AIBU to ask about bizarre parenting advice you've received?

[squeakyballs]

It's been a long week with a teething DS and I though this would be a lighthearted way to get to the end of today!

I'll start. I'm British but live in Australia. We took our 7mo DS to a daytime birthday party recently. It was sunny and although mostly in the shade, I was putting sun cream on him to be extra cautious. A friend's mother who was there (native Aussie) advised us to put him in the sun for 30 minutes without sun cream to 'toughen up' his skin to the climate. She had done it with her children. She was being deadly serious, definitely not joking .

What whacky advice have you been given?

Crying is good for a baby as it strengthen the lungs.

There's no good reason for giving baby rice. It spikes blood sugar, it bland and full of milk (that they are already getting another way) and supplements.
Babies have a reflex to stop.them eating solids until they are ready for them , milky rice gets round that protection.
Who the hell can sleep if thier stomach is full up anyway?
Babies can't digest starchy cereals till 8 months!
And there's that insignificant small detail of the arsenic in it.

@Ridingthegravytrain my ex boyfriends mother breastfed all 3 of her children and was told similar to you after bloodworm showed she had a deficiency... She ignored her Dr, and lost all her teeth before she turned 40!

"There's no good reason for giving baby rice. It spikes blood sugar,"

How? When there is no sugar in it?

" it bland and full of milk (that they are already getting another way) and supplements."

It's not a replacement for milk.

"Babies have a reflex tostop.themeating solids until they are ready for them , milky rice gets round that protection."

It wouldnt be given to very small babies.

"Who the hell can sleep if thier stomach is full up anyway?"
They can sleep if hungry? It fills them up and they sleep more contedly.

"Babies can't digest starchy cereals till 8 months!"
They can digest milk from birth and rice and cereal from about 3 months.

"And there's that insignificant small detail of the arsenic in it." Not in baby rice.

"@TabbyMumzputting rice in a bottle isn't outlandish, it's utterly dangerous."
Why? Again, it's not grains of rice like we know it, its flakes. It just dissolves. It's not a paste, it's a liquid. Its not dangerous. No different to giving thicker milk or cows milk. Hundreds of parents used to do it.

@ninecoronas how dod the fructose stop the baby crying? I'm intrigued I've never heard it before

@PrincessHoneysuckle when my son was in NICU after he was born he was given 'sugar syrup' (probably fructose) for every procedure, bloods taken, changing catheter etc. It came in a tiny squeezy bottle (think soy sauce in a pack of sushi type thing) and they dropped it slowly into his mouth. The nurses told me that for very tiny babies it somehow acts as a painkiller (I mean...presumably they knew how, I just mean that I gleaned in my postnatal, baby very poorly in NICU state, that it 'somehow' works ) Apparently this painkilling effect doesn't last very long so no use trying it on a 2 month old for example.
Could have just been bunkum to reassure worried parents while their babies were going through nasty procedures but my son certainly seemed to be helped by it!

@MollyBloomYes My twins were given the same when they were still tiny in NICU, I don’t know if it’s true about the painkiller element but it definitely worked for them too 😊

@MollyBloomYes same but I definitely remember them saying they dont know how it works! But yes it did- I remember asking if I could take some home to help with nappy rash changes... they just smiled like I was joking!

None but a very handsome young Male GP insisted my SPD was a sports injury .

It was weird he was so sure that a 7 month pregnant woman with pelvic pain and pain on walking who hadn’t done sport for years and had been diagnosed in seconds by the midwife as having SPD actually had a sports injury wtf. I only needed him to refer me for physio which he did but really how thick can you get.

M’y mum told me i shouldn’t be eating «all these huge salads» while BFing DS1, as it was clearly making him windy and cry a lot (he was BF).

And a dear but slightly batshit friend, when she heard I was having a boy, sat me down and told me very seriously that I would have to explain to him that he couldn’t marry me when he grew up ;-) he’s 12 now and showing no signs of wanting this.

My MIL told me not to eat fish while breastfeeding because my DS will have BO.

I dont have children but my mil is a midwife and comes out with some crackers. Recently she told me you shouldnt bottle feed as the baby then sleeps through the night and develops a flat head...

So they dont get flat heads from sitting in car seats all day then?

Love this thread!

Ds1 was born in September 2003 and the weather was still really hot that yr. Everyone at my in-laws were adamant I should be giving him water at least 5 times during the day. Everytime they had some water they would say oh poor baby he must be thirsty... He was exclusively breastfed so I had been assured by midwives that this was completely unnecessary.
They carried on with this insistence for the whole first year of his life. I learned to just nod and ignore

So they dont get flat heads from sitting in car seats all day then?

Dunno about flatheads but they'll definitely have a damaged spine if they're in a carseat all day

Sh05....I was being sarcastic....flat head syndrome is from putting babies in car seats too long. Some buggies allow for the car seat to come out the car and strap on to the buggy, so the child is in the car seat for much longer and their head is on a hard surface.

When I was pregnant and living among a largely Med-culture society, I was told I must not go swimming, since ‘your bones will open and you’ll lose the baby.’
Also while pregnant, was told that I should not be carrying my toddler, since, ‘your baby will be born with a broken arm.’ !

Once I had a new baby, I must cover her face with a blanket if taking her out at night - still not sure why, germs or maybe the evil eye? The women of that culture would pin a crucifix plus an ‘eye’ to their babies’ clothing - Christian protection, plus warding off the pagan evil eye.

Once the baby was older, I must start potty training at 12 months.
All this was quite a while ago now, so maybe the old wives’ tales are dying the death.

My MIL was obsessed with DS being outside in his pram. Not bad advice in itself, but the commitment she showed to this was bizarre. It got to the point that if I left the room for a second, I knew I'd come back to find an irate DS parked under the apple tree!

@Sh05 my MIL too said this. He must be thirsty. Why wouldnt you give little water? smiled and nod. She bottlefed all her kids and I think that was the advice she got then

“My elderly relative said the same thing, it was thought they seek the baby out to lie on them because they are warm and then unintentionally smother them”

My mum thought that too. I remember DBro having a cat net over his pram in the 1980s to keep passing cats off him in the garden (we did not have cats ourselves, but it was thought to be such a serious risk she bought the net anyway).

My DGM did once find a rat in DAunt’s crib (and chased it into the mangle, but that’s a different story), so I can imagine deaths by animal did used to occur.

Every summer my DM will start going on about how I should lay off the sunscreen for the kids or they will never 'build up protection', I've tried explaining that that's not how skin cancer works....

She also tells me to give ebf babies water, and when I tried to explain that breastmilk actually changes composition to give more fluids in hot weather she said that would only work for mums who were born in hot countries .

She also insists that each of my babies must have been starving before we introduced solids because 'look he's watching the food' Yes, he's watching that sharp knife and my wine too, but that's no reason to give a them to a two month old.

Oddest piece of advice from someone who isn't my mum, a woman who worked at a play centre told me babies are manipulative, and the best thing to do was put them somewhere you can't hear them all night.

DC1 has just turned 2 when DC2 was born. It was the depths of Winter.

My DM suggested it was the ideal time to begin toilet-training, and told me to lift DC1 from her cosy warm bed in the night and hold her - in theory still sleeping, but in reality more likely abruptly woken and confused - on the toilet. Every couple of hours, as I'd "be up with the baby anyway".

I didn't do this.

Oh I have lists, my MIL is Korean and older people (and a good many younger people) are not big on science.

Her latest one was that some child she knew was ignored and neglected by the parents and it made him get autism. So I have to mind the baby at all times (said while staring at me deeply, lest I should go and pee without having the baby attached to me) so he doesn't get autism.

There is an automatic assumption that we're going to give away my dog too, not even in case he bites which I could understand, but in case the hairs go up the baby's nose and choke him. Even my doctor was worried about this.

Most people keep their baby inside for three months after its birth and are horrified that mine wasn't. I mean, like urging me to go home, telling me how dangerous it was and so on. Imagine if you sent your two month old down a mineshaft - that level of reaction and I'm not even exaggerating.