To think a lot of young baby advice is given in isolation?

[Thurlow]

Not a TAAT but a few threads I read this weekend got me thinking about this.

I can't help but think some of the big advice given to new parents re newborns is given in complete isolation to how most people's real lives are.

Take two of the biggies.

Never leave your baby to sleep alone for the first 6 months. Perfectly feasible if you have a baby who happily sleeps in the corner of the living room every evening, or sleeps contentedly in a sling, maybe, assuming someone can physically wear a sling that long. But nowhere near as practical if you have a baby who only sleeps in a pitch dark room with white noise blasting at them, say. Not taking into account a parent's own mental health which might just need an hour to themselves in an evening.

Never leave your baby to cry. Again, possibly quite easily done with just one child who sleeps well at night. Much less easily done if you have older children, or are on your knees with sleep deprivation.

But the advice is generally given in such dogmatic terms that it leaves new mums terrified they are causing damage to their newborn by not adhering rigidly to these recommendations.

I'm not saying the recommendations aren't right. I know people with much more experience are making what they feel to be the correct, evidence based advice on the safest way to care for a newborn. But if it's given in complete isolation from the reality of family life - multiple children, partners working long hours or away, high needs babies, struggling mental health - they advice can end up being just another rod to beat yourself up about and creating more worry?

YADNBU. I've noticed this lots. Same with feeding advice "I couldn't breastfeed because of X Y Z" to a Mum asking for BF advice. The underlying message seems to be "I couldn't do it and neither will you", when actually the vast majority of women CAN breastfeed!

Advice is also given on the assumption a new Mum has oodles of support. "Get family to bring round Shepherds Pie, take baby for a walk, get them to make you cups of tea.". We have very little support, and when family did come they said "put the kettle on" before they even sat down, took my baby from me and wouldn't have cooked a Shepherd's Pie if their life depended on it.

Same goes for childcare advice- often when parents realise how expensive Nursery is, someone always says "Can granny not look after her one day a week?" - these days it's quite rare for grandparents to always be retired or working PT - if you're 27 with your first DC, and your Mum was also 27 when she had you, she's got 11 years until retirement! I wish people would exercise a bit of thought before dispensing 'advice'

You could say that about any advice though.

It is safer for babies not to sleep alone and it is better for their development not to be left crying with their needs unmet for long periods.

It's also generally better for them to be breastfed but most people would agree that every child is different, as is every parent and every family and for some it is not better.

Each parent needs to take the advice and apply it alongside common sense to create the safest and best situation for their child that they feel is possible and right for their family.

You can't start withholding advice in case some people feel under pressure if following it is difficult.

Cave women raised kids and to the best of my knowledge didnt have access to google. Unless google was some sort of wise elder. Point being there is often no single best way. All babies are different. I think some people like to justify their own parental decisions so they dont feel they fucked up.

You can't start withholding advice in case some people feel under pressure if following it is difficult

I don't think advice should be withheld. I just think like a lot of advice in life, it needs to be viewed by the professionals giving that advice in a way that is actually practical in relation to real life.

I think some people like to justify their own parental decisions so they dont feel they fucked up

I suspect they do to, but what exactly constitutes fucking up, and is that not looking at the situation from a potentially judgemental view?

The examples you gave are sensible advice though. If no one was told its safer for them not to sleep alone under 6 months then lots of people may assume they'd be better off sleeping in a dark room for example and not even know to try and keep the baby with them.

No one is saying you have to do these things, just that ideally its what we should be aiming for.
My second and third are 1 and 5 months, so I cant always pick them up straight away if they're crying as I have to prioritise who needs seeing to most. I know ideally they shouldn't wait when they're crying, but its never made me feel guilty knowing that as I know its general advice to be aiming for but also not physically possible in every situation.

I agree; I majorly stressed about the not letting my baby sleep in a different room which meant a lot of miserable evenings for us both and I heard so much about how damaging it is to leave babies to cry that I made myself ill by not eating as I had a baby who would cry if not held for weeks and I was too worried to put her down crying to make food.
It sounds silly writing it down but as a first time Mum with a baby who fed constantly and didn’t sleep much I didn’t have the sense of perspective that I have now.
The expectations around breastfeeding also left me confused about when I was supposed to eat or sleep.

I have stopped googling for my mental health.
When you add up doing everything by the book time wise you'd be up 24 hours with no time to pee or eat yourself.
The formula guidelines I was given include a ten minute hand wash before each bottle

Reading other people’s posts it’s fair to say that the advice should be considered alongside common sense or as an aim but that wasn’t how it was presented to me as a first time Mum. It was put to me as a must and I thought I was a bad parent if I didn’t follow it to the letter

There’s a lot of unsolicited, one-size-fits-all advice out there. There’s not much real evidence-based information (personally I think the SIDS guidelines, vaccination schedules and formula-making guidelines are good examples of where there appears to be good science support). But the rest: YANBU. there’s a lot of “advice”. Little tailored suppprt from real life often.

It was put to me as a must and I thought I was a bad parent if I didn’t follow it to the letter - this is exactly what I meant. I'm not saying any of it is bad advice, I know it's all the correct advice, but as I said before, if the advice is given so dogmatically then it makes parents feel as though they are 'failing'.

On the SIDS stuff, I'm not in any way suggesting I am in the know about this but I look at some of the risk factors (swaddling, sleeping on the tummy, sleeping alone) and I wonder if the reason these things come up is because they are correlated with sleeping well, and they show up as a risk factor simply because babies die of SIDS when they are asleep.

I do think that we really suffer from getting our information from the internet/experts vs from older relatives, as we might have done in the past. It's been some of the older women in my life such as my MIL and friends with older children who gave me "permission" not to do everything by the book, essential as I have twins. It's fine if HVs etc recommend best practice but it wouldn't hurt if they could share some of their expertise in telling people which recommendations are the life and death ones, vs the ones that are nice to have.

The ones that worry me are the baby milestones/apps. If your baby hasn't smiled, cooed, stroked your face and composed his first sonata by the time he's 4 weeks old, you're going to be feeling like shit...!

Yes of course parents need to be aware of milestones, but there's a broad range of timescales, and the NHS website is quite enough.

(She says, despite googling "what should my 4 week old be doing" about 5 times a day.... 🙈)

Advice is set to the lowest common denominator. You are assuming everyone has the same amount of common sense. They don't. That is why e.g. the safe sleeping guidelines exist.

Unfortunately HCP don't have much leeway, they can't look at someone and treat them differently based on a judgement of their common sense or lack thereof.

I had to sit through a 20 min spiel on the importance of contraception before I was allowed out of the hospital, 6 hours after giving birth. It was patronising and surreal, and actually quite offensive. But I sat through it with good grace because I know the midwife had to do her job.

I think some people like to justify their own parental decisions so they dont feel they fucked up.

There is way too much of this! Also "I did that to my children and they survived!"

Apart from SIDS advice, I don't remember feeling that anything that came from professionals was dogmatic. My concern was more that there was so much contradictory advice that I couldn't follow everything. However, DD2 is now 15 so I'm happy to accept that things may have changed a lot.

But isnt it about "best practice"? It is best practice to respond straight away to a crying baby. It is best practice to have them sleep in whatever room you are in. If there are genuine reasons these cant be done then its a case by case basis on what to do.

If it wasnt advised that baby should slwwp in the same room for 6 monhs then there would be new parents who leave their 2 week old upstairs all day popping up only tp feed 3 hourly.

I don't think you can immediately leap from don't leave your baby alone to parents leaving them alone for 24 hours a day...

I mean what PP have said, that yes it's best practice but you have to do what works sometimes and there are new parents out there beating themselves up because they took 10 minutes to have a shower while the baby napped in another room.

So, what you’re saying is that people should be wary of giving out personal experience unless it’s not balanced enough?

We’re human. Even HVs who have had their own children will find the advice they give swayed by their own personal experience. And unless you come onto Mumsnet and give a complete and comprehensive background then people giving advice on a “my baby won’t stop crying” thread can only go on the info given and make certain assumptions.

Having a baby isn’t the same as being given advice on how to fill out a form. Most adults will have an opinion and some will be ridiculous and some won’t be. And even if your advice is completely measured and takes everything into account unless the person you’re talking to is completely honest then it might not be right, for them.

I never ever felt bad for taking ten minutes to shower or eat a sandwich. I had twins and it was impressed to me early on that letting a baby cry isn’t the same as making them cry - and that it would happen because when you’re elbows deep in one shitty nappy then you literally can’t deal with the other one immediately. Had I’d had a singleton first - maybe I would have been a bit more worried about that.

I actually think now we have a bajillion books and websites and strangers giving opinions it’s making mothers more neurotic.

Or have I waffled in and completely got the wrong end of the stick?

YANBU!!!

Same with advice re dummies and breastfeeding - apparently they are associated with faltering growth. Well yes, of course they will be if you give your breastfed baby a dummy to try and stretch out feeds to 4 hourly or whatever. If you’re still feeding on demand and just using the dummy for sleep etc then i don’t see how it will affect the bf relationship. It seems to be all or nothing with some advice.

I agree. With my first born who refused to latch I cried myself to distraction because I couldn't put him down for long enough to pump because he'd cry. I was in agony for months.
Fortunately with baby 2 my standards dropped significantly out of necessity! When baby 3 came along a year later... well no ones died yet!

I think people confuse people sharing their experience with being given advice. I try to use ' what worked for me is.........' followed up by a quick ' it's a bit trial and error anyway, which for me is the reality of parenting.

I agree with you completely. I was a nervous wreck after having my daughter, wouldn't leave her in a room on her own to even got to the toilet, I would hold it until my husband got home or go to my parents house. I had really bad PND an felt like a dreadful mother as I couldn't breast feed her, I felt like I was failing her terribly. I even went to leave one night feeling she would be better off without me because what kind of mother am I? I know the benefits of breast feeding, but I do wish they wouldn't force it the way they do. The stigma with formula feeding is horrible, it's like your not a "real" mum or at least a terrible one. Couldn't feed my second either for different reasons but this time I was more like screw them at least I am feeding my baby and he is happy and healthy.

Yanbu! It’s the same with a lot of pregnancy advice. It’s dogmatic and often extremely exaggerated. People over the world have healthy babies under the most trying circumstances yet we think in the west that having a second cup of coffee is going to cause miscarriage.

I honestly beleive it all does a huge disservice to women. We are led to beleive that anything that goes wrong in pregnancy or with the baby is OUR fault. Allergies, your fault if you did t breastfeed. SIDS your fault you left the baby alone for an hour so you could do some hoovering ( 80s babies like me slept alone from birth- sids risk is extreylow whether o matter where the baby sleeps). Tore during labour? Your fault you didn’t do pelvic floor exercises or you had an epidural. Your fault- nothing to do with babies size or position...,, the list goes on.

It is resiculous and puts so much pressure on women at a very vulnerable time. Wish we could just get back to common sense no judgemental approach.

Eatalot, CaveWomen would have naturally followed the advice we give today, as Primates do.

toomuchtoold, no its been found by research. Its the same research that shows how babies regulate when doing skin-to-skin.

I agree that its ' best practice advice'. If you have a really difficult baby, then you do what you have to, to get through the first year.

It adds to the ethos that two people have a baby, not one. My DH worked away, so he couldn't do his bit, but many Dad's can. We shouldn't be putting our babies at risk to keep hold of the worthless arseholes, the way some Women churn out children to them.

The advice, is there to increase the quality of Care given to babies and toddlers. You have to filter it down, to suit your life. But if you can't do any of it, you could argue that either the baby isn't your priority or you shouldn't be having another.

@Cherry I really agree with your examples about family support

I’m constantly being told to get a grandparent etc to help / cook / babysit etc - they all live hundreds of miles away! Argh