The things our Mums did when we were babies.........

[Northerner]

Following on from Coddys boiled egg comment!

According to my Mum I had sugered water as a new born, had a crushed rusk in my bottle from 4 weeks, was put to sleep on my tummy and was potty trained by 12 months and walking at 9 months.

Your turn!

On the subject of car seats we would go all the way to Spain in the car with my baby brother in his carry cot on the back parcel shelf

We lived near the countryside and would go off for hours and just return for meals - met some very odd people out and about - guess we were just lucky, or more streetwise then.

I agree though all these reminisences do sound like fun perhaps ignorance was bliss!

Still no luck on car seat but found this:

New cars had to be fitted with rear seat belts from 1987
Seat belts, if available, had to be worn in the back of cars by children under 14 from 1989 (includes adults from 1991)

My brother - who is still at school - was a carry cot on the back seat baby, so even in the late 80s we were still at it.

A friend of my mum's in the 1970s went back to work and took her daughter with her. She would park her car right by her classroom and leave the baby on the back seat while she taught her classes!

We also spent a lot of time in a pram in the garden. Front garden, that is.

I was born in 1969 and always had car seats, the first was one you sat in with straps that did up inside. This was then attached by more straps to the frame of the car. I think it was a Britax, Mum and I were discussing this the other day.As I got older, my brother had that one and I had another which was a bit like the sort of straps you use on a highchair now. Again, this was attached to the frame of the car. My parents were really hot on being strapped in the car and I remember being jealous of my friends didn't have to .

The back of the estate car reference reminded me: on motorway journeys, we used to be bundled into the boot with a duvet cover and left to go to sleep. We thought it was huge fun! Imagine the outcry if parents did that now...

I suppose the duvets muffled the constant cries of 'are we nearly there yet'

When ds was born we were given carseats by some kindly neighbours who had them for their twin boys, who are now 20ish. Needless to say they haven't been used!

When I was a kid, we used to travel around in the back of a pick-up. It was lovely standing up, holding on to the back of the cab, feeling the wind in our faces. My dad was a forester (this was in Africa) and he used to take us to fight fires like this - speeding down dirt track roads!

remembered another one - an ex's father used to be tied to a tree when he was little, with a long enough rope to have a bit of a play area. I always imagined he must have worn the ground down to a round smooth patch all around the tree....
this was back in the fourties, and even the rest of his family thought it was a bit much....!

Yes eddm,we spent a great deal of time constructing tunnels ect out of bales-fantastic.As we are a poor backward farming family,we still have the old type bales,so maybe dd will be able to play in them too.

A horrible memory came back to me whilst reading these messages.Me,my sister & cousins used to love playing by the milking parlour.When the cows had mastitis,an antibiotic cream in a plastic syringe was squirted up inside the teat.The empty syringe was then thrown into an old fertiliser sack,to be burnt at a later date.We used to fish them out,fill them with water from the cows drinking trough & run around squirting them at each other!Uggghh,I don't know what was worse,the syringe with mastitis germs & antibiotics all over it,or the water.Strangely enough we were rarely ill.

We also fell off the back of trailers,going over bumpy fields, fell into nettles,barbed wire fences & off horses.We also had a swimming pool constructed by my dad,out of courrugated iron & a haystack tarpaulin.We used to get sheep & dogs jumping in it & the water was green by the end of the summer-great!

So carseats did exist, I can't remember a single child in one in the 70s or anyone ever using a seatbelt either. Maybe they didn't catch on for a bit. I think my baby brother (born 1975) also travelled in a carrycot. Interesting about the babyturning frogs - a friend of mine and my sister both got told "we don't do that" whilst her mum and my mum grumbled about how it used to happen in their day...

My younger brother b.1962 had a car seat which hooked over the back seat, it wasn't actually secured to it and the same seat was used at home at the table hooked over the back of the chair. He also had disposable nappies and my mum bought a new scheme called teach your baby to read or something which i think was American.

Mirage you just reminded me we used to holiday at my grandmas in wales and played at the back of the butchers which was used as a slaughterhouse. Only the boys were allowed inside the shed to watch but we all played in the yard, used to collect a stash of bladders and squirt them at each other which covered our clothes in green pee which wouldn't wash out. Yeeeugh

I don't think our Mums were so bad back then. Nowadays the world is just a more paranoid place. Check out this poem

sixty's childhood

Apparently when i was born my mam cried and cried as she thought i looked strange and had a big head,(I've seen toddler pics of me and beleive me-i did I assume she didn't take any when i was a baby!)
She says the nurses put me next to an open window,(December), and i turned blue and then had to go in an incubator(is that the one?)

How i'm here to tell the tale and relatively normal is a mystery

p.s, haven't read thread but will do when i have time later for a giggle+

My mum used to 'reward' my good behaviour by letting me help her pour boiling water over the ants on the backyard to kill them...what a treat...

i was given curry sauce on a dummy at two weeks my mother wondered if i would like it
she used terry toweling and was horrified at first when i said i didnt know how to use them
only sterilised in cold water and salt when she remembered
filled the bottle to the top and used that till it was empty
broke nearly every regulation that you were supposed to follow when brinig up a child
and the list could go on and on and on

rofl at these. To try to wean me off sucking my thumb my mum used to put sugar/jam/golden syrup (whatever was available) on a dummy and try to get me to suck that instead. It never worked. I sucked my thumb well into my teens. And I've now got loads of fillings. My dad used to take garden rubbish down to the tip in his wheelbarrow and wheel us back up the street in it, that was great fun.

Ghosty - I remember it well... And being under instruction to cook the babysitter's dinner so that she didn't go hungry!

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I was dry and clean by 18mnts.
Had the bottle then cows milk, starting weaning very early.
Left in care with an old man a lot of the time.
Put in the cows feed trough while she milked the cows.
Carried loose in the car.
And I'm here healthy as can be.

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Mum added Farex to my milk to help me sleep.
My darling sister was weaned from 2 weeks!!!!! On the advice of the GP - "she's hungry - feed her"!!!!

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