To be booooooooored to death of smug PFB comments on MN. It's shite, you know it is.

[welliemum]

It's an old story. Someone posts an OP in which you can see that they?re being quite protective or concerned about their child ? maybe a bit too much so.

Within minutes, someone will ask, ?Is this your first child??

Then the floodgates open for a deluge of posts along the lines of ?Oh, you are a silly little thing - when you have TWO children and are as fabulously wise and experienced as I am, you will See The Error Of Your Ways? [virtual pat on head].

I just don?t get this. It?s like jeering at a learner driver for driving slowly. Would you want an 18 year old with a sparkly new licence to be barrelling down the motorway at 90 mph?

We live in a society where most of us have very little contact with babies until we have our own. IMO it?s absolutely right that new, inexperienced parents should have safety margins the size of Australia until they?ve sorted out what is truly risky and what isn?t. In fact I?d go further and say that that?s the ONLY sensible way to parent if you?re new to the game.

Far rather rush around madly sterilising than put your tiny baby in hospital on a drip because you were too cool to wash a bottle.

As far as I can see, PFB comments have nothing to do with giving helpful advice to a new parent, and everything to do with massaging the ego of the PFB-commentator.

I think good advice is always well-received
there are ways of giving advice that are not patronising

sorry, cross posted pea

I guess I've been on the receiving end of that sort of "it's all trivial, once you aren't breastfeeding any more you no longer care" - and that infuriates me, because I see the bf thing as being about sisterhood and making things better for generations of women and building a strong bf culture and fighting huge companies with glossy marketing campaigns with actual, you know, facts.

And I don't see why you can't care about that sort of thing just because your breasts are no longer on active lactation duty.

I have 4mo LO and sometimes find PFB comments helpful as reality check. I accept that I am paranoid about some things although quite relaxed about others (eg co-sleeping). Don't know which is right but we al lhave to find our own way and the whole advantage of MN is hearing others' opinions and get an idea of the spectrum of parenting practices.

Can I just interupt

I had a PFB moment the other day

Packed up loads of photos of the children for the grandparents and sent them off

Realised as I posted them that I'd written "Here are lots of new photos of !" - completely failing to mention her sister

Oh, I agree with MB - if one parent can't advise another we might as well shut down MN today.

But I think there's a big difference between pointing out the facts and being patronising.

So by all means say "OK, there's no need to boil wash the cat once a week, but you do need to stop the baby from eating cat poo" - that's useful stuff for the OP to know, whereas sneering at them is only useful to the sneerer.

Although I do jeer at learner drivers who drive slowly.

"Is it your first?" seems to translate to "Are you stupid/paranoid?"

it's right in that it's not the number of children you have that qualifies you to talk with confidence, whether you've got 5 or 1. I know a lot more than I did 7 years ago and I only have one.

It's the age of your child/ren that allows you to look back with confidence on those anxieties we all go through.

And to dismiss those anxieties with "Oh, PFB" is to be really very patronising.

hmmm, I do sort of wish that I'd known about mumsnet and had checked out this PFB cunning plan before I'd carried it out and maybe been shamed into a re-think - here follows my own personal PFB low-point.....

"After flying to France yesterday with my three (7yrs, 4yrs and 6 months), armed with a packet of pringles, a few nappies, a fab new ring sling and not much else, I suddenly remembered my worst PFB moment which I must have blocked out until now.

When DS1 was about 9 months old we had booked a holiday to the canaries. Being very informed and clever first time parents we also took the precautionary measure of also booking a Man/London flight for the sole purpose of gauging his "flightability" before we set forth on the mammoth 4 hr real flight. Armed with most of the stock of the ELC we spent the 45min flight beaming with pride as our obviously gifted traveller slept all the way there and back... Dear god, we needed a slap."

But I digress.

SUCH a good post, Welliemum.

I am, sadly, the person who called her doula to ask about new born's poo... but still.

You are absolutely right...

with my first I was such a fuckwit I used to lie under the baby gym and play with her. At 4 months.

I needed someone to tell me to sit down and drink a cup of coffee insead.

I now see this as my role in life

Having been a fuckwit, I can recognise the trait in others

yes Pea it's easy to forget how stressed you were at certain times and get very blase
it's not helpful to people who are still in the throes of it!

Oh. MB, surely there's joy in lying under the babygym - there are many cups of coffee to be had. Unnecessary, maybe, but fuckwitish? No, I don't think so.

Oh, shit, MB. I am a fuckwit!!!

To be fair, I do feel I need the advice kicking.

My DS isn't so much a PFB as a POB (perfect only born - can't persuage DH to have another ) so I actually believe I've reached a whole new level of PFB-ism

And what Hunker said about breastfeeding.

Some issues seem terribly important early on because they are terribly important - infant feeding is one.

Not everything about infant feeding of course - babies are quite robust things - but there's increasing evidence that what a baby is fed can have lifelong effects for them.

So if someone is stressing about baby feeding they're more likely to be right than wrong, however inexperienced they are.

StellaDallas - on phoning the maternity ward at 3am to ask if you needed to sterilise the infacol dropper...my dh asked our midwife "if his dummy (ds1) drops out in his cot, do we need to sterilise it before we put it back in his mouth?"

She fixed him with a steely glare and said "well, I don't know...you're the microbiologist [and yes, he really is]...you tell me."

See, this is what I mean::

DH does sterilise DS's dummy if it drops out of his mouth...

I kid you not!!!

LOL MB.

But no! Lying under the baby gym sounds very sensible to me! I'd never try to persuade someone not to do such a lovely thing

My dd brought back a whole bottle, I sat on the sofa in floods of tears and demanded that dh came home from work so we could go to the hospital.

"PFB comments have nothing to do with giving helpful advice to a new parent"

I disagree completely. Sometimes you need to be told you're being over protective or that you really don't need to be worried.

"Having been a fuckwit, I can recognise the trait in others"

Now this I agree with 100% My antenatal class friends and I used to sit around watching our newborn PFB babies sleep. If we left the room to go to the toilet, we asked one of the others to keep an eye on them whilst they slept.

whilst I wholeheartedly agree with the whole PFB thing, I would never deny someone the indulgence of having many many PFB moments. It makes me remember the days when I was less jaded.

SorenLorenson - I did sterilise the ones that dropped on the carpet.
And I used to sleep on the floor beside her cot and hold her hand all night if she was restless.
And when we went to Ireland on holiday when she was 11 months old we brought two weeks' worth of Baby Organix food and nappies and a travel steriliser in the car.

So I judgeth not, but I do have lots of experience to share.
DD2 and DD3 were dragged up by comparison.

But, Welliemum - your post is still spot on.

So what if PFB mums are a bit over cautious - better safe than sorry, eh?

So what if all of their efforts have no benefit at all???

I adore my son with an intensity I had no clue even existed until I became a mum. It does not matter how many women have become mums before me, or after me.

I now have 3 SmallDragons but DS1 (9) is still my PFB and I still worry more about him doing things than I will when DS2 and DD come to do the same things. PFBs have to be trailblazers - they generally clear the path for their younger siblings to breeze along with less hassle.

My worst thing was bloody togs. I had a thermometer and a chart that showed how many togs your baby needed when sleeping (too hot and they die, was what was going round my head). So about every ten minutes I would check the temperature (the thermometer was in his cot) and then do a quick calculation - thin sheet, 0.5; blanket, 1; nappy, dry, 0.5...oh it might be wet by now, that makes it 1...and add or take away layers as appropriate. No wonder the poor kid didn't sleep through the night til he was 3 years old.