Anyone seen todays Times about Gina Ford's new book?!!!!!

[louby78]

OMFG is all I can say. Anyone who doesn't like her will now see their hatred excel to a new level.

Apparently new mums should go on a date night with their husbands 4-6 weeks after the birth of their new baby and have sex even if they don't feel like it. Other mums share their tips and one woman actually says...."you may have to grin and bear it"!! EXCUSE ME?!

When her mums are feeling down she tells them to have a bath, shave their legs and paint their nails!!!! Not sure about anyone else but when my children were babies I could just about manage to brush my teeth! And as for sex...... well sleep would be my priority but I guess if I'd listened to her my babies would be sleeping through from 6 weeks after I put them in their own room and left them to cry until they got the message.

All this from someone who has never even had a baby. If she too had pushed out a baby bigger than a melon, had to be cut and then stitched together again (not to mention the bruises which made it hard to sit down for a week), then she maybe qualified to offer new mums advice. Until that day she should just keep stum.

It's like reading something from the 1940s. Silly cow.

Rainbow.

Patti I'm not much minded to dispense advice to other parents either, which is probably why neither of us have written a book on childcare (you haven't, I presume?). However, I don't have an issue with someone else writing one.

Don't like her? Don't buy book.

Is there such a thing as a PhD in childcare?
Being a parent isn't a competition, having a child shouldn't require martyrdom! I think we all need advice from time to time, isn't that one of the reasons MN exists? Why is it so deplorable to trust what GF has to say?

I've seen several midwives over the pregnancies I have had, including two who I laboured with, who had never had children themselves. Didn't make a difference to the care they gave me and I took their advice as they had been through births before and were qualified HCPs.

However, while I don't think a childcare expert needs to have had children to know children (applies to nursery staff as above, too) I do think that telling women what to do ala Ms Ford in this ridiculous book is complete idiocracy and I would second mathanxiety's brilliant post above. I did have sex very early after my daughter was born (2 weeks) and while it was brilliant for me personally, I would never prescribe it to anyone else and certainly wouldn't tell them to "grin and bear it". Thats not healthy at all. Mind you I am biased as I think GF's "methods" are cruel and basically shit.

(just to note, I'm not trying to be smug when I mention how quickly after the birth I had sex. It actually embarresses me to think about how eager I was )

zingzillas - I'm allowed to have an opinion though. I think her books encourage new mothers to cut themselves off from their natural instincts which is hugely painful a lot of the time for both them and their new baby. So yes, I think she gives shit advice and I think it's crap that her books are so popular.

narkedpuffin, that wasn't a rainbow?

Patti of course you're allowed an opinion - isn't that what we are all doing on MN? Perhaps we are the daft ones - our books might be better

Bloody hell, you're right!

Nightlark - I think that may have been a reference to the previous SWMNBN events on MN.

I agree with mathanxiety. It sounds like a recipe for Stepford.

PMSL puffin!!!

Puffin I rather love you

But surely midwife care is antenatal for the mother and is to be present at the birth and visits for a week after. I'd gladly take professional advice during pregnancy and immediately after from a midwife. I can't see how being a midwife qualifies you to dictate the next bit??!!

loving puffin's link, those were the days

It grates having someone who gasn't done your job telling you how it's done, no matter what your job.

I think that's one of the reasons why people make a point of it. M

I have watched a lot of porn but I am not a sex expert.

Just saying!

Arf @Puffin

[defcon 1]

Oops.

I liked the poster who said she couldn't pass on her copy of GF's book as it would spread the depression - unfortunately I now have scenes from the movie "The Ring" passing through my head - pass it on, and someone else dies instead of you!

If new mothers can spend some time painting toenails etc. and actually want to then that's great. Really.

However, the idea that GF seems to be selling here is that a relationship is doomed unless we keep up grooming standards in the immediate wake of healing from birthing a child which is, even if you are fortunate enough to have a fairly straight forward birth, physically and emotionally knackering. There is a physical wound inside you that takes a good few weeks to heal - much, much longer if you've had a surgically assisted delivery. I think she probably should have called it The Contented Father book.

With my first DC I bought into all this and pretended to be superwoman following my em cs. Bit of a break down 5 months later.

With my second I sat on the sofa for 2 weeks cuddling DD while my fabulous, patient, kind DH entertained DS, looked after the house, cooked etc. No breakdown. My pedicure wasn't uppermost in my mind but amazingly my marriage survived.

Bonds between husbands and wives can be nurturered and strengthened in many ways - and they don't have to involve "date nights."

Ive said it before but I really don't get the hysteria. All you out there who don't like the contented baby stuff just perpetuate its fame/notoriety by threads like this.

Me, I don't care. I actually used her routines as a guide in the early days when I didn't know what I was doing and it suited the way my brain works. I didn't do all of it - I kept DS in with me because of the advice on SIDS and because of his reflux he had to be held upright after a feed and so naturally fell asleep that way.

But it was useful for me. But there are other childcare theories would really not suit me but I won't flame them because they might be great for a different type of mother or child.

Surely we should celebrate that we live in a society that offers us so much advice on different ways of being a parent.

I don't understand why anyone would need to read a book that claims to tell them how to be contented. Surely we know as individuals what makes each of us contented. How ridiculous.

Grin and bear it? How ridiculous.

I'm not talking about anyone specifically here but...

I can say, as someone who was a nanny for many years, there is nothing and I mean nothing that prepares you for your own child. I know that there is this whole idea that "well a surgeon hasn't needed to be operated on to then be able to operate" which is true but surgeons also deal with people who hopefully aren't crying, pooping, puking machines to whom you are emotionally attached.

Advice is good if given in the right manner. Being dictated to is not. Some mums bounce back quickly, some mums don't and both are fine but no one needs the pressure of a deadline. What a passion killer that is - well it is x weeks so go at it. Lovely, how nice that must be.