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.

Oh, and what is the research if not a culmination of thousands of different experiences??

My dd has multiple allergies and I had to wait until 6 months before I weaned her, on advice of allergy specialist. She had no interest in food at all, and in fact it wasn't until 7-8 months we managed to get some food to stay down her (severe reflux too). All this time I was panicking I was starving her and utterly pissed off by other mothers asking why she wasn't weaned yet, it didn't help she was so much smaller than all the other babies. Shes now 18 months and we're still having major food issues, and all the time I have to deal with people assuming I'm just a paranoid mother,whilst they smugly shovel more biscuits into their kids.

bluedomino9, you know what I say to those people? Fuck 'em.
You know you're doing right and you;re certainly not starving your child.

I have a certain sympathy with the OP. I think it is wise to avoid being over zealous about research and to be too smug in knowledge.

Research is not a done deal - it is an on-going exercise. Something that people are evangelical about now may, next month, next year, in a decades time, be found to be inadvisable. It happens. For example, for years the advice was to wean at 4 mths. We know that now it is 6 mths but who to say where the research will take us further down the line and those advocating 6 months will find themselves looked down on by the newer mother who has looked at all the evidence and done the research and thinks those saying 6 mths are a bunch of out of date nutters.

A tiny piece of scepticism or restraint would not go amiss in some threads. We try to do the best by our children and it is a little disconcerting to find some new mother looking down on us as though we are idiots for doing things the way we did without accepting that we did what was right at the time.

Niecie, fair enough, "right at the time" and "based on the best information of that time" - the OP wants all information to cease (in case it makes others feel guilty) and only her "do what you think is best" or "do what I did" advice to stand.

Which is dim.

where are people looking down on people? where is this all going on and why do i keep missing it?

It's in the imagination of the people who did the things that they think are being looked down upon now just because people now do things differently based on new research about, you know, things like formula powder not being sterile and all that malarkey, you see, Aitch.

Cos apparently, it's a personal attack to do things differently now, like, in the future and all that. And heaven forbid you actually give any information to anybody on MN. Heaven FORBID.

People feel looked down upon because at times, information is given in such absolute terms. You should do this, that or the other which by insinuation means that anything else is wrong. In my experience there is very little that is actually 'wrong', more a case of something being more or less advisable.

It smacks of smuggery to say that something is out and out wrong because research changes and it may not be wrong again in the future. And yes it does happen.

I personally don't think it is wrong to provide information. I am a great one for researching things but the research is not necessarily the be all and end all and years of parenting experience should not just be waved away because it does not fit in with the current research.

Surely MN is about sharing experiences not just providing a library service for the latest scientific publication?

(No I am not saying that it what it is in reality but that is what it should not be, before somebody says something).

it doesn't happen, Neicie. who on earth would be stupid enough to say that there will be no more research done that will change what we think today? and i know we've disagreed on this in the past but i've just not read this smug stuff you refer to, i've read everythign from people's very personal experiences right through to the WHO research on here. future research will most definitely change guidelines, and i hope for the betterment of our children and grandchildren's health. i really hope if i get to be someone's grandma i'll not be pissing about saying 'i never killed one yet' rather than accepting my child's desire to do teh best by hers.

As TTLVS said, research is based on RL people's experience.

And TBH research these days tends to converge back towards old wisdom on childbirth, breastfeeding, blw etc...........We are merely going back to basics.

I'm reading a fantastic book: Birth - Tina Cassidy. It explains how doctors and science robbed women of control on the whole childbearing/childrearing experience.
But we are taking control back by discussing this science on forums like this one.
And we do value experience (like yours) to put things in perspective. Nobody is trying to make you feel out of touch.

For the first tiime in decades science is listening to women..........and mumsnet is quoted in the press! Isn't that a cause to rejoice?

God I should keep away from these threads.

People don't think about the future when they share their information. They don't say the WHO says this or that and that is the advice I am following but we could be wrong! Do they? Really?

I was on a thread a few months ago where somebody asked if it was so bad to start solids at 4mths. There were several older mothers saying, well the latest advice is 6mths because of findings on the development of the gut but actually we all started solids at 4 mths because that was the advice when we were doing it and in reality for most babies it hasn't had any detrimental effects but do what you think is best. All very reasonable and measured.

Then the zealots come along saying that you absolutely mustn't feed solids before 6mths because the WHO says not to and it is very bad for babies. Somebody actually said something like why would you want to, totally disregarding what everybody had said about the history of weaning and the fact that every baby is different. So, by implication, because of clumsily worded advice , all those mothers who had started at 4 mths, were at a stroke made to feel like they have done something wrong when they had done what they were told was best at that time. Chucking out all that experience is plain daft.

You would have to be supremely confident or totally thick skinned not to feel that your experience counted for nothing.

And no I am not going to link to the thread as I don't want to go down the route of getting stuck on one thread again.

I don't post on these threads very often because there doesn't seem any point in discussing it because you can't argue with the latest research.

I am sure that when you have grandchildren you will want what is best for them but do you take any notice of what the older generation says, the generation who most fed formula almost without question and weaned at 4 mths as my mother did? How do you think our mothers feel when we tell them that they are wrong and how do you think you will feel when your children tell you what you did is wrong? You will be a bit put out if you are honest even if you do accept that they now know better.

And if they don't do it with a certain amount of tact they will come across as smug which is exactly what goes on here. We don't have the benefit of discussing things face to face so sometimes the tone is misinterpreted maybe but you intuitively know that some posters are tutting and rolling their eyes. Unless of course you are the one doing the rolling and the tutting

I'm laughing here because I've got 2 MN windows open at the moment and in the other one I'm writing a vast, technical, million-word critique of a recent study about infant feeding and growth.

I will post it anyway I think. Unlike the OP, I believe that people making important decisions deserve to have the facts, even if the facts are complicated and confusing.

Science is not like a crossword puzzle, you can't turn the page to find the solution all laid out for you. You can only move forward carefully, doing the best you have with the information you have.

Parenting is no different.

The dogmatic opinions here on MN are the ones from people who're rejecting ideas without bothering to examine them.

As to "the evidence changes":

slim22 has made a very good point, one which is really striking when you look at the research coming out now, which is that the evidence from lots of different sources is all pointing towards a "back to basics" approach.

Each time "something" is found to be healthier than "something else", the "something" will be the more natural option.

It's a very strong trend, and is very unlikely to reverse.

But Welliemum, that is sort of what the OP is saying. She is ranting about some new mothers (or maybe we should say inexperienced parents) saying that this is the research and it IS all laid out in front of them as a road map to bringing up your child. They don't take into account experiences and the possibility that things will change because they don't have your vast knowledge at their finger tips (I say that without any sarcasm, honestly).

There are people who are experts on here and there are people who think they are experts because they were told about or read a little bit of the research and latched on to it.

Or maybe I am being too forgiving of the OP.

but neicie i have no reason to reject my mother's experience, she's not a stupid woman, she doesn't get huffy about the fact that some things have changed from the way she did them and other things have changed back to the way she did them. she was also feeding her children at a time before farming and food production changed beyond all recognition and before we were all wealthy enough to eat steroid-laden meat every day, so to dismiss that generation as one that fed us all formula is hardly to compare like with like.

she equally doesn't feel guilty that my sister has chronic allergies and i have suffered badly from IBS (weaned at two weeks) because she really was only doing what she thought was best. in fact it was the midwives that weaned me, in those days two weeks was not an unusual hospital stay after a birth.

all the stuff you mention, the feeling guilty or not, looking down people's noses or not, i think it's all in people's heads tbh, i really don't see it on these boards.

there is one poster who posts things unequivocally on the weaning boards that i can think of, but i am personally always careful to muddy the waters a little when she's been around. i think it's her tone of voice. but that's one, in tens of thousands and it's generally not just me posting 'are you sure?'

so you and i can't agree on this, really. we read the same thread and draw completely different conclusions, as we did the other day. you say 'i've seen this but i won't link' and i say 'i haven't seen anythign to link to'. certainly with regards to weaning threads on here i suspect i keep a closer eye on them than you do, so don't worry overly that people are being looked down on there. in fact, there was a funny situation the other day where someone posted to say they'd given their child some puree at 4 months and she didn't get any sort of bad response at all. despite this, a number of people posted to say 'ignore these people who tell you you're doing a bad thing, i weaned mine at 4 months and she's fine' etc etc etc. no one had said she was doing a bad thing... not that it stopped them.

afaic, we all muck in with our opinion and also with the facts as the research have them, and then the OP responds to the people the OP wants to and tunes the rest out. i don't see all these casualties that you are seeing, quite the opposite, i see people getting a great deal of help and support at a time when they are incredibly vulnerable.

Tinsel - I know just how you feel - my dd1 was not " keeping up with the weight chart" at 11 weeks and the HV told me I had to either give her some formula or baby rice.

I remember crying at clinic and giving her baby rice at 11 weeks. She was constipated for months and is now a very picky eater.

I WISH I has seen mumsnet at the time, or just has the confidence in my own judgement, but I was SO worried (over nothing I now know.)

amen, hellish. i wish i'd had MN when i was trying (and failing) to bf, i really think it would have made a big difference. either to my bfing or my ability to come to terms with not being able to do it exclusively.

I too read the bf/weaning threads carefully, and what I see is people bending over backwards to accommodate different points of view and not be judgemental.

• "whats so speical about waiting till the baby is six months old before weaning that will garantee said mothers a direct ticket to heaven?"

• "the ones spouting statistics at everyone, with their smug expressions"

• "we dont constantly need to have information shoved in our noses"

The OP's not arguing for the value of individual experience, she's arguing against the value of discussing research.

And she's being amazingly judgemental about it.

Zealots? Evangelical?

Bizarre. So, if you like to have well informed opinions and you'd like to make sure that information is disseminated, you are a zealot and evangelical?

And just because lots of mums are doing one thing i.e. weaning at four months (and if that's what they want to do, all power to them) doesn't necessarily make it right for another mum to do it.

It would appear it's ok for one set of mums to say their opinion but if another set point out some findings that are different, they're zealots and evangelical.

Luddite anyone?

Message withdrawn

lol

yes YABU, utterly ;-)

You probably just don't remember how smug YOU were for your first born. I know I didn't, until I was forcibly reminded by several friends of how awful I was (my birth plan included a request for aromatherapy and detailed instructions on what to do in every contingency-to this day I am grateful to the lovely midwives for not saying "Um...we HAVE done this before, you know...".