxation to new mums.

Also it was my job from age 6 to wheel the clothes to the launderette!

I don’t mean that new mums today are not as good as we old birds, just that I think they’re under more pressure.

Wintertime I am mid 50s. I agree kids were more independent then. But me and my siblings still had bedtime stories, and homework from starting school at 4.5. Also lots of kids did not go to bed after dinner. So some of what you describe is family specific.

Evelyn 40 years ago 66% of families had a washing machine. That will have often been a twin tub though which is more work than automatics. It was far less families 50 years ago.

Agree crunchymint a lot varied in families.

However my mum was not unusual, and the expectations were a lot lower. Most kids were expected to be far more independent from a younger age and parenting wasn’t the intense job it is now.

Vaccinations existed as soon as science invented them and were eagerly taken up. Mothers back then would have seen children dying or being harmed by illnesses that vaccinations prevent. There were no car seats at one time. I am sure mothers would have used them if they had existed, but they didn't.

Will that achieve better results Wintertime4. How (and when) will you know? What are the success criteria?

Yes crunchymint. I remember the panic to get us vaccinated against polio.