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.

I am not a flag waver for GF, read her baby book, didn't understand it, didn't follow it (apart from putting my baby to bed same time every evening which I think is perfectly sensible).

But to object to her on basis she doesn't have children is bonkers. I would prefer to listen and take advice from someone who had worked in child care for many many years and cared for many children than someone who had given birth to one baby. What is the particular magic in that?

I feel for Alpine , she has had a positive experience after the birth of her baby, and is managing to do various things that others aren't able to yet, and she gets fucking slated for it?

Is this Martyrnet.com?

Just because GF doesn;t work for some, doesn't mean that those for whom it does work should be made to feel like pariahs for it.

IF you feel like shaving your legs, do it, it probably will make you feel a little more human. If you are a bit hmmm...sex yet or not? Maybe try it. Putting it off will only delay the inevetable "shit, is everything still going to feel ok down there?" moment, much like the dreaded first poo after childbirth.

DH and I went out for a meal when DD was three weeks old, and had a great evening where we could focus totally on one another, and discuss where we were in our life and the amazing journey of the past year, while Nana got to spend some cuddle time with the baby. Yes, I know this isn't suitable for everyone, and I respect that...why can't that same respect be shown to those who feel able to do it?

Why is it, exactly, that if things are hard going after baby comes along, you are all ears, and when things are going well it's "smugness"?

I've got a Gina Ford book. My mum brought it to the postnatal ward, along with a slimming/toning body oil.

Nobody knows you like your own mother, after all . I think they're both gathering dust in the same cupboard.

I think what is so annoying about her is that alrhough what she suggests might be quite sensible in an ideal world, we just don't any of us live in an ideal world.

A date night at 6 weeks sounds great...except at 6 weeks, I was still bleeding, still felt like I had never slept, still struggling with breastfeeding, had a DH who was working round the clock, no family support (we live abroad), baby was slightly premature so feeding a lot....etc. Etc. We all have our stories of the early days and why a "luvvy dovvy date night" is not always possible, despite the best if intentions.

Gina Ford appears to be rather overweight. I am not having a dig at her, but it woukd be like me telling her that s simple healthy eating regime and regular cardio vascular exercise, less alcohol etc, would do wonders for her energy levels, and her weight. Just commonsense advice, Gina. But very, very difficult for very many people to follow. Including Ms. Ford, it appears from her picture.

And I am really not having a go at another woman for her appearance, just pointing out that there slim people who find it incomprehensible that people cannot lose weight. Likewise, there are childless people who have no idea that their commonsense advice is crap not easy to follow in practise.

Also, what mathanxiety said.

I was on MN 6 months after having DS, getting lots of advice and reassurance because i had only had sex with DH once in that time - and it hurt like hell and i was struggling to bring myself to do the deed again. It was a real psychological as well as a physical barrier to overcome. For a start, my breasts still didn't belong to me, let alone my DH. They were to provide my DS with food. I'd had a pretty straight forward birth, but had a 2nd degree tear and i didn't feel normal again probably until some time after 6 months. I have always prided myself on being quite a strong character and was consequently out and about, dressed nicely, shaved legs etc two days after giving birth. My first trip out was to the supermarket, and it was a mistake. I nearly fainted and felt like i was on a massive drug come down. This was added to the fact that i was now a new mum, my life had changed forever, and i felt totally different to the way i had felt just days before. GF has absolutely no clue about any of this because she has not felt it first hand.

I do actually believe that there is some truth in what she says. DH and I have always tried to have some 'us' time - even when we weren't having sex. And there is a lot to be said for having a bath, applying some makeup and greeting the world head on. But really, i take my advice from someone who can empathise. And GF can't.

So what you are really saying is that only woman who have given birth and had a crap time are able to offer advice? So any child care guru who gave birth and was up and about, shaving legs, with a baby who slept through from early on is therefore not competent to give advice?

Sorry, I must be thick but I just don't understand this. How can caring for 100s of children over decades mean so little?

Spero - try the first edition of her first book - before any revisions. Then you'll see what the problem was. Only someone who had no emotional bond with a child and no empathy and no understanding of basic humanity could have written it.

Oh, and someone who hadn't bothered to look up any of the research on breastfeeding, just gone with their own ill-informed 'beliefs' that are completely the opposite of how it actually works...

Sorry I'm going to buck the trend - GF worked for us ! Twice . Really well . Loved her advice on routines . She has some sensible advice .
nothing wrong with outlining the need to keep nurturing the relationship with your partner . And yes pampering self does help with self esteem ...

and I have a great bond with my children. I just picked out the bits of GFs book that I liked. She makes some very valid points .
Some not so valid - for eg the benefits of controlled crying ( which I think is awful ).
I have also co slept so obviously ignored her on those points .

(TwoIfBySea, I believe there is also some sort of prohibition on surgeons operating on their own families. I may have got the wrong end of the stick on this one though..)

There really is nothing that could possibly prepare you for the experience of taking care of your own baby. Perhaps this is why GF can so blithely advise mothers to ignore their natural instincts.

Going with your natural instincts and focusing on the baby to some extent doesn't equal martyrdom. And yes, sex and the first white-knuckle poo after childbirth both (ehem) lovely to look forward to... great analogy. What man would like to feel this was how his partner saw things? Back in the saddle takes on a whole new meaning.

'Nothing wrong with nurturing the relationship with your partner' ??
Here's what's wrong with the GF approach to 'nurturing the relationship with your partner':
The relationship nurturer in the GF scheme of things is the mother.
In my opinion, it is the job of the man to nurture the relationship with the woman by doing all the helpful things he can to help her heal. Not the job of the woman to reassure the man that he is still number one/pander to immaturity and insecurity. The woman here is the one who is supposed to be everything to everyone.

Here's the other thing that is wrong about the GF advice:
The focus on the woman's appearance (apparent in the grooming advice) will have the effect of making women worry that they look as flattened by a train as they feel. It just piles on pressure to be 'perfect' at a time when a woman's body is working 24/7, when a woman is still carrying around a lot of baby weight, when her hair is falling out in handfuls in the shower, when she wakes at night with a bed soaked in sweat and maybe milk as she gets rid of the extra water weight of pregnancy, and the bags under her eyes have their own bags. No matter how advice to spruce yourself up is couched, even in terms of relaxing or perking yourself up and making yourself feel better, the subtext is that you look like something the cat dragged home.

Hell will freeze over before I take parenting advice from Gina Ford.

This is what I hate about the GF threads: the suggestion that GF "blithely advise[s] mothers to ignore their natural instincts". I haven't read GF, but thanks to MN, I know all about her. And there are too many people on MN who assume that every mother has the same "instincts" as they do.

My own instinct told me, in fact, to leave my 10-week-old DD to grumble and grizzle and, yes, cry while she sorted out how to get to sleep. I did this because my "natural instinct" told me that I was becoming very depressed indeed from lack of sleep. I didn't read GF or anything else that told me to do this - I just figured that sleep was a learned human activity. And in my DD's case (and, later, my DS's), it was.

I don't assume this method works for everyone - of course it doesn't. Babies are different. But I hate this assumption on MN that it doesn't work for anyone at all, and GF is full of shit, and no decent, sane mother would ever allow her baby to cry. Some of us do. And I, frankly, am not going to apologise for it.

Penelope Leach was the only book I read which made me feel unbeleivably guilty that I couldn't/had no wish to follow all her theories. She made me feel that I was emotionally damaging my children everytime I strayed from what she said.
When I was a bit more mentally stable I realised that no one person had all the correct theories for every child.
Yes my children all slept through the night by three months not all do. I did controlled crying when we hit a blip at eighteen months, it doesn't work for everyone.
The only book I agreed with whole-heartedly (again not everyone will) was Libby Purves with 'How not to be a perfect Mother). I think she saved me from the depths of depression.

She does blithely advise mothers to ignore their natural instincts. Many women have an inclination to do exactly the opposite of what she recommends and make themselves miserable trying to have a 'contented' baby (because one who sleeps irregularly, etc, isn't contented?) and beating themselves up for being unable to achieve that. Not only have they failed the poor discontented baby, they have failed to get any sleep themselves, and end up in a complete heap. Hence all those comments from so many people who rue the day they ever cracked open her books. And all those comments you see from people who say it worked for them but then they reveal they did exactly two things she recommended but ignored the rest and went with their instincts instead.

A book that essentially guides women to refer more to the clock than to the baby is one that is telling all women except the clock obsessed to override their instincts, whatever they may be. Not for nothing has her method been compared to dog training.

wrt 'instincts'

'psychologist Jack Boyle says: 'Gina Ford's regime is actually quite similar to training animals.'

The programme also features a young couple trying to follow Ford's routine but eventually giving up in frustration. Millie Gregory said she found it hard to obey the strict rules that meant she could not always feed her son Saul when he was crying. 'What happens if he cries, or doesn't become sleepy?' complained Gregory. 'Where is plan B?'

Sheila Kitzinger, another baby expert, said conditioning babies not to cry by ignoring them can work well but could carry negative side effects: 'You are telling a baby, "When you cry for me to comfort you I won't respond.'

mathanxiety As I say, I haven't read GF, so I don't want to be her cheerleader. But it does sound as though you are happy to listen to "experts" who agree with whatever you already think is right. You know what? There are other "experts" who disagree with them. So why not just put GF into that batch of books that you don't agree with, accept that it doesn't work for you, but that it does for some people?

I most certainly didn't have a date night within a month of giving birth, but I did host family for dinner within three weeks (they brought the food, I set the table) and I was thrilled to have a few minutes of grown-up time talking to them in between the screaming. Remembering being a normal person is sometimes good. Not everyone wants it, sure - but lots of us do. I needed it. Just accept that some of us are different from you.

I don't care if she has kids or not. Even if she had five of her own, her books would still be a load of misguided rubbish. imo.

The thing that stands out most clearly to me in terms of GF's lack of experience of the whole thing is that she's obviously never experienced the total absence of libido that most women experience when they're breastfeeding. Telling women they should be having sex five weeks after the birth when you have no sex drive at that point is just plain wrong. Not only that but most men who are engaged with their partner and baby experience an enormous drop in testosterone that reduces their sex drive too. It's nature's way of making sure that a) you don't get pregnant again too early and b) the baby you've got gets looked after properly. It's simply another example of her shooting off her mouth without knowing anything about the physiology involved.

It also irritates me that people buy wholesale into her own estimate of having looked after 300 babies when there's no evidence of that.

Getting advice off GF for 'bringing up baby' is akin to getting weight loss advice from Marjorie Dawes.

Having gone to several 'dinner parties' where grim faced parents ate in shifts at 10pm because they had the bloody baby at the table with them and wouldn't put the baby to bed because there might be crying... Some parents need to follow their instincts a little less I think.

A couple of my friends have been doing what appears to be full on attachment parenting. They moan all the time about how tired they are, can never leave baby for a single second etc. I was quite happy to leave my baby to cry for five mins of an evening and 90% of time she would go to sleep. Tough shit if that has taught her I don't respond because responding 24/7 would have driven me to a nervous breakdown and left her without any mother. She has a mother who responds reasonably well 80% of the time and she is left alone for the rest, because that is what I have to do to survive.

I think the point I am trying to make is that those of you who dismiss a childless woman as competent to advise on child care, appear to be falling into the same trap. I.e. Only people who have had your experiences can validly comment.

There is no one size fits all. You do what works for you. Some of GF worked very well for me. If you don't agree with her, don't buy her books.