ok, i probably am, but the way new mothers do thing s now, and there attitude is really getting on my nerves.

[pukkapatch]

rant alert
te entire holier than thou attitude. huge genreralistaion, i know. but whats so speical about waiting till the baby is six months old before weaning that will garantee said mothers a direct ticket to heaven?
from what i recall, upping the age to six months didnt happen because of some amazing scintific breakthrough. no new data was used t o make the decision. (a mnetter showed the evidence of this on some thread.
and then the whole breast bottle thing. the ones spouting statistics at everyone, with their smug expressions. it doesnt matter. every mom does what she sees as best for her baby. we dont constantly need to have information shoved in our noses.

my eldest is ten, and youngest four, so i'm not that far away from these subjects, but, some peoples attitudes just really really get on my tits.

Absolutely agree with welliemum. Why would I want to ignore research which informes me about potentional outcomes for people most important to me in the world?

hmmm - i think we will all switch to a 4-5 month ruling any year now and all the 'over precious 6 month weaners' will eat their baby led words

my words not any one elses

But BJ, to fluff advice up into lay-language is to infantilise.

I dont see why we shouldnt treat people as adults and lay out advice, with the relevant information to back it up, rather than saying "do it this way, love, it works" and give them a virtual pat on the head.

ANd if you dont like the repetativeness, you really are in the wrong place. The same type of threads come up over and over and over again. Every time they do, posters take it upon themselves to post actual answers, instead of just going " havent we had this one before? Go and check the archives fgs"

I've read quite a lot, PaulaYates, that sugegsts the opposite.

Happy to discuss, maybe on a different thread though? We wouldn't want to accidentally inform people.

Paulayatesbiggestfan, I very much doubt they'll lower the recc'd age for weaning, they have stats that made them suggest this age in the first place but quite apart from that what would be the point? Unless things prove that waiting to wean until 6 months is detrimental they would be wasting their time.
I'm not for one second saying that weaning at 4 months is terrible, but I think the minimum age suggested is 17 weeks? At 8 weeks however you're asking for trouble.

but the 'fashion' and it is that will change!

parenting over a couple of decades will teach you that

Well to be fair, some people say "go and check the archives love"

But they are unhelpful, I think. And they're outnumbered by patient people willing to share their knowledge and experience. (I don't think experience is irrelevant or uninteresting btw - just that on its own, decontextualised from a wider picture, it's at best very limited and at worst possibly misinformed.)

PY - surely you should be posting that on "Fluffynet.com"?

the child i weaned late has terrible bowel problems

the one i jammed food in at a horrifically young age is fine

the ones in between vary in their bowel habits!

Obviously fashions and advice will change.

Doesn't mean people are wrong (or smug or holier than thou) to advise on the basis of current guidelines though, surely.

Otherwise, why give any advice at all?

What this thread (the OP anyway) seems to be saying is that anyone who advises according to current guidelines is somehow trashing everyone who didn't follow them. But they aren't! That's not the intention at all.

No, it's the opposite of fashion.

It's very careful, painstaking work to tease out actions and consequences.

We have better quality information now than any other parents in the whole of human history.

We'd be insane to ignore it.

Paula my grandmother smoked until she was 92. She died at the age of 100.

Does that prove that smoking's OK?

Of course it doesn't. It just means that individual experience is not on its own a very useful indicator of likely outcomes.

Just like your example given.

hey you get me wrong hunker
I am a REAL stickler for an excellent diet - wean late (ish) and breast feed long and hard despite NOT enjoying it at all

i just think that advice changes and we should all be a little more relaxed and trust our own and our babies' instincts

pukka I sort of agree with what you say. Everything is seemingly over analysed today. However, there are lots of people who haven't had good examples of parenting to base their own opinions and knowledge on. This is more important IMHO than all the literature and research in the world in most topics. FWIW I weaned my first dd at 16wks because she was ready. I don't judge people for waiting until 6mths, but to me it is sensible to be starting to wean when a baby is no longer satisfied and is waking up hungry/ lasting shorter and shorter time between milk feeds.

When I became a mum I took bits from the way my mum did things that I thought were sensible such as weaning/ advice about not continually holding/ carrying/ rocking to sleep etc. However, my mum said she felt I was far better at motherhood and far more maternal than she was. She pointed out that I interacted with dd far more naturally and spent much more time playing with her than she had with me.

The only evidence based decision I made was to try to bf because of the benefits to health of mum and baby. Although I have to say that I didn't last very long because I had little knowledgable support.

The smugness aspect is a difficult one because when you type it is difficult to show the emotions in what you say. If a person hasn't had experience of a particular problem they can only say as much and explain what they did with their dc/s. This can come accross as smug IYSWIM, but may be helpful in identifying the cause of the ops problem.

Well, a lot of people's "instincts" in the 70s told them to wean at 6 weeks.

However, in Canada in the 20s, people's "instincts" told them to wean at 8 months or later.

Weaning age is culturally conditioned, very strongly so.

smoking is different
very - silly analogy

12 years ago foam mattresses caused sids

15 years ago baby was to sleep on its back

we all all learning - as are those who TEACH us

I believe in mothering based on nature and instinct and i think today ( particularly last 5 years) a lot of that is being lost to HV's say so
people are losing the ability to do 'what they think right'

Why's smoking different, PY?

The evidence says that smoking is harmful, yet many heavy smokers live to a great age.

The evidence says that early weaning has health risks, yet many children who were weaned early are healthy.

I think it's a very good analogy.

But how is it instinctive to not put your baby on its tum to sleep?

How are we supposed to know some foam used in mattresses are harmful? Instinct?

Nope. Research tells us. Should that research not have been made available because it involved facts and figures?

no PY my argument isn't silly, I just don't think you've followed it properly. In what way is quoting one person with no ill effects from a generally discouraged activity (smoking), different from quoting another person with no ill effect from another generally discouraged activity (early weaning)?

Neither is particularly enlightening. That was my point.

i dont want to get into a weaning argument

i do think mothers now are more 'righteous' than they used to be
parenting is not about doing it by the book nor should it be

do it how you want within reason!

So, what's within reason then? Who decides that?

Weaning an 8 week old might seem reasonable to some.

weaning is always a fascinating subject. It seems that irritable bowel syndrome/ chrones disease/ intolerances have escalated massively in the last 30yrs. I have to question whether this is due to early weaning.
When I was born the advice was to wean when the baby needed more food and was not satisfied/ sleeping well on just milk.
Also in the last 30yrs there has been a decline in good diet and exercise on the whole.
It is well documented that diets high in saturated fats contribute to bowel disease/ gall stones.
Coincidentally the average size of men and women have increased dramatically suggesting high fat and low exercise routines into adulthood.

Also, intolerances to foods seem to be rife in children of school age when bf rates have supposedly increased. Surely if there was a direct link between bf and preventing allergies then the rates of both would be indirectly proportional i.e if bf increases then allergies decrease. This doesn't seem to be the case. FWIW I do not recall a single friend at school having an allergy, even though when we were babies there were more ff babies than bf because it was fashionable to bottle feed.

But that's the whole point of research - so you don't have to do it by the book - you make up your own mind, using research available.

So the WHO might be rated as a reasonably trustworthy source, while the British Tobacco Council might produce data one could view with scepticism.

Research is there to help you make informed decisions. You can reject it if you choose. I'm just puzzled as to why people are so hostile to the very fact of it.

People used to believe in 'blood letting' for infections.
people used to believe that the world was flat.
people used to believe that those with mental illness has devils inside them.

My point being that we believe what we are told at the time but it can turn out that the information is not correct.

There are lots of accurate discoveries but also lots of inaccurate ones.

I.e the discovery by midwives that washing hands between delivering babies significantly reduced morbity of mother and baby centuries ago. That still stands.

The point is you need to analyse the data and decide if you feel it is credible and reliable. Don't just blindly follow the quotes to say I did it by the book.

within reason imo -after 4 months

they only say 6 months because they know folk will ignore the advice and go earlier

leaches were a no no and are now back on the wards lol