what are your views on health visitors

[honeydew]

I have a pretty poor view of health visitors and wondering what others think. The two I've had have both been absolutely useless! They never followed up after the initial visits to my home directly after the birth of each of my children. They don't seem ever be easily available or provide any good advice that you couldn't get from family, friends, a doctor, health/parenting book or the internet. My health visitor last week phoned my husband's mobile twice and left a message she was "desperate" to contact me so that I could arrange for my baby to have her 12 month check. This was the first time I'd heard from her in a year! As an experienced mother, I just have the impression now that health visitors are there simply to check up on you! Does anyone else feel the same way or have you had more positive experiences?

Bit harsh BB

lol frasersmummy. i saw mine maybe four times tops.

does anyone remember when whomovedmychocolate's HV disapprovingly wrote 'eats human food' on her notes when whomoved told her she was doing BLW.

most recent one was awful.
We had a visit because i changed doctor so that classed us as new to the area. came to our (very tidy) home, took her shoes off and walked around with filthy feet.
very rude, told me i had ruined dd's teath for life by giving her a dummy (she has never had a dummy) told me i was irresponsible for wanting to wait until dd was older to have the mmr jab and silly for listening to any advice other than the prescribed nhs view.
went on to inform me that dd - who is 2.5 was an attention seeker and obviously spoilt by being an only child!
when she left i was in tears, luckily i have mum and aunts that all live close by, so a very good support system that all told me to ignore the old bag!

to make matters worse the day after her visit she called to tell me that she needed to visit as we were new to the area, when i told her she had been the day before she told me i must have been mistaken!
needless to say i told her, in no uncertain terms that neither she nor any other hv would ever be coming to my house again. if i have a problem i will go to the doctor.

The ones round here are great. They organise baby massage course, a weaning course which even acknowledges the existence of BLW, a weekly drop in with free cake and coffee, very supportive of breastfeeding.

atich - what sort of food was the baby meant to eat then - the dogs, cats?? silly woman.

The first time round as a new mum she was less than helpful. She added to the stream of conflicting advice on bf; promoted it in terms of statistics but practically knew very little and she was actually relieved when I stopped trying to bf.

The 2nd time round, I was confident enough to ignore the bits I needed to but she was very helpful when it came to diagnosing hand, foot and mouth in my wee dd.

I have been pretty lucky with HVs

The one I had when DD was first born was absolutely amazing. My PND took the form of OCD and I was off my head with panic a great deal of the time. She gave me so much time to talk things through and non-judgemental support. I had a work mobile number that I could always call during office hours, and if she was unable to take the call due to an appointment, she always called me back ASAP. She got me emergency appointments with sympathetic doctors on a couple of occassions when I needed it. She got me CBT worksheets to work through.

She always made sure to tell me what a great job I was doing and how lovely DD was. She picked up on the fact that BF was going well for me and always complimented me on it and found ways to raise my self-esteem.

Having moved away I now have a couple of HVs who are lovely and very helpful. They are not as amazing as my first HV was - but I think she was truly exceptional and I will never forget her.

I decided when they didnt come to me I would take ds to the clinic to be weighed etc

I was asked at approx 6 months why I was still taking him down there as he was absolutely fine!!!

my gp's take on it was that they had judged me to be a sensible mother and I should take it as a compliment

My take was that they just couldnt be bothered to do their job!!!

i know, wasn't that brilliant dtm? my favourite BLW line ever.

Ah yes, HV did tell me ds (a poor feeder) was overweight. I then suggested she check his height. In the space of 30 seconds he went from overweight to underweight - sigh. He still is long and lean.

Some HV really don't get the principle behind the height/weight graphs. DH, mathematician, lost her and me tbh, when he explained about frequency distribution (hope that's the right term) and averages.

Oh, and mine told me to bathe ds' cradle cap in olive oil FOUR times a day and take him to the dr in a week if it hadn't gone. Not infected or very bad cradle cap - just cradle cap. Nutter.

my dh gets furious about the way HCPs bandy medical stats, particularly when they confuse odds, probability and percentages all at the same time.

My son's HV is dappy and hopeless.

However, the 2 that I work with in a professional capacity are fabulous and worth their weight in gold.

Err...Health visitors? What do they do then? Had one visit when DD was two weeks old and haven't seen one since.

I would like to do my HV training.

Am I stark raving bonkers???

Last one I had turned up just after ds was born and asked if I could manage changing nappies alright, and did I need any help or advice?
I said that unlike her, I wasn't a complete moron, and told her to leave and not come back again.

You may think this is a little harsh, however my 15 mo and (just) 3 year old were also in the room.
What did she think I'd been doing for the last 3 flaming years?

DS's HV was very supportive in the initial days about breastfeeding. Wasn't super-knowledgable about some of my questions, but pointed me in the right direction for more specialist advice (breast feeding counsellors, specialist breast feeding clinic at the hospital) which I think was the the smart thing to do, rather than make up advice as some people's HVs seem to do. I don't mind people having gaps in their knowledge as long as they know this and don't insert myths and bollocks to make up for their lack of knowledge! Haven't seen DS's health visitors since he he was 16 weeks (last set of jabs) but I don't consider this a bad thing - we haven't needed to. I know where they are if I need them.

In a professional capacity I work with some absolutely excellent health visitors, especially when it comes to their child protection work. In my patch their job has completely changed over the past few years with nearly all except the very early health checks phased out and a massive increase in their child protection work.

Sidge - you're only as bonkers as anyone who works in the NHS (which is probably fairly bonkers!). I think motivated and interested health visitors are worth their weight in gold so I say go for it!

First HV i had helped persuade me to give up BF at two/three weeks as i was really struggling, turned out i had massive undiagnosed infection and then PND afterwards neither of which she noticed. Feel bad that i gave in so easily but was very unwell physically and mentally. Maybe if she had sent me to the bF clinic at hospital things might have been different

we moved when ds was three months old, new practice. the usual hv was very wishy washy and whenever you asked her for advice she usually said what do you think? ME? YOU'RE the professional, i'm asking YOU for advice you silly cow! again she didn't pick up on the fact i was finding life hard

finally when ds was 7 months old and i went to get him checked after he'd had a bump from tumbling over, saw the alternative scary older HV that i'd avoided as she seemed the terribly strict matron type, iron grey hair twinset and pearls etc. She turned out to be fab, spotted straight away i needed help took me straight through to lovely sympathetic female doctor and got my PND diagnosis done. She also gave very good advice in early weaning days. And she had good rapport with ds and the other babies, in that confident but kindly grandmotherly way that is so reassuring when youre a first timer.

HVs with my first were rubbish, I ended up telling her what I thought (work has always been with children/families)

HV with ds2.. um still waiting to meet her!
Community MW and stand in HV at day10 said HV should contact me by the end of the month.. this was January. I have been to baby clinic for a weigh in, but still no meeting my official HV, and even then the stand in one nearly put me off BFeeding at wk 7 because of 'poor weight gain' turned out the chart was plotted incorrectly.

I have however since learnt not enought HVs are in my area so for one part of where I live there are 2 HVs for over 1000 children.

1sr HV was brilliant - really supportive to me as a nervous single teenage mum who was coming to terms with my own mum's death when i was 7mths preg. When ds was 8wks and i was really tired and wanted to stop bf, she was not around and her colleague was very unsympathetic and told me just to stop and take some paracetamol. Three days later i was in A&E have my mastits cyst drained.

2nd HV also really great. Had PND with dd had HV wasx absolutely brilliant.

3rd time round and I have met my HV once so have no opinion!!

horrendous. reduced me to tears on an almost daily basis for the 1st few weeks of dd's life. gave me terrible, bordering on dangerous, bf advice (feed one side, 5hrs between feeds etc - this with a sleepy small newborn, who they then decided was FTT - hardly surprising). advice has included "don't waste your money on pampers" - actually they were a freebie and dd is normally in tescos, but what if i wanted to buy her diamond encrusted nappies? so what?! and "she's too small to bf" and " you can swap to formula for a few weeks to get her weight up then go back to bf-ng".

i think she is actually sponsored by aptamil - she has been the end of bf-ing for at least 4 other people i know.

my poor dh said that for him, she had almost taken the joy out of having a newborn baby .

am now gearing myself up for the BLW conversation...can you imagine?!

I have always had lovely hvs. Very pleasant and easy to talk to. With dd3 we've had very little contact (my choice) but when I have gone to see them I have always come away feeling supported. The hv I had with dd2 was very good as well - and I know she fully supported b/feeding because she asked me if she could give my phone no to a breastfeeding mum who lived nearby and who was really struggling (failed induction, c section, week in hospital and total loss of confidence ) I saw quite a bit of that mum - she had no family support to keep b/feeding whatsoever and told me that the hv and I were the only people who had encouraged her at all

I used to be a HV. Gave it up as felt much of what I did was a waste of time, and when people did need serious ammounts of support my hands were tied by lack of available services. Think they really need to rethink training, with much more emphasis on BF (we got practically no real teaching on this) and also more in depth on behaviour / sleep etc. Also think HVs need to commit much more to updating their knowledge - mine (who didn't know I was a HV) were in the dark ages!

Mine told me after 2 weeks that "I didn't need her at all."

I agreed.

what a shame, diplodocus. i'm sure you were one of the good ones as well...

listen, do you you mind me asking if you know what an HV gets paid these days? or is it the sort of thing that varies? and do you still have access to things like HV weaning guidelines? someone posted them on here once and they were fascinating in their ability to contradict themselves repeatedly in the space of a paragraph.