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.

Quattrocento

The Classic of the type you are talking about it

'My dc of 2 is counting and must be G and T, how soon can I get extra assistance for the genius I have given birth to'

Cue lots of people who have had children of 2 saying, 'It is called rote learning and they are just saying the words'

Cue huff

There is also such a thing as the PFB grandparent.

my mother already thinks my son is G&T....

He is 6 weeks old

But I expect that already his eye contact is exceptional and his neck muscles are amazing !

lol at that woman in that article. Should dig out some from Lowrie Turner as she flip flops all over the place with regard to actual expereince vs predudice, and she has a lot of the latter

I completely agree with the comment about not knowing the background. We had some PFBish "knowing looks" when DD was up to 6 months because we followed all the SIDS rules to the letter. What no-one knew in RL was that it had taken 8 rounds of fertility treatment, 3 years and thousands of pounds to have her (too private to make our infertility public) and then when she was a few hours hours she had an explained crash and almost died (it was too upsetting to tell people about).
I defy anyone not to worry about their child under those circumstances, and we will be treating our PSB (due in October) exactly the same. We were much more relaxed about the issues of feeding/babysitting/clothing etc.

Yurt makes some good points I think, for example I would NEVER have put dd on the floor with 2 year olds running around, but don't think twice about it with ds (largely I think because 2 year olds now seem small to me whereas when I just had dd they seemed massive)

However there are some things I am equally precious about, like a child with green snot all over their face trying to kiss him, or putting his dummy in his mouth when they've just had it in theirs etc. And the worry is the same when any child is ill-your baby is still your baby whether they are your first or 6th (although I have to say I never had that "oh no she's sneezed twice now lets take her to the doctor" thing)

You are right, MB - He can hold his head up for a few seconds and he has an amazing grip, apparently!!!

And he smiles!!!

On the example thread I posted, I think the majority of posters were in fact taking the piss. Deservedly IMO.

We're talking about different situations. There are threads with genuine anxiety about first born babies, which everyone responds to positively and supportively (me included).

But there are also pretty fatuous threads ("Look I have given birth to a FECKING GENIUS - six weeks old and already smiling") which everyone is entitled to take the piss out of. No?

Quattrocento, the thread you linked was very funny indeed. Well needed Friday light relief.

Only having skimmed the thread, I think there are two different sorts of posts that require different responses.

The first is the anxious first-time parent who needs non-patronising reassurance that they are doing alright.

The second is the demanding first-time parent who hasn't realised that their child is not the centre of everybody else's universe, and who needs a lovely patronising MN wake-up call. In which case PFB comments are fine.

At different times, I admit to having been both.

People get worried over different things and it's perfectly reasonable that they can post about them. We were all inexperienced at one time. I see the same criticism of teenagers and 20 somethings (the age of my older children). Of course they don't have 20 years of experience of adult life so of course they don't always get things right but that doesn't make them wrong, just age appropriate and they have good insights into things too.

(What does PFB stand for?)

(precious first born)

makes me glad my pfbs are twins, no time to be p about it and no energy to have more

ack, go on, do a search on PFB and show me ONE SINGLE EXAMPLE of a brutal, cruel use of the term to crush a devoted, sensible parent, and I'll give you my house.

Can I just say I posted a thread where I am being obviously way over protective and paranoid about my child, not one person said anything along the lines of 'PFB', I have only seen it used on threads like 'My son will never see a TV' or 'Someone gave my 4year old a chocolate finger'

What I get really pissed of reading on here is 1st time mothers who judge and spout crap, thinking they know it all when the know next to nothing.

I've seen pretty unpleasant sanctimonious comments from those with pfb's.

Yes we've all had a first born. When I had mine I had the good sense to KNOW that I knew nothing and didn't make out otherwise, nor did I flounce around telling people how I was going to do this that and the other, blah, blah, yawn

Sometimes it's the 'I did it this way and this is how it's fine so you do it this way too' posts are worse than the PFBs.

Precious first born? I suppose that' s a nice phrase, they are very precious, nothing quite so special as your very first new born baby.

I feel more a grandmother than mother with numbers 4 and 5 but I know how I felt at 22 with number 1.

What is interesting these days is so few people ever get beyond 2 or 3 so in a sense no one parents as people used to with lots of experience.

Msdemeanour

Motivated by the prospect of winning your house, I DID do a search on PFB (from 1 Jan 08 onwards).

Tragically I was unable to find ONE SINGLE EXAMPLE of a brutal, cruel use of the term to crush a devoted, sensible parent.

Okay, now time for the handwringers on this thread to put up or shut up. Where have people been unkind in cases of genuine anxiety? MsDemeanour has offered you her house.

It's quite a nice house too

I think I'll probably redecorate the master bedroom, if that's OK?

have just read the article on jimjams post - OMG, she was a bit precious, wasnt she? despite her assertions to the opposite.
I am a first timer and I admit to getting my sister to wash her hands prior to holding my PFB DS for the first few weeks, but only because she has 3 germladen children herself and I honestly thought she might pass on a cold/cough/D&V bug. No one else needed to bother. Some offered anyway, some didn't think of it.

I haven't seen too many threads yet where people are patronising about PFBs but I have had some of it in RL and it is really infuriating when people do that "oh yes, it's your first isn't it. well, by the time you've had another couple you won't worry about X" in that soupy, smug way. So I agree with the OP in principle.

Isn't it cheating when the OP used the phrase first and posters are just posting it back in a joshing sort of way?

Nobody's posting because everyone's on the search facility....gulp.