What's the worst piece of advice you have ever been given re parenting?

[grumblingirl]

Mine include:

1. Strapping ds2 into his cot by tying a sheet tightly round the mattress and base so he can't wriggle about at night. My reply 'A bit like a straight jacket for babies eh?'

1. Putting my newborn in a (used) furry soft dog house as a playpen/sleeping basket (offer of 'giving' us the dog house included)

1. Stick a dummy onto LO's face with sticky tape so it doesn't fall out at night - This one was a joke though because I was moaning about lack of sleep (again).

Please tell me I'm not the only one who gets this crackers kind of advice?

They're so unnecessary I mean.

wow this could go on forever, bin told probably alot of what everyones said over the years but most of all from FIL who comes as one of 13 of which he never sees and doesnt speak to his two daughters!!!! so i obviously listen to him ( NOT ) but just a few are:

dont pick her up all the time you'll spoil her
get her on some proper food (10 week old)

My MIL told me not to let DS look up, or his eyes would get stuck in the back of his head!
In my sleep-deprived state, I believed her for a few weeks, and got mighty paranoid about it.
FIL tried to give him chocolate buttons when he was 12 weeks old.
They both sudgested chips as a great weaning food. Hmmm
I could go on...

PMSL at food and drink boobies, I wonder which is which??

Back to the smoking-a-whole-pack-of-fags thing, my mother was made to sit on a cow and smoke a packet of woodbines as a child. She now smokes about 30 a day!
(This is the very same mother who told me to scrub my nipples with a nail-brush when pg to toughen-up for bfing. I didn't, and bf for 2.5 years with DD just fine.)

Er, why the cow?

Crackfox, that was never made clear. It was a large aggressive cow, by all accounts. Perhaps so my Mother never forgot the lesson. Didn't work though. Only served to highlight what a bunch of weirdos my maternal family are.

I had the 'you'll spoil that child with love'. we were out to dinner one day with MIL and dd 5mths was sleeping in her car seat, when she woke up I picked her up to receive a 'do you have do that now - you're forever cuddling her' Again from MIL you'll regret it if you don't give her a dummy. put brandy on her gums, when it came to weaning, why are you giving her mushed up veg, she wants puddings, she'll eat them.

Haven't had any seriously weird advice either from my own parents or my ILs. Not even really from HVs. Now consultant paedidiatricians are a different matter...

Pmsl at these.

Community midwife told me to use 2-week old DS's wee as sterile balm for dry skin. And don't touch his back as it would damage the spinal cord.

Formula last thing at 7pm to make her sleep all night. (DD1 was about 16 weeks, unsolicited advice from a strange old lady in a post office)

"Leave her to cry, she'll soon stop" and all the other "rod for your back" crap that people spout when they see you actually meeting your babys needs rather than ignoring them.

Don't hoover or dust while the DCs are in the same room...they will inhale all the dust particles, end up with chronic asthma and severe allergies...thanks MIL, I will ask the nanny to take them to the west wing when the housekeeper cleans....

From my boss just before I had DS: 'Don't put your children to bed until you want to go, then they won't want to get up until you do'.

That does actually work in our case emilia if we need to catch up on some sleep In our defence, DS is very adaptable and it doesn't bother him when he gets his 12 hours as long as he gets them.

took DS to a natural medicine practitioner when he was 3 months old and howling non stop, esp after feeds. She blamed the one bottle of formula we gave DS every night before bed(although he'd howled from day 1, and we'd started the formula the week before?) and said we should give him goat's milk instead as formula was eating him up inside! Sensibly we ignored her, and instread followed the doctor's advice for pediatric reflux.

Crush up some rusks and add them to her bottle.That will help her sleep.MIL when dd1 was a few weeks old.She repeated the advice for dd2 as well.

Given that a large amount of this loony helpful advice is from our own mothers or MILs, it's a miracle we and out dps turned out as healthy and sane as we have .

(cluck, cluck, gibber, gibber, my old man's a mushroom, etc.)

I love the way that I thought these crazy things were just what my mother says, but now I see that there was a whole generation obsessed with babies being:

-as hot as humanly possible
-formula fed ("developed by scientists, you see")
-not tickled ("it's dangerous", never quite explained why but now I understand the potential for explosions!
-and not picked up when they cry. I will never forget my mother rolling her eyes when I stopped walking to pick DD (10 days) out of her pram to hug her when she cried.

My mother is also of the view that bf must always be carried out in silence, without company. She only managed three weeks before she had a piece of bad news and her milk "dried up overnight", and was of the view that every piece of news might do the same to me.

I completely agree funtime, expect sometimes it makes me a bit sad to think how we were parented.

FattipuffsandThinnifers - wee is (unless you have a urinary tract infection) sterile. A fact I kept repeating to my paranoid DH endlessly whilst we were potty training DS...

It contains urea - which is used in creams to treat skin conditions........

so she was probably correct, if you could get over the yuck factor!

I wonder how many of our mothers lived in fear of us being tickled in case we (a) died of a heart attack, (b) exploded or (c) fell victim to some other terrible misfortune.

To read Gina Ford or any other guru with all the answers. Luckily I took no notice.

"took DS to a natural medicine practitioner when he was 3 months old and howling non stop, esp after feeds. She blamed the one bottle of formula we gave DS every night before bed(although he'd howled from day 1, and we'd started the formula the week before?) and said we should give him goat's milk instead as formula was eating him up inside! Sensibly we ignored her, and instread followed the doctor's advice for pediatric reflux. "

It is quite possible that the cows milk in your diet (and that the formula was made from) was a major contributing factor in his reflux though. 50% of babies with reflux show improvment or cessation of symptoms when cows milk is removed from thier diets, either by using special formula or removing cows milk from the mothers diet (if you are bf). The protiens in goats milk are much less indigectable than the casein in cows milk, and whilst I'd not give it to an infant, I do use it for my kids when I am introducing dairy into thier diets. DD2 is intolerant to cows milk, I had to be dairy free until she was 18 months old, and whilst I can eat it now without it effecting her she still can't really tolerate it if she eats much cheese or yoghurt, and she's nealry two and a half now. I work in Radiology and it really bugs me that cows milk intolerance is not tested for with every baby with reflux, instead we medicate them, smother them in creams for thier excema and irradiate them whilst feeding them barium, and more often than not the parents discovers the dairy link by talking to another parent who's child had reflux as a baby.

Not sure if this is bad advice:

After DS1 was born,

midwife at hospital: if you must have a drink when you are BFing, drink only clear stuff, like gin or vodka. Avoid grape-based stuff like red wine.

community midwife: if you must have a drink when you are BFing, drink only red wine and not any of those hard stuff.

I took it to mean you could drink anything you want

You have to have a bottle, if only to feed him herbal tea (from paediatrician, about 10 day old bf baby)

I'll prescribe you painkillers, because you are going to have to feed him more often than once every three hours to get him to put on weight but feeding him that frequently will give him colic - ditto.

Reflux can't cause failure to thrive - different paed, presented with 4mo ftt baby (due to reflux)

If hed has no IGE in his blood he can't be allergic - by same paed, sitting in front of a poster about allergy testing which said the opposite!

Old lady who I don't really know: start potty training right away, put them over a potty after every feed - would this actually work?