To think that Health visitors are a certain annoying breed generally?

[Moomin8]

I've just had my 4th baby and the health visitor came the other day. I found her really annoying and rude. First of all she came walking into my living room in her dirty boots and got mud all over my newly cleaned carpet.

My youngest before dc4 is 10 years old and the HV said she was going to therefore talk to me as if I'd never actually had a baby she also wanted to look in my bedroom - I told her no.

Then I thought back to my older dc and their HVs and realised they are all pretty much the same whereas midwives, when they visit are really nice and helpful usually and don't speak to you as though you're an idiot. I'm a 39 year old university educated person and I find these people intrusive and annoying.

What is it with health visitors?

I've met one lovely one, the rest were all varying degrees of useless. Midwives were almost all lovely.

Your mum sounds ace confused. What a thing to tell a young mum. Jeez.

My HV was brilliant.

She spotted my PND (traumatic childbirth)
She warned me at the risk of her job about a neighbour whose paedophile relative had moved into the area (yes, their rights to privacy trump everything). I wish I had done more in the subsequence years to protect that neighbour's child ...

My hv for dd and dtwins has been fab, however, both dd and dtwins had extra visits just cos she wanted to do weight checks. Even though they all happy contented and no other concerns.
So dtwins due a review at 6-9mths from jan on, she called couple of times before christmas to set up a visit which i decided to ignore. Fuck that.
Then i got a knock at door one afternoon. Diff hv standing there. Apparently sent by the usual one to call in with me.
I didnt let her in. She pulled a cats bum face then asked to set up a visit for the other one while she was there. Again told her no. She looked at me like i had just shat in her bag.
Week later the usual hv rings. Looking to do another weight check told her they will be weighed at next review and so was leaving it til then as no concerns. Pushy much.

I was prepared to be visited by a Health Visitor with every intention of being polite. I was up until she told me my baby was not the right size for age. I looked at the Health Visitor but didn't say a work. I think she got that I thought she was not in a fit shape to be criticising my baby.

This was a moment when I regretted my well mannered upbringing!

This is a nasty thread
I don't think so, actually quite balanced with people talking of their pisutuve experiences too. But perhaps an indication that the training needs to be changed and hvs need to adapt how they interact with people. I spoke to an hv about mine refusing milk and she went through all the vitamins what they do etc. Yes, I know! 🙄Bloody patronising to speak to people like that. She also suggested macaroni cheese, although didn't give me recipe at least as pp mentioned

My 2 HVs were lovely and really down to earth. They were a great source of information for me as my mum passed away when dd was 1 and I didn't really have anyone else to ask.

I now work with HVs and in awe of what they do. Like every profession you will always get good and bad and there will also be clashes of personality. I think it also varies by region as to the amount of input that they have.

I must have been lucky. I had the same HV for both my DCs and she was lovely. When I had first one She knew I had no family (other than DH) around so if she was in the area she sometimes just knocked to see if I wanted some company and would just have a cup of tea with me - not even look at the baby if she was sleeping. She was amazing and certainly helped keep me sane until I started going to mother and baby groups.

I've liked both health visitors I've met. I haven't had much contact with them but they were polite, certainly not patronising and DS first one said I had a lovely bond with him when he was newborn which I thought was a very nice thing to say to a first time mum.

I had the same lady with both boys and she was fantastic. I'm not the easiest case either. MH difficulties generally but much worse during both pregnancies, single mum now, eldest child ASC and youngest severe milk allergy. She has been kind, supportive and very down to earth and easy to talk to. She received a referral once from A&E as my ex husband took eldest there with an arm injury and it was recorded as an unwitnessed injury (it wasn't unwitnessed. He was pretending to be a superhero and jumping from one sofa to the other yelling "POW!"). She didn't even contact us about it. When I asked her she just said she had no concerns and closed the case. My youngest baby is six months and a few weeks before Christmas the hv informed me she had a new job. Gutted! The new one came on Christmas Eve and thankfully she was trained by the old one and is also fantastic. I forgot she was coming. The house was a tip, I had no bra on and scruffy pjs, needed a shower. Kids in pjs too. We were all in the kitchen, baby in jumperoo, me roasting veg for Xmas dinner, 4yo making fairy cakes with my help. She wasn't bothered in the slightest.

Reading this thread makes me very grateful for my wonderful, supportive health visitors!

Mine was nice enough although did not provide any useful information. She would also stay two hours at a time and only talk about herself! She quit in the end because because her job was 'too stressful '! Never met her successor.

I found the ones at the weighing centre quite patronising too.

I defined HV with my second. she turned up on the doorstep at 10 days, spouted a lot of shit about breastfeeding (I wasn’t producing a lot a she told me to only feed every 6 hours so I’d have time to make more ). I thank you but I wouldn’t be using the service, she wrote that in the red book and left never to be seen again. I did tell my midwife who still had one visit left, she phoned her and told her off for the bf “advice”.

With my first 13 years earlier I had an awful experience. It took me 5 years of therapy and it’s the reason I have such an age gap. Awful HV allay ruined my life for no reason and then made me too terrified to make a compliant.

Ffs, I’m the queen of typos. My screen is cracked.

I didn't want a HV with my second so I rang up and asked them not to come. I also didn't attend baby weigh clinic but measured my dd at home. You don't have to do any of these things, they are not compulsory, only optional if you want them.

I found them useless with dd1 so refused them with dd2. The first made loads of assumptions and I had to complain about her and switch to another who was just useless.

My first visit was when I was about 35/36 weeks pregnant with dd1, we were living with my parents to save for a deposit/buy a house having just relocated for husband's new job (professional role based in London, it was relevant to our conversation), she kept going on about benefits we were entitled to despite me explaining over and over that we were not entitled to anything bar child benefit as we earned too much, she didn't believe me when I told her how much we did earn she refused to refer to DH as my husband and on her form she put me down as single/unmarried and said that she would change it later, I kept my name when we married so I can only assume it was from that. She tried to lecture me on circumcision, I said that I had no intention to do that, and she then said something that clearly implied that she assumed that I was Muslim based on my surname and living situation (I'm not). Basically threatened me with a parenting program where I would have to see her regularly for the first year. I made the mistake about asking for information about counselling for historic abuse and that turned into implying it was be a safeguarding risk if I didn't attend two counselling things she'd found which would not only be difficult to attend with a small breastfed baby due to distance but entirely inappropriate for what I needed. It was just horrific and I was terrified she'd get social services onto me, if anything I think the whole situation made my pnd much much worse, especially as I was worried about talking to healthcare professionals about it!

Mine is a bit scatty with appointments but honestly couldn't be nicer. Stays way longer than she should just for some company for me and when I was struggling at doing stuff or going through the colicky days.. she said as long as baby is safe and lying down somewhere.. go into another room, shut the door and have a breather.
Shes honestly so supportive and friendly.

Both my HVs were amazing. Being a FTM with my own mum in a different country, I was so scared and anxious when I was solely responsible for my newborn. She helped me with everything - my baby had silent reflux, chicken pox, allergies etc and she set up all the referrals and appointments. Couldn't fault her, never felt intrusive or like she's checking up on me. Same with dc2, just helpful and lovely.

My bigger issue was that due to the cuts in services, when we did hit a problem, it was virtually impossible to get hold of a HV and there was little support available.

When I started my previous job (2007), there were 25 HVs covering the area covered by my team. The last HV I worked with, mid-2017, told me that they were now a team of 6.

Just before Christmas, an ex-colleague told me that out of that 6, one has retired, one has left and that neither of them are being replaced. If things are as bad as this in other areas, I'm not surprised they're hard to get hold of.

And mine never asked to see sleeping area and although she did promote breastfeeding, she said it's all about what works for you as a family. She was lovely.

Mine seems nice enough but I haven't needed anything from them and thankfully she seems happy enough just to leave us to it. Her visits were always very short after I had baby, perhaps I gave off an air of 'please leave us alone', but I get the impression that had I needed or wanted more, she would have been happy to help. But we were fine, I was happy, baby was happy, we just wanted to be left to get on with it!

I think it's one of these professions where the individual person makes a lot of difference.

They do get a bad press but all of the ones who visited us and we saw at clinics have been really good.

Ohhhhh have such a dislike for HV, my first for my first two babies was old, crusty and generally patronising and so text book it was painful. I literally dreaded seeing her. Only I am confident and stood up for my son her determination to find some development problem would’ve had him labelled un-necessarily.
My second HV for my third child was incredible.
In general though I do not like them. (Which I’m aware is awful)

I posted upthread a couple of times about the bad experiences my friend and sisters had with their health visitors but I was actually very lucky and had nice health visitors. The first one was an older lady with grown up family who was very much 'these are the current guidelines, but babies don't come from textbooks so not everything is set in stone'. The other was a younger lady with young-ish children and she was very helpful on the issue of PND.

I did have a stand in for a couple of appointments who suggested feeding my baby Monster Munch or Skips as a weaning food though and I remember thinking that was weird, especially when there are any number of similarly textured baby products made without salt on the market.

Ive just been in my call logs and i see 2 missed calls from private num after 1pm today. Il bet my life that was hv again. Cant even wait til christmas and new year out of the way.

they are by and large a waste of time. the one who came round the other day pre DC2 arrival was reasonably sensible but it's still unnecessary/i would happily ask if i felt the need for extra services. but i suppose we aren't all like that.