To be fed up to the back teeth of hearing that new health rules are crap and new mums know nothing.

[Kaedsmum]

Because everything was fine in their day, they didn't know dangers, no babies ever died or got ill, and we are all just fussy.

Yet guidelines today are realistic and do decrease the risk of cot death. Don't get me wrong, I'm weaning my baby early because he's so hungry and ready for it, and sometimes I lie him on his side if he's very colicy. I am open to older people's opinions.

But I'm sick of being patronised and disregarded for doing things A) my way, or B) according to guidelines.

Oh and the worst is when you change to their way and they go 'well I didn't want to say anything before because you thought you knew best'.

Anyone else want to join my rant?

Nah, I'm going to carry on with the baby rice. He absolutely loves it and he tries to poke his spoon in the food and eat it himself. He even picks up his own teething ring with two hands and bites it. He doesn't even like weaning spoons, he likes the bigger spoons (plastic, still). And he sleeps rigtht through the night now. He also has VERY bad reflux, which isn't bad at all when he has his baby rice.

Good God, some of you have got it worse than me lol.. Poor you all. nevermind, I'm sure we'll do it to our kids lol.

don;t get me started on hv's !!

when i hadds i had read all the "rules" etc and knew everything there was to know about ff

anyway he was constipated and the hv told me to ad an extra ounze of water to his feeds as this would loosen things up - i did say isn;t this wring but she was quick to reassure me that as it wasn;t extra formula i was adding it would be fine

anyway the day after a differnt hv came and i told her what i ad been doing and she had a right go at me!! i did point out it waswhat her colleague had advised

ooo mustsleep- same happened to me!! With the extra water. It even says on the tin not to do that, but they told me to and then a different one told me not to. And another one told me to give him brown sugar for constipation but I didn't because I don't want him having sugar and stuff!!

i was sooo angry in fact it was nearly 7 years ago and thinking about it still pisses me off

My Mother is currently advising me to deal with my daughter (23 months) when she screams and shouts by telling her off, I prefer to ignore her completely. Ho hum.

What is the difference between an extra ounce of water in the bottle with the milk, or an extra ounce after the milk is finished?

IMO- none. Surely.

Yes, the tin says don't do it, but this is to ensure morons don't overfeed/underfeed their babies on a daily basis and give them too many/ too few calories etc... I hardly think, if you ensure your baby gets the 'scoops' of milk they need in 24hrs, one extra ounce of water mixed into one of the bottles is going to cause any harm.....

BT we need CMOTDibbler and her old parenting books here!

Apparently Formula companies started telling people BM is bad for the baby and FM is good - of course in the days when scientists just needed the money and not actual evidence to do so. However it was still early days and FM was too rubbish to actually sustain a baby as long as they would normally go before weaning. So bad in fact that they had to invent puree and start weaning at 3 weeks. Since then until recently when 6 months came about, there hasn't really been any studies into weaning age. It's all been telling people what the norm is.

Oh, I get fed up of it the other way around too. I've had funny looks from other Mums several times because I didn't co-sleep. I can understand why they think that it's a solution, as DD was a dreadful sleeper and very hungry, but I just wanted to shout out "if your baby almost died then you'd follow the SIDS guidelines too!".

SIDS guidelines don't say don't co sleep though, they tell you how to do it safely. My first daughter (an extreme prem) died in my arms and Tink was very prem so we spent the first few weeks not knowing what would happen. So I can understand your feelings, for me it was more reason to have her in with us.

The trouble that we had was that we were in a bed that had gaps all around (in an alcove, but not flush to the wall), and we were completely exhausted (for lots of reasons), so I just couldn't trust the situation. We had DD in the same room as us (again to follow the guidelines to the letter) and everyone who didn't want us to cosleep couldn't understand why we didn't want her in a different room, as we would wake up to her every sound. You just can't win, can you?

Nope lol.

We did a mixture. She would go in her own bed at night then come in with us first time she woke (normally when we went to bed anyway) and stay all night.

But Tinkerbelle's mum, the advice is clear in that the safest place to sleep is in a crib or a cot... and not a bed.

This is from the FSID website...

"the safest place for your baby to sleep - night and day - is in a crib or cot in a room with you for the first six months."

By specificing that a crib or cot is the safest, then it necessarily follows that sharing a bed cannot be as safe (or a crib / cot would not be the safest). Therefore, whilst they have avoided discussing the safety or otherwise of sharing a bed, they have chosen their terminology carefully so that it makes clear that they do not consider sharing a bed to be as safe as using a cot / crib.

Also from the FSIDS site:

"Do not share a bed with your baby if you have been drinking alcohol, take drugs or if you are a smoker"

There is also a page on safe co-sleeping on their site.

I don't take a lot of notice of FSIDS to be totally honest. They are not a givernment agency and their sponsorship often shows. There are plenty of studies that do show co-sleeping is not only safe but when done correctly (see above) that it is safer than having them sleep in another bed.

I was trained by the NHS to tell mothers that I see that co-sleeping is best for establishing breastfeeding. Like I said, FSIDS isn't a govt agency, NHS is!

Actually, it says...

"It's especially dangerous for your baby to sleep in your bed if...." and then lists drinking alcohol...

You say there are studies that show it is safer... I would like to see these, because I looked for them when I had acess to medical and academic research, and could not find a single one that did support co-sleeping. So I would genuinely be interested to read them. Do you have the references??

(Incidently, I am not necessarily against co-sleeping, my two year old frequently joins us in the night - I just think that we must make the effort to replicate research accurately, and not adjust it for our means).

Oh and for the NHS - not sure I trust them either, after all, HVs are employed by the NHS, and are supposed to give NHS advice... but from my experience and from threads on here (including these ones), their advice is not always to be trusted... I personally would like something a bit more robust

Oh and it also says this (FSID)

Can my baby share my bed?
There are dangers in bedsharing. The safest place for your baby to sleep is in a cot in your bedroom for the first six months. There is a proven risk in bedsharing if you or your partner smoke (even if you never smoke in bed or at home), have been drinking alcohol, take drugs or medication that make you drowsy, or have had little sleep, or if your baby was born premature, was small at birth or is less than three months old. If your baby does come into your bed, use lightweight blankets and keep your baby?s head uncovered and remember that accidents can happen. Never sleep together with your baby on a sofa or armchair.

co=sleeping
this is an interesting study, suggesting it is safer as baby regulates their breathing in turn with mums,.

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VS, I read some research similar to what you are saying at the time my DD was a baby - but I also seem to remember it saying that there were no additional benefits to having the baby in bed with you, as to having the baby in a moses basket next to you... so the benefit was not actually in co-sleeping per se, but rather in having the baby next to you (as is the FSIDs guidance). Thereby, the inference being that having a baby in a moses basket next to the bed, would still be safer than having the baby in bed next to you iyswim.

Pruners - fully agree with you there. I have been watching tribal wives recently, and one thing I thought it made blatantly clear was that there is no 'non western' norm and how different habits are. I also thought it interesting, that in many of the cultures, it was the mother who slept with the baby and the father slept elsewhere. Thinking the Massai tribe, the other african tribe, the indonesian tribe, the South American tribes), in all of them, the men slept elsewhere some if not all of the time. This does kind of diminish the idea that other cultures have a 'family bed'.

Also, with the SIDS in non western cultures, I think that is such a non argument, that it is impossible to really compare. SIDS is only defined when other causes of death has been examined and ruled out (to my understanding), so of course there will be no SIDS records, because infant deaths are so often not recorded... it is naive at the very least to just compare statistics, because you have to look at the cultures and reasons behind when post mortems are done, why etc etc (The critiques to Durkheim's study of suicide are ringing bells in my ears here). You cannot just compare stats, because it would be totally unrealistic, unless you brought in all the other factors, which to my understanding has not yet been done. Or, I could simply give another statistic that the women of Mentawai co-sleep and they have an infant mortality rate of almost 50%. But of course, that is an unrealistic comparison and unfair to do... but that's my point, what does make a fair comparison? I think we know too little to be able to make comparisons to other cultures and say that this shows co-sleeping is safe or that it isn't.

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But even if we did compare our stats to other countries, I think there are still too many variables for us really to make any valid conclusions. For example, one of the 'dangers' often linked to co-sleeping in the west is our mattresses. The fact that we have, relatively speaking, very soft mattresses and often they have a lot of chemicals in them too (these things are linked as risk factors). Do we use the same choice of bedding as people in Japan, for example? If not it is an unfair comparison, because it might be riskier here, if bedding is potentially an issue.

The fact still remains that we do not really know what causes SIDS - lots of factors seem to have been suggested as possible causes - the mattress (type, chemicals in it and whether it has been re-used), dummies, formula feeding, sleeping position of the baby, whether the baby inhales smoke, overheating, genetics, all have been suggested as having a role to play, but as yet no-one knows to what extent each factor contributes to cot death, if at all. Given this, I therefore think we cannot be certain about any comparisions made, because the difference between say what we do in the West and what they do in Japan (such as choice of bedding) might just be the most significant factor in determining cot death, yet we could attribute to co-sleeping. Until we have established all the variables, then I don't think it is safe really to make any comparisons and offer them up as 'proof' or 'evidence' that co-sleeping is safe or otherwise.

Oh and that is even before we even look at how SIDS is classified in the different countries. That would also have to be considered too. Are some countries more likely to classify a SIDS death than others, for example? This would (unfairly) affect statistics too.