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.

Because you are clearly not expecting your H to consider the fact that while he may still be a man he is now a parent, and your parenting partner. Partnership goes both ways. Parenting is the new reality of both of your lives, not just yours.

And also that there is more to being the female half of a partnership than providing sex while your body is not yet healed. There is nothing heroic in being a sex martyr.

Seriously, your body may forgive you in the short term for going too fast in the postpartum period, but it has to last you many more decades; you will reap what you sow in later years when it comes to your undercarriage, moreso than any other part of the body except perhaps the heart.

So how old are you, KLou111? If you are under 60, I wouldn't put money on your pelvic floor yet.

'Will have to agree to disagree, but can see how soooo many relationships end after having a baby?'

Are you saying therefore that it is up to women to put out or risk losing a so-called partner?

Because either you are partners or you are a collection of body parts that is there to service the needs of someone else; partnership involves mutual support, not someone endangering her health by doing something desperate and foolish out of fear.

If a relationship ends because a man wasn't willing to wait until his partner was completely healed before having sex, then maybe he wasn't much of a catch in the first place.

It is truly weird to come across an attitude like yours in this day and age.

It is one thing to theorise about how babies should be looked after if you dont have children. You can have plenty of experience of looking after children and think you know what you are talking about.
However it is an entirely different matter to think you can know what it is like to give birth and be a new mother if you have never done it. This is what is so outrageous about this utter tripe.

I have had 5. One of those is adopted and he came to us as a newborn.
I was exhausted and taking on an unknown newborn brings its own challenges but you are not sore, in pain, full of hormones and leaking from odd places.

GF is talking toss and she can sue me if she likes. I aint got no money because I spend my time having babies not writing about them. ner.

With the lolling and soooooing I would say about 12?

Her advice actually makes me feel quite upset. I had an horrendous recovery from a difficult delivery which resulted in me probably having PTSD, I was also closely watched for PND. The physical trauma meant I didn't have sex for a year afterwards and any attempt at sexual contact gave me flashbacks.

Thank God I hadn't read a book telling me that if I wanted to feel contented (and not like I'd had my soul scooped out with a blunt instrument) all I needed to do was romance my husband and offer him sexual favours when I still had a gaping episiotomy wound. That may well have completely forced me into depression for feeling like a failure, like I couldn't do what was necessary to make myself "contented". With the implication that if I could only follow the advice of all the other contented women in the book, I'd be okay.

Herethere, yes the use of the word 'Contented' is the epitomy of smugness and it really gets my goat too.

If you're not 'contented' it's all your own fault for refusing to buy the book and follow the advice. If your baby cries, sleeps irregularly, wants to feed 24/7, then she is clearly not 'contented' and whose fault is that?

math I am not saying you have to put out as you called it, but you still have to have a relationship with with your partner, so having a date is a good thing, afterall, that's what got you into being a parent in the first place (in most cases). And yes, totally agree, it is up to both sides, not just the woman to make an effort with the man.

And 'to come across an attitude like yours in this day and age' truly questions whether I am actually not the norm?? Why, because I am in a loving relationship aswell as being a mother? And still talk to, sit down and eat, and make love with my husband? I'd say it is an attitude like yours as to why so many relationships fail honey, not mine!

I'm finding this "put out or lose out" attitude regarding partners really sad.

If my husband felt he had to go out and get some from someone else just because I wasn't in the mood in the weeks/months after childbirth I'd happily wave him goodbye.

No way in hell would I spread my legs or get down on my knees just to "keep my man"

I went for a date and had sex a few weeks after giving birth and all of my babies slept through from about 12 weeks but I am very aware of how fortunate I was AND I had two babies within 11 months as a result of the date. There's no way I would tell other mothers that this was the way to be, I was one of the lucky ones.

Oh and the main reason we had sex was because dh found the bump off putting and I was ready to pounce as soon as poss.

Sorry, KLou111 but you're not the norm. Unless it's 1954 again and I missed a memo?

If a relationship can't survive for a while without sex until both partners are ready for it, then it isn't much of a relationship. I'm also in a loving relationship as well as being a mother - and the reason I know I'm in a loving relationship is that I know full well there's no way DH would want me to put out simply because I thought I had to. That's how you can tell you're in a loving relationship - when both parties are partners in everything and everyone's being honest.

Irrespective of how many paid hours she has put in looking after other peoples babies for some of the hours in the day and night, some of the time, it's a bit fucking much to write about how to be a contented mother when you are not a mother and have never done 24/7 baby care of your own baby. Wth all the attendant hormones, exhaustion, pride, pain, and panic, as part of a family reality, not as a job. But as your actual life.

Sheesh.

Klou11- did you actually enjoy the sex or was it just purely for your DH's benefit?

I am no great fan of GF. (I too have an original edition of tclbb and some of the early stuff is terrifying. However I found her advice about having 2 spot on.Also her waening guilde was v. useful.
I think posters are being unnecessarily scathing about some fairly harmless and sensible advice. Giving the baby to someone else for an hour so you can have abath strikes me as a very good idea. Similarly going out for a drink with your OH. Newborns can be left much more easily than than older babies who have bedtime routines and stranger anxiety IME.

We went out to dinner leaving ds with my Mum (5minutes away) when ds was 10 days old (he was ebf btw). I just can't see why that is controversial. This was for both of us, I think I would go mad stuck at home tbh and personaly I would have been far more likely to get PND if I couldn`t have gone.out at.all.

alpine - your suggestion is pretty repellent, actually. Do you hold your marriage/DH in so little esteem that you have to 'perform' to make sure all is ok? I can't think there are many more acts likely to make a new mother feel worthless than the 'duty blow job'.

I think you parent in a style that suits you, i didn't want to wedge my ds into a strict routine, and we ended up in a variety of evolving patterns which seems to suit us. My dh and i did get out for dinner when ds was around 6-8 weeks old, but he came too, was an angel in the restaurant, sleeping whilst we ate, and had a feed before we left for home.
I know three friends who follow gf routines, the happiest baby and mum is the one who isnwilling to bend the rules a bit, one ended up being driven around to ensure that she had a 2 hour afternoon nap and the other is often crying, so imo not all that contented!
Do also wonder how much time you can have spent with each baby if you've looked after 300?

Good god. I'm sure she is a perfectly pleasant person in most respects but a certain one of her other books was almost responsible for sending me over the edge of the Thoroughly Inadequate Abyss when I acquired it after 6 weeks of no sleep with an as-yet undiagnosed severe case of silent reflux. This book might have buried me. Actually, perhaps it wouldn't because, luckily for me, DH has always been of the bin the bloody self-help book persuasion.

Alpine, you have been very lucky so far. Many of us haven't. But, I'm sorry, BJs at 6 weeks post-partum? Fine if you want to but to feel compelled? I would rather end up alone than end up with someone who only stayed with me because, at that stage of my life, I prioritised his wants

octavia I did not say you had to have sex, I said you had to have a relationship still. I just said I had sex.

thecrackfox and anyone else, why do you assume it was for Dh benefit?
I have a very high sex drive, it was me who jumped on him. He actually was very concerned about it, but it was me who initiated it. He was actually very uncomfortable about it all.
Jeez, why do people assume it's always the man? Unbelievable!

MrsDeVere Far from 12 thanks, a very successful and retired at 29, now 32 year old, hence we started a family after waiting 14 years of building a business so we could both be parents. LOL!!!!

I am 'honey' now?

'Get on with it! I had 3 stitches, bf, and knackered, but my Dh and I dtd when our baby was 12 days old! '

I don't see evidence of being 'in a loving relationship as well as being a mother' there. I see it as really sad, and sort of desperate, but I suppose you can console yourself that you are the norm and that your pelvic floor has so far held up to that sort of ill use.

And if a man 'jumped' a woman when she wasn't really up for it, and obviously kept going (and bragged about it afterwards [see above, dtd reference] and claimed you both 'did it'), I think he would get short shrift here and rightly so, no matter what the state of his sex drive was.

If there's one thing I learned out of the whole experience of pregnancy and childbirth it was that my body is a fantastic machine -- it has manufactured five healthy babies and pushed them out into the world, and then fed them for months afterwards. My last pregnancy, at 37, showed me the danger of taking it for granted, and that it requires respect and care. Gestational diabetes was no fun.

You may be a big grown up person but you come across as a bit of a twat.

From a 44 year old mother of five who has a very successful 22 year relationship.
You are both parents?!?!? Wow. Well done hun.

Lol
oh and

hugzz

KLou111 - I didn't assume that you had sex just for your DH. That was your interpretation of my question. Are you always this paranoid?

If women want to have sex 24hrs after having a baby then more power to their elbow. Similarly if someone wants to wait 6 months then fine. What isn't helpful is a book telling women what they should think or feel.

NarkedPuffin I like your style Especially the rainbow.

Oh yeah course you did Klou