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Original poster

Baby Care on a Desert Island

34 replies

leonsmum · 16/03/2006 22:05

Watched Lost (channel 4) and thought it was fantastic. One of the characters has a baby on the island and it really made me think... What do people living in similar environments or our ancestors in general do without all the trappings and tools of modern baby care? Such as...

  • nappies (or detergent to clean cloth ones)
  • blenders (did they just crush up baby food in a pestal mortar style???)
  • what did mothers do if babies had problems latching on after birth? etc etc
  • Grabbyness in semi-outdoor dwellings (What did mothers do when their babies got to the grabby 'eat anything you can lay your little hands on" stage? did they let them eat twigs and leaves and stones etc??? or did they just keep them slung on their backs all day?)

Being the hippychick type, it just made me wonder how people did it before us and coped with alot more, with alot less. I know natve americans used to hang their babies up in trees (in baskets of course!) and the breeze would rock them to sleep, hence the nursery rhyme.

Does anyone else know of any old baby care methods or basically how people coped without the above?

OP posts:
NannyL · 16/03/2006 22:10

well i saw on a programme about eskimos (or inuits to be PC) the real native ones who still live like that now that they dont ahve nappies.... and the put them in their bot with bark chipping to absorb all the wee (a nappy would freeze and freeze their bum literally)

I think it goes to show that we are all a bit too preciouse and worried about stuff nowadays...

the whole human race had survived, without worrying about do we food at 4 months or 6 months or a year..... the babies got whatever the mum thought was best.... and us (their ancestors) have all survived so it cant eb that bad what they did

nothercules · 16/03/2006 22:11

I never used a blender or a pestal mortar. Babies would have been weaned when they could manage more solid type food ie 6 months - is what we are designed for.

You'd have passed your baby to someone else to bf till it was okay.

NannyL · 16/03/2006 22:11

also shows that a bit of dirt etc really doesnt harm us at all

they would have had no steam sterilisers then either!

hester · 16/03/2006 22:12

I would guess that they kept their babies strapped to them all day for several months, and that they breastfed for far longer. When I was in W Africa I noticed how babies are either wrapped onto their mother's bodies, or carried everywhere by their siblings.

As for babies who can't breastfeed - I guess they would have either been fed some kind of substitute or met a sticky end Sad I read somewhere that a few centuries ago one of the Scandinavian countries (can't remember which) had sky-high infant mortality because they used to feed babies on cream and butter...

Heathcliffscathy · 16/03/2006 22:19

i chewed ds's food a lot of the time when he was weaning...sorry if it grosses you all out, but it worked for us...

NotQuiteCockney · 16/03/2006 22:21

Although the Inuit (not a PC term - it's their word for themselves! Eskimo is actually rude) do use nappies, they're not filled with bark chips, they have no trees in the Artic. They're cariboo skin, which are allowed to freeze, then scraped clean. Bark chips might be used further south.

In warmer climates, from what I know, people traditionally don't bother with nappies, and just become able to tell when their kids need to go, and take them to an appropriate place. People still do this sort of thing, I've forgotten the modern term for it, though.

NotQuiteCockney · 16/03/2006 22:22

\link{http://www.kellymom.com/parenting/infantpottytraining.html\here} is a link about infant potty training.

moondog · 16/03/2006 22:22

Well,I grw up on the proverbial coral island in the middle of the Pacific in the 70s.
Babies were carried everywhere,and b/fed for at least a couple of years.
(This was PNG where bottles were only available on prescription-legislation introduced to counter soaring mortality rates courtesy of caring companies such as Nestle)
No nappies generally-mind you it was warm so no probs if a baby pooed/weed.
Tiny ones slept in bilums (string bags) which would be lined with possum fir and suspended from a tree branch and swung occasionally.

starlover · 16/03/2006 22:24

nappies would have been any cloth they could use, washed however they wash their clothes and stuff

food would have been chewed for them, or soft finger foods

i think mothers and babies just had to get on with breastfeeding. I think as a general rule labours are maybe easier, less intervention etc etc which can have an affect on baby latching on.

babies owuld be carried, and when not then yes, they'd stick things in their mouths

NotQuiteCockney · 16/03/2006 22:24

And yeah, as others have said, no blenders, babies got solids when they could grab and chew. Mothers presumably had good local breastfeeding support - imagine if you lived with your family, still, and every woman there had breastfed! I expect lots of family members would wet-nurse for you if you had a problem, maybe? (This still happens.)

And grabbiness was presumably just accepted. Letting babies chew on bits of bark and stones and so on is how one MN person makes her living now!

moondog · 16/03/2006 22:25

Who is that then NQC and what is it all about?

Heathcliffscathy · 16/03/2006 22:27

[slight hijack] moondog wow....you grew up in papua new guinea??? how come? dh (and i) are envious and v curious!!!

NotQuiteCockney · 16/03/2006 22:27

FaZ and her heuristic play sessions.

Have you missed this bit? She makes money by letting babies lick bark (and now, knitting!).

Original poster
leonsmum · 16/03/2006 22:28

NannyL - Frozen nappies and sub-zero nappy changes - now theres a scarey concept!

I've heard that babies in developing countries, where their mums carry them around in slings all day, demand feed and co-sleep with them very rarely cry. Maybe we've forgotten some good baby-care methods along the way.

I wish I knew how to safely carry DS in a sling on my back. I might get some more housework done or get dinner made on time!

OP posts:
NotQuiteCockney · 16/03/2006 22:29

Oh, I have another PNG question for you, did you learn Pidgin at all? Also, is Gadusek famous there? (pedophilic anthropologist who worked out how kuru was caused)

nothercules · 16/03/2006 22:30

There are mums in this country who follow those methods too, leonsmum.... Smile

moondog · 16/03/2006 22:35

Ah,I knew F&Z must do something interesting.

Yes,I know about kuru although the whole ^cannibal thing is a bit overdone. It wasn't happening every day! (Was this guy exposed as it were in PNG?)

Yes,I do speak Pidgin. Lived there from 5-22 (althoguh went to boarding school and uni)

Soph,my father was a headmaster and high school inspector,so we lived in many different parts.
Wonderful place.Bit dangerous now unfortunately. Sad
Should you ever see it on a map,we lived(amongst other places) on a speck of an island called Buka off the tip of Bougainville.
Nothing between us and Peru.
We had our lessons shipped to us from a correspondence school in Australia.

Very very very happy times.

Original poster
leonsmum · 16/03/2006 22:40

My mum told me about that Nestle thing. Horrible. 'They' (Nestle and other corporations that make formula milk) started promoting its use in developing countries with poorer water supplies. People who had done well enough with breast feeding for ever started using formula made up with this poor quality water and lots of babies died. They should have known better (Nestle) but my cynacle side says that they did and didn't care.

OP posts:
moondog · 16/03/2006 22:42

Quite leonsmum.
This has been discussed rather vigorously on MN on many occasions! Smile

Original poster
leonsmum · 16/03/2006 22:47

Hi nothercules

Good point!

I was thinking more of the women who work out out-doors and have their babies in slings, literally all day. But, I love using said practices :)

I breastfeed on demand, co-sleep (half the night at least) and used to carry DS around in a sling when I went out until he got so big that I had to use cloth ring-slings that I have a real problem using comfortably - hence wanting to know how to carry him on my back!

OP posts:
Laura032004 · 16/03/2006 23:07

leonsmum - have you looked at the \link{http://www.freerangekids.co.uk/product_info.php?products_id=122\Ergo baby carrier} if you want an easy back carrier? I can still carry ds comfortably at nearly 24 months and 6 months pg. They are always available 2nd hand on the UKParents website. :)

rummum · 16/03/2006 23:14

Laura032004 .... what happens if the baby falls asleep in the sling....

Laura032004 · 17/03/2006 05:32

What age 'baby' do you mean? I carried DS in this as a back carrier from about 9 months. You can also use it as a front carrier.

If you are worried about the baby's head lolling back, there is a flap that you pull up and secure with velcro straps (sounds complicated but the website has videos to demonstrate) to keep the head nice and snug.

If you would like to lay the baby down as you were using it to get them to sleep, it's quite easy to take off, front or back, without disturbing the baby. I just do it on my bed, and leave DS to sleep on top of the sling.

This is the best £50 I ever spent, although there is now a newer version, so the price is down to £39.50. I used it this week at the airport - travelling alone without a pushchair! - great for getting DS from the plane, through the baggage collection, and out to our car without losing him several times or getting really stressed! :)

NotQuiteCockney · 17/03/2006 08:30

I'm always seeing African-looking ladies carrying babies in some sort of very simple-looking sling - may just be a big piece of (very pretty) fabric. I should ask one to demo, if I get a chance.

moondog, I don't think Gadjusek was exposed to kuru himself - it was just him who worked out how, exactly, the (intermittent and relatively rare - and declining in popularity even then) cannibalism was causing kuru. The whole thing about the spinal column etc being the problem.

He also made some rather unlikely-sounding claims about the PNG approach to children and sexuality, during his trial for child molestation in the states. He had adopted or fostered a bunch of PNG kids, brought them to the states. And when he got in trouble for (very) inappropriate stuff, he claimed that this behaviour was normal in PNG, what the kids were used to, how children were raised etc etc. Quite horrid.

Callisto · 17/03/2006 09:40

"the whole human race had survived, without worrying about do we food at 4 months or 6 months or a year..... the babies got whatever the mum thought was best.... and us (their ancestors) have all survived so it cant eb that bad what they did" - NannyL I think you will find that weaning was infant led and babies certainly wern't weaned at four or even six months. The whole weaning early being a problem thing is down to the human race evolving to wean at two or three years old. It is only the West that has this weird thing about early weaning.