Flipping, freezing, sterilising and the just plain ludicrous - what daft things did you do with your PFB?

[NorthernLurker]

Talking to dd1 tonight (she is 15 and has two sisters) I remembered how totally inept dh and I were.

We:

Filled the baby bath and then carried it (taking two of us) in to the living room of our flat to bath her because it was warmer than the bathroom. Then after the bath we carried it back, sloshing right and left, to empty it.

The first night we had her at home we were so worried about overheating her we put her in a cradle in a vest with a sheet and single blanket, by a window, in April......then wondered why she cried all night and went to sleep when the sun came up.....

Sterilised the bowl for her breakfast until she was a year old. This was dh's job because I Was At Home All Day With The Baby! When he forgot and tried to get in to bed and go to sleep without doing it we had a row. Dh still complains of the 'tyranny of baby's bowl'

When she was six months old and started to roll she would roll herself on to her front to sleep. So every night we would check on her, find her on her front and flip her on to back. Unsurprisingly this woke her....but we kept doing it till my HV told me we were crazy!

Were we alone in this insanity?

I would love to be a fly on the wall to hear the calls that anxious new parents make to the maternity unit.

It should be in a special section of OBEM.

Please keep this going, I can foresee a classics thread here!!!

On my first trip out on my own with PFB, I packed 10 nappies, 4 changes of clothes, 2 packs of baby wipes and 5 cartons of baby milk...........we were nipping into town!!! lol

Oh the breast milk in the cornflakes thing is hilarious! We did the obsessive sterilising and constant use of antibacterial hand lotion, the kind that dries in, left me with a terrible rash on my hands but I persevered!

I used to make DH go down the stairs in front of me when he was home, in case I'd slip going down while holding the baby. I guess i thought he'd act as some kind of buffer to stop the fall, only occurred to me recently I'd probably have taken him out too and the three of us would have been in a heap at the foot of the stairs.

I've remembered something else - dd aged about 7 months got hold of a magazine and chewed a page. In a panic that she would choke/be poisoned and unable to establish all the page had been removed from her mouth (yes I did try and piece the sucked and chewed bits together) I carried her (at speed) down to the GP practice at the end of the road to ask them. The receptionist very gravely assured me that no dd was not choking and no a bit of chewed page would not kill her. They must have killed themselves laughing afterwards. I wasn't even a patient there!

Warmed cucumber sticks

And the laminated instructions!! Love it!

For the first 3 weeks of DD1's life, I kept a chart of all the times I fed her and changed her, including colour and substance of the poo. 3 weeks! Goodness knows what I was thinking at the time but i was in such a state of exhaustion that I didn't half know what I was doing anyway (probably from trying to write down that I had fed her at 2.07 am)

we used to change DS's nappy before each night feed. used to turn the lights on, move to the living room to feed him, and everything. finally saw sense at about 6wks when MiL came to stay, and was sleeping in the living room, so I just fed him in bed, in the dark. changed my life!

Also, when he was about 3 days old we noticed his whole babygrow was wet in the middle of the night, but his nappy was completely dry! We then spend 30minutes on hold with NHS direct convinced he had some kind of sweating disease. In the end we decided that we must have put his nappy on wrong and that he just peed out of the side.....

I still change my 9mo dds nappy in night if she wakes! Maybe I am nuts? She is my pfb though... !
Bertie i totally agree- OBEM should have a special feuture of demented mums ringing, asking insane questions hahah!

Madonna you are nuts! Only change at night for poo or total saturation.

we still change 7mo if he wakes and feeds, if we dont he'll leak by morning apparently he pees a lot in the night...

Yep, I did the sterilising thing and whilst my MIL is lovely and loved holding them she used to leave them smelling of her perfume. I used to bath them once she had gone to get back to the lovely smell of new born baby. If it is any consolation to other mums who find the smell of perfume on their baby off putting I read a newspaper article saying that it evolved to help a mother bond with her baby. There is nothing you can do, it is hard wired into you.

My mum insisted on heating the baby wipes on the radiator before using them on DTs when they were little. She also used to wipe the dog's feet with Dettol wipes so he didn't bring in germs which he really did not enjoy.

I still poke them to the point of waking them up and they're 2.5.

What a lovely thread! So funny and heart-warming. I wish I had been warned about PFBness...might have saved me from some faces in those first few years months!

I used to sit on the back seat of the car on any car journey as was afraid that pfb would be upset and have no one to comfort her and/or distract DH driving causing a terrible accident!

Bathing pfb was a 2 person job, every single time. And when she started to object to the baby bath I would go in with her in the big bath instead, every time for months and months and again dh had to be there to take her out in case I slipped!

I warm his clothes on the radiator...

Not me but my parents with pfb GC. They came to visit at about 3 weeks old and we left them in charge to go have a meal. Got back to my mum bawling! My Dad covered in poo and cotton wool and DD covered in the same. Looked like she had been tarred and feathered.
She had pooed and my Dad had tried cleaning her bum with cotton balls dipped in sudocreme, couldn't understand why this stuck rather than cleaned. They hadn't a clue.
My mother was convinced we'd never let her near DD again. Still wonder how they raised 3 kids. I mustn't have been very PFB because both Dh and I spent weeks crying with laughter every time we remembered it.

I remember carrying on sterilising everything for far too long. I even saw him licking the pram wheels while crawling on the floor and even that didn't tell me that I was on a hiding to nothing and it was probably time to stop!

I remember giving him his first ever bottle of formula on New Year's Millennium eve and not surprisingly after guzzling it all up, he threw it up half hour later. In a panic we called out the on duty doctor, to his credit he turned up in his dinner jacket and all, and was kindly and sympathetic, for which I shall always be grateful! (slightly by way of explanation, son had been very ill at birth, so I think he gave this mad mother a break…!)

I had an app on my phone that tuned how long DD had fed for, when she had a dirty/wet nappy and how long she napped for. I was obsessed and panicked if one day the total was too different to the day before.

DC2 due in 4.5 weeks, don't think I'll be downloading that again!

Oh god. The obsessive sterilizing rings a bell.

Our worst incident was the evening/night 11 month old pfb did not stop crying. We tried everything, literally everything (cuddling, calpol, tv) and in the end we took him across the road to our lovely neighbour (seasoned mum of 3 and a child psychiatrist) who couldn't find anything wrong and suggested we all get some fresh air. We then went to dps mum and by this point I was convinced DS had virus, was seriously ill. DMil bounced him a few times and he promptly let out the loudest fart imaginable, sighed loudly and grinned.

DMil still teases us about DSs 'brush with death'.

Minniemaggo your 'tarred and feathered' story is epic! Loving this thread! So nice to be able to laugh at ourselves (amd eachothers) lunacy- esspecially with a pfb!

Oh there are some very good stories here

Looking at a lot of this we were remarkably un-PFB (do we not care?!), however we did have some moments.

Until DS was weaned, DH was convinced we had to sterilise everything FF-related. As in, not just the bottles, but also the scoop that came with the formula and the knife we used to scrape it even. The knife and scoop, of course, had to be regularly washed as well as sterilised.

DS was not to be in contact with anything on public transport. People, support poles, chairs... none of it. If we had been holding on, we couldn't touch him without washing or anti-bacterialising first.

When I got home from being out, I had to full on change before picking up DS. I wanted a decontamination chamber. I'd get out of all of my clothes, change into loungewear, wash face and hands, and then hug my lovely little ball of squish.

I've always washed DS in the bathroom sink (still do!). I would heat up the bathroom as much as possible by turning on the towel radiator and closing the door. The water had to be exactly 37C and I would spend ages letting out water, running hot then cold, until my trusty Avent thermometer gave me 37.0. I would pre-heat the bedroom for post-bath. On one occasion the bedroom got very warm, about 27C, despite airing the room I just couldn't get it to cool down quickly. I was so paranoid about overheating that I stayed with DS in the bedroom for hours to make sure he was okay, whilst watching the thermometer, until it reached about 20C...

We also wouldn't let anyone feed DS (his bottle). He had reflux and on 2 occasions other relatives fed him and then he ended up being sicky/colicky. We determined that they clearly didn't know how to feed him properly Apart from those 2 occasions, DS was only ever fed by DH or me!

I think I'm more psb than i was with ds1.

with ds1 i had pnd which made things worse, but i used to only give ds1 his baby jar dessert if he had five spoons of the veg first. I still maintain he understood...

with ds2 (3weeks - so still v hormonal) only dh and I can give him his bottle. But we're on guard against pnd again, so hoping just us feeding him helps me bond more.

according to my pil we're being unreasonable. Who knew that it would be such a bone of contention!

I love the fart one and the sudocrem one

I used to sit in the back of the car with dd watching her like a hawk to check she was still breathing. When I was driving, I sometimes used to pull over and check she was OK in the back if I couldn't hear her.

I once dragged her to the out of hours doctor late one Sunday night because she felt hot and had a (miniscule) rash on her torso - which I think was actually caused by the label on her vest rubbing. The doctor was very nice not to denounce me as totally bonkers.

I used to feed dd sitting up in bed in the night. I would throw the duvet off (leaving poor dh huddled, shivering and uncovered) in case any portion of the duvet came into contact with my pfb and caused her to overheat.

I also put baby sunglasses on her. In April, it wasn't even that sunny.

And I clipped her into the baby swings at the playground with reins in case she fell out.