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.

Agree with Jimjams that preciousness comes from someones basic personality rather than the number of children they have....

Agree with several posters- it's more personality than number of children. The most relaxed and easy-to-be with Mum I ever met knew from the start that she was too old to have more than the one. I have never caught her out in anything remotely resembling preciousness. You are not doomed to be precious because you are a single-child parent!

I think a lot of public preciousness (as opposed to lonely sobbing in the night over an unsterilised dummy) is not actually about parenting at all. It's about the parent feeling they need more attention and using their child as a sort of prop. It's people who feel insecure about themselves. And if you feel insecure in yourself, you can still feel that after you've had a dozen children.

I know plenty of only children who are in no way PFB's.

I think its about the way you see the world.

A typical PFB thread for me (and this is a very common one) is one where a child gets bitten at nursery and the mother/father wants to go in and demand that the biter (often described as a 1 year old 'bully') gets expelled/removed/banished.

Of course being upset that your child has been bitten is not PFB, and there are things you should expect, incident book, if the 'offender' is repeatedly biting then some sort of behaviour plant etc. But demanding the removal of the other child or demanding to know who it was so you can shout at the parent is way over the top. I think it's more helpful for the poster to be told they've lost perspective than to have lots of people agreeing they should go in and demand impossibilities of a nursery.

I think if you have one child or ten children each is an indavidual with their own ways and needs, I was less scared with my 2nd child I admit on some things but on others more worried then with DS1.. I think it Pnew born more the PFB

Agree completely cory. That's it in a nutshell.

Pruners I never assume preciousness in parents of only children as I'm on myself and my parents were about as far from precious with me as its possible to be. They wanted more, couldn't have any and then worried I might grwo up a spoiled only child so any sign of brattishness was jumped on probably more than it would have been had I had siblings.

PnewB even

I think the medical profession can over-rely on assumptions of PFB. When ds3 had a seizure and we ended up in A&E I was asked whether he was my first. As soon as I said 'no he's my 3rd' I was taken more seriously (change in tone etc). But I would have been quite capable of recognising a seizure in ds1 You don't need 3 children to spot one of those.

Well done Welliemum. As the mum of a PFB I welcome the advice of mums with older babies and more than one babies, because I had NO experience of babies before I had my own. But I don't appreciate being patronised to. I do have a brain and can work somethings out for myself:.
For example.
Ds has lots of 2nd hand + charity shop clothing because he doesn't care what he is wearing, he won't be in it for long and it'll just get covered in poo, sick and butternut squash.
I stopped sterilsing his dummies at 4mo because I reasoned I wasn't able to sterilise his clothes, my clothes, his toys, the carpet, the cat etc. If he drops it, I run it under the tap of give it a suck.
He doesn't need all the latest tat from Mamas and Papas - he has the cheapy cot and changing table from Ikea, his Moses basket was about 4th hand, and I can't recommend enought the Antilop highchair from Ikea - it's truly fab and cheap as chips.
And he is bfed and being BLWed because I am incredibly lazy and PFB that he is can't possibly encroach on my MNing time

Agree with Welliemum some of the PFB comments are pernicious and slightly upsetting. I occasionally find it a bit hurtful since DS is a PSB after a stillborn DD.

I recognise the stereotype, though, and there is PFB behaviour. But there is a difference between saying to someone who is saying how tired/stressed she is that there is no need to do X for your baby and squashing someone's delight in their having done This Little Piggy and made their baby laugh. That's jealousy talking, maybe.

FWIW am contemplating TTC no.3 (but will only be my second to look after) The constant reminders that I've had it easy so far with my PFB only serve to make me feel utterly shite, since I'm seriously worried I might not make it through another pregnancy without major personal breakdown or serious neglect of said PF(S)B.

agree 100% with cory and with jimjams (as always)

Caring passionatly is normal.

Expecting everyone else to care for your child in the same way as you do, to the detriment of everyone else is a PITA and in the long term bad for you and your child

Coudn't agree more. Always thinks it smack of smugness

I have been a "MB Fuckwit" for the last four years.
I didn't just to twaty things when ds was first born. I have continued to do things twaty since.
I reguarly remember posts from 6 months ago or a year ago, and wonder why such a trivuil thing could seem so important.
But most PFB comments on MN are said nastily and vindicatively.

Of course worrying is a good thing. I didn't worry enough with DS3 at first (although I do now, obviously .

For example, having breastfed DS1 and DS2, I was utterly confident that it would be a cinch breastfeeding DS3. And so it seemed, at first. And I was really impressed that in between feeds, he actually slept (which is what I always thought newborns were meant to, but which DS1 and DS2 didn't).

Anyway, it turned out that he was hardly taking any milk, was probably very dehydrated (it was hot), was jaundiced, his birthweight dropped like a stone, and all in all I was letting him sleep his little life away, secure in the utterly false belief that I knew what I was doing .

Message withdrawn

I agree SSB. I had similar problems with bfing and jaundice, so really sympathise with you there. I think it's not unreasonable to worry about newborns, they are rather helpless after all. But for the rest I do agree with cory and jimjams.

Re: Medical profession and attitude towards parents.

I think it was Christopher Green who said "I believe in mother's instincts & take them seriously. If Mum is worried, I sit up. If GRANDMA is worried, I KNOW there is something to worry about"!

as an award winnign travel writer id say dont haev babies

As an award winning travel writer William, you need to learn to spell.

as an award wingnign travel writer i can swwosh off in my plane

I agree that sometimes the PFB comments can come across as patronising.

And it is worse when these comments come from the medical profession.

I had htis a lot with dd1 (ASD). I knew from when she was about 7 months old that there was something not right (for want of a better phrase) with her. I repeatedly took her to HVs, docs, etc, to be told each tie "oh, she's lovely, babies do things at their own pace you now". I was not disputing her loveliness, and to have it implied that I was being neurotic when there was, indeed, something quite seriously wrong with dd1 was more than unhelpful. I got the feeling that if I had pushed it, I would have been put down as having PND, as I obviously was not enjoying my lovely baby (not true, btw - dd1 was and is a delight, but she needs help - that is all I wanted).

It took until she was 2.6 for us to get a diagnosis - 2 years of being fobbed of with "oh, is she your first? You can't expect all babies to do things at the same time, you know"

Dd1 is doing well now, but it was still a lot of wasted time, mostly due to me being written off as the mother of a PFB

have only read op, but

i agree totally

patronising shoite

{sorry for thread-crash - silverfrog, great to hear your DD is doing well now!}

{hello SSB - just answered your other thread. dd1 is coming on brilliantly - just started a home VB programme with her, and she is loving it. She stood up at pre-school yesterday, in the middle of circle time, and sang "doh a deer" (they are learning it for the summer concert) with all the other children - she never sings at pre-school (been there a year) and also never sings when other people are singing - the staff were in tears .

Have seen a few threads about your ds3 recently - he sounds as though he loves his pre-school}

I disagree. I have seen absolutely bloody hilarious threads on this site in which people fess up their own PFB moments and laugh at themselves (and vent about ghastly visitors with PFBs). I don't think PFB syndrome is anything to do really with having more than one child - it's a stage most of us experience that doesn't outlast babyhood, when we start to realise that we were hysterical nutcases. I have never seen it used meanly here, only amusingly or, at worst, gently teasingly.
I think we nearly all admit to having cringeworthy PFB moments ourselves so why is it patronising to say so?
I remember the agonising over room temperature with the sodding thermometer that came with the grobag. What a waste of time and emotional energy that was. I also know someone who was so anxious about her baby overheating she cut the legs off her daughter's babygrow as she slept. She hoots with laughter about it now.

People aren't all that kind to learner drivers either. Like they never were a learner themselves. It's a stage everyone goes through, but I suppose we all rush to forget the embarrassing things we did...