Baby Care on a Desert Island

[leonsmum]

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?

Sorry NQC,I meant exposed as a pervert rather than exposed to kuru!

What you say is/was very common unfortunately.
Margaret Mead started a lot of the rot with her assertions about Trobriand Islanders ('Islands of Luuuuurve' as they are known to some idiots)

My father spent a lot of time nipping inappropriate sexual behaviour (usually by gay and straight expat. teachers) in the bud.

Moondog, they could carry the babies by nursing them 'Welsh Fashion'

\link{http://www.therhondda.co.uk/images/current/miner__family.jpg\here}

No, I think he was exposed in North America. Tried, even.

What did Margaret Mead say about the Trobriand Islanders? I had heard about some islandy places being reasonably relaxed about sex, but not pedophilia ...

Ah blessMB!
(Don't know that statue-must do some research.)

NQC,it's a long time since i read her stuff but general consensus is that she was talking through her arse a great deal of the time.
Her breathless reports of free love (which to a certain extent is true,although it's the women doing the choosing at a precise time of their lives)caused many a priapic Caucasian to hyperventilate with excitement.

Hey,on those lines,a friend of mine was covering the big sex abuse/scandal case on Pitcairn Island last year. He is a journalist with the Telegraph and spent about 6 weeks there. That was a way out story.

MD my father helped to raise the money to get it made [very proud emoticon!] It was his idea. A girl who grew up in my street was the model for the woman and it was her own baby 'welsh fashion'

It was put up a year or so, before he died.

Ah that's great.
A tribute to him and the people then!

I see it every time I drive back home. I see it as dad's memorial....I have only been to his grave twice. He isn't there....he is at the statue IYSWIM

have you read clan of the cave bear?

either the mummy breastfed, or someone else wouldhave to. since the option of not feeding was not really there, you didnt give up unless you died, or some such.
babies were potty timed?
mummy chews up food? although no real need to give babies solids till ages later really.
everyone watched the babies!

A lot of early anthropology was really dodgy, wasn't it. I still remember that article about the Nacirema, highlighting the ridiculousness of it all.