Not sure where to ask about this awful terrible baby advice you have published?

[ridiculouspirate]

www.mumsnet.com/babies/features/developing-a-routine

What on earth?

Mumsnet advice pages used to be reasonably balanced and evidence based. Saw this shared on Facebook and wondered wtf someone was thinking?

Make it stop before someone tries this bollocks on their new baby!

www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/features/should-we-cuddle-babies-or-leave-them-to-cry-8470338.html

Wow she's one of these no nonsense modern parents have no idea types. Ffs.

Wake them up for feeds? What madness is this?!

We did that once. Never again. Never.

Agree cat and ragwort

This thread and the other is pretty awful imo. If someone wants to bring their baby up in a way that doesn't harm them or themselves then that's completely up to them.

no wonder there's so many threads on crap sleepers

Is she paying you to punt her book or website MN?

Crikey....I thought this thread was an over reaction until I read the link. What a load of out-dated, cruel bollocks. Making a newborn go 3-4 hours without a feed?? Just plain cruel. Horrible undertones of "you'll make a rod for your own back putting your baby's needs first".

Utter tosh that would be so so unhelpful for a vulnerable first time mum who was a bit unsure if themselves.

Is it all that bad in terms of trying to establish a routine?

Although they surely need to be read as suggestions & not absolute musts.

Waking up for feeds is advised for babies of low birth weights. I was told to do it with ds who was born very small. But under normal conditions just let them sleep!

Points 1-5 are all a bit bollocks.

We followed our daughter for feeding (I say we because she was formula fed bar her most formative weeks), let her sleep for as long as she needed during the day. Result for us - she's slept through since she was 4 months old. We co-slept sometimes, had weeks where only one of us would do for day time naps.

Every baby is different.

No one is saying that you can't bring your baby up however you want.

Just that MN sharing this as what new patents should do to get sleep sucks for the new babies and parents when it doesn't work.

I know this makes me sound like an idiot but I've clearly been so brainwashed by having this type of advice rammed down my throat that I honestly thought everyone else had babies who conformed to all of that and I was one of the few failing. Two and a half years of failure with DD1 because she liked to be cuddled and hated her cot. Now DD2 at 7 weeks old spends a lot of time in the sling because she also hates her cot and she'll only ever feed to sleep. Advice on here and from LLL tells me that this is okay and what babies need but pretty much everything else tells me I'm creating bad habits and I'm committing myself to a lifetime of sleepless nights and clingy children. Phew, I feel relieved that so many of you think this kind of advice is complete bollocks. Maybe I'm not failing after all!

Some of this is good advice.

Phew that's what I meant above!

I just read that independent link and wow..

Talk about patronising

How the hell do you space Feds out for fucks sake???

in my case, very slowly. With one, I delayed slightly every time (by a couple of minutes) until reached a better interval. So if baby crying, I didn't feed him immediately, I waited a minute or two.
Before you accuse me of being a monster, if baby was starting crying in the car during school run or something, he had to wait until we were home anyway! You can't always feed a baby immediately. He might have to wait even longer if you have to prepare a bottle. And slowly they drink more too, so more full, and wait longer until next feed. I don't think anyone says you should have a strict routine from the first day, it just help to get into one gradually. Baby not putting on enough weight are a totally different story.

I've never forced a baby to drink too much, but I fed another one of mine before he even asked, to make sure he had enough feeds during the day (and no request at night).

What rubbish. Mainly the "do this or you are failing" tone.

I got a right bollocking off the midwife when she popped in the day after I brought my daughter home from hospital as she had been asleep for almost 6 hours. She told me she had to be fed every 4 hours and that I was starving her ffs. She was a right fousty old bat. I totally ignored her advice. My daughter was a great sleeper and very contented baby, she sure let me know when she was hungry.

Waking up for feeds is advised for babies of low birth weights.

I agree that there are scenarios where this is necessary. Both of mine were premature with slow weight gain and prem babies don't always know to wake up for a feed. Same with jaundiced babies - they're just too sleepy. But they should be the exception not the rule, and in those cases a medical professional is always involved to give that advise. Sleep is just as important for growth and development.

Just read the article about her linked to, what a horrible, patronising and arrogant woman she comes across as!

Shit. I used to pray for Her to sleep.

No way would I have woken her up.

Oh dear, that really is bad...

Feed "your new arrival" every 3-4 hours : against current advice about feeding on demand (and a newborn / young baby might well feed more frequently than that)

Nappy change after each feed: what?! Nuts.

You have to swaddle: why? Some babies just don't like it.

Babies who snack find it hard to sleep at night: how does that fit in with evening cluster feeding, a well known and completely normal phenomenon. Also suggests that the perfect feed is always a really long one - some babies (including my DD1) feed quickly but still thrive.

Also, why is there water in the bottle in the first picture? As I understand it, almost no little babies ever ever need water - they get all their hydration from milk.

Agree, please review this page, MNHQ.

I can well remember my angst at having a baby who sometimes wanted feeding every two hours when 'You're supposed to wait three/four hours'!
I couldn't understand what was wrong with him.

Re waking up

I used to have to strip ds so he was a bit cooler and not so cosy.
Or tap and tickle his feed and stroke his cheek to keep jostling him
awake.

Even if he only took a couple of ounces before going back to sleep, every little bit helped

I think there is nothing wrong with the advice. We had to all of these things with our premature dd. However not all babies are alike so there is no one size fits all approach which this article seems to imply.

don't get me wrong, if you have a baby sleeping through the night from 2 or 3 weeks old (and I've seen a couple of those! not mine unfortunately), then don't change anything! Of course all babies are different.

I just couldn't have coped with another baby waking up every 2 hours for months on end. Having happy and healthy baby sleeping through from 3 to 5 months old was a life changer for me.

Giving tips to help you build a routine can't be wrong. If you don't want a routine, you don't have to!