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!

But it's the "babies need this" tone which we are objecting to most.

Although I do think it's bad advice overall tbh.

Sorry - is it April 1st?!

MNHQ that's horrific - get rid please.

(Number 2 is particularly awful)

op not sure if your post was addressing mine but if it was, I was agreeing with you.

Every baby is different so prescriptive routines like that don't work, is what I meant.

I don't think it's bad advice, a routine is a choice isn't it?

I have 4 children and I choose to have a routine with all of them, they were all sleeping through the night by 6 weeks old and remained excellent sleepers, I had never heard of the " 4 month sleep regression" until I joined mums net, none of my 4 had it!

Personally for me feeding on demand, baby wearing etc is my idea of hell but if that's how someone else chooses to do it and it works for them and crack on not my business to have a view on

Oh do think the swaddling thing us carp though

I used a lot of what has been highlighted and it worked a treat for me.
So many different ways of doing things....... can't see why this is being branded a pile of shite. If you don't like it or it doesn't work then don't follow it.

Yes, it very much implies that this is good advice for all babies. Some of it isn't - personal preference - and some of it is just against current NHS advice.

Think all you need is a link to Kelly Mom on the bfeeding side - sorted! Evidence-based, sensible, practical advice.

It's a shame it isn't more reflective of the advice given on the actual boards - I got so much from threads on here with my first, and hopefully have given some help and reassurance back over time too.

Most of those items on that list are unrecognisable from my experience of having a newborn, I would have really doubted myself if that was all I encountered. My five year old is now a great sleeper, despite all my best efforts to get him in bad habits as a newborn, rocking him, feeding him, letting him sleep.

I hate the spacing feeds thing - I had a large breastfed baby who needed feeding more often and the 4 hours nonsense had relatives remarking every bloody time, and more than once led to him being taken from me and 'distracted' ie him howling and me engorged and upset. First time mothers need to see a spectrum of advice that encompasses more than one experience that they can find their own path through, and that list is not representative of what this site does at its best.

Agree with the OP - most of the points in that list are personal preference but dressed up as ALL BABIES MUST DO THIS, which is deeply unhelpful to first timers who may feel inadequate because their baby feeds every 2 hours etc!

The tone is bad but some of the advice is good like taking baby for a walk in the pram to get them to sleep longer, and swaddling works really well for some babies, but spacing out feeds is not right, and against current advice.
Getting them used to falling asleep with you - doubt that makes any difference. Mine could fall asleep by herself as a newborn until about 4 months old and then she turned into the baby from hell.

Always did nappy changes first as they dropped off after a feed and I didn't want to disturb them, swaddling! Yeah right. They hated it.

I do agree with putting them down to sleep though and I think a lot of sleep issues are the result of rocking etc. Both of mine self settled. Surely if you don't rock them/walk around with them from the beginning, then they won't know any different.

Hear hear, Satsuki's final sentence!

Alis it wad in response to J0ker's post. Had to look back and check! :)

I think this is a mixed bag: other then the swaddling it's pretty much all current midwife/health visitor advice. I have 3 kids 13, 8 and 3 weeks old and have been given wildly different advice each time. Eldest was born in Gina Ford era and was a very difficult colicky baby who never slept , so Gina could kiss it as far as I was concerned. There was no getting him into any kind of routine, every day was just a case of getting through. Number 2 was an absolute breeze. He did self settle and slept through from a few weeks old. Number 3 sleeps well at night (so far) but can be hard to settle during the day......with her I've been told to feed every 3 hours whether she wants it or not, to wake her for feeds and that I should be the only person to feed her (I'm bottle feeding) and to hold her at a bizarre angle whilst feeding! As an elderly and experienced Mum , I just smiled and nodded and took not a blind bit of notice but I realise that a first timer would probably be really demoralised by this kind of thing. Babies are people, they are all different and need to be adapted to. The ultimate goal should be finding a 'routine' that works for you and your baby and only you can work that out!

What?? :(

Mumsnet, what has happened?

Also what happened to the lovely balanced articles you used to do which were completely wishy washy in not actually saying which way is right or wrong but which contained great quotes from MNers from real threads about the topic in question, and always seemed to have a LOT of information in?

I'd imagine an article about routines to be a bit more like this:

Something like: Some parents find that they prefer to go with the flow and others find a routine is helpful from an early age.

Also, the buzzfeed-esque format is a little bit cringey. Sorry.

Giving tips to help you build a routine can't be wrong

It can, if the tips can end up causing you and your baby problems.

Putting your newborn on a 3-4 hour feed schedule won't work for a lot of newborns, especially breastfed ones. Plenty won't be getting enough milk if you do this. They will be going hungry. And they won't just make up for it by drinking enough every 3/4 hours, because their stomachs will only hold so much and their mother's breasts will only hold so much, and sometimes that won't be enough.

Likewise, if you want to breastfeed, then spacing out feeds for your newborn rather than feeding on demand can truly scupper that. Milk production is determined by demand.

This is really, really bad advice, and MNHQ should know better than to fling it out there to new parents as if it's gospel truth

I agree it's badly written but the advice is not bad or cruel. Our dd was on a 3 hourly schedule when we left hospital. We went to demand feeding on returning home as instructed by the hv, and then had a completely nocturnal baby. So we reverted to 3 hour waking to feed and she went back to a normal happy baby. There is nothing bad about doing this.

Same as the advise about not rocking them to sleep. None of it is cruel or bad. But it is doing what works for you not a this is the only solution and the article is very badly written

MN articles always used to have a lovely gentle tone of "Don't worry folks, there is a huge spectrum of what is considered normal!" and lots of different points of view in the same article.

Please, please tell me this is a joke.

I'm nearly 65, and I think this is total bollocks, guaranteed to make new mums feel inadequate!

Number one is actively harmful for newborn breastfed babies, and I frankly wouldn't listen to any other advice from someone proposing spacing feeds that far apart.

It's great that so many of you had babies this worked for. Sadly, mine have been the antithesis of this routine, and the last thing you need when you're on your last legs due to sleep deprivation is judgemental crap like this.

I'm a bit suspicious of the app they are peddling, if it's full of stuff like this. Why not use the massive resource they have of the actual boards?! Picking out helpful titbits from the tide of supportive threads (fact checked if necessary) would be a great idea for an app. Not more of the same clichéd stuff you can find in every other app.

This is really, really bad advice, and MNHQ should know better than to fling it out there to new parents as if it's gospel truth

You could say that about ANY advice dished out on the multitude of baby related forums/websites on the internet. It is all down to personal opinion. A lot can be trial and error. Hopefully the majority of new mothers will be able to work that out for themselves

Also this:

"Relevant articles are tagged and surfaced in accordance with your baby’s age and gender"

Wait. What?

What kind of articles need to be separated by baby gender?

Yes Bertie I've spent almost 7 years reading and wasting time on here asks never seen anything quite this shit and unbalanced.

Ducking Facebook click bait has a lot to answer for.

Speaking as someone who loves MN and fb.

I did most of those points with my DCs because they worked - I didn't do them deliberately because I'd been told to, its just how it worked out. I think the advice about feeding is more likely to work for formula fed babies, I have no idea how this could be done with breastfed babies.

They are useful points; fresh air does help babies to regulate their awake/asleep routine and it stands to reason that if a baby oversleeps during the day then they'll miss feeds and be hungry and awake for most of the night. I don't know what the guidelines are now but I was advised to swaddle fairly recently and it helped my DCs to settle, DS2 would still be swaddled now if I offered.

I know that new mums who read this who have babies that the routine doesn't 'fit' might feel like they have failed in some way, but that goes for all advice doesn't it? And a struggling mum might see some points in here that they hadn't considered that help them. Advice and points are allowed to be published, there isn't a one size fits all and not all advice orders people to follow it.

Wow I am really surprised by the reaction to this. It's not how I parented DC1 but it is really similar to DC2 out of necessity - DC2 is breastfed but I do wake to feed if he hasn't woken first, if I don't he will need feeding when I'm doing pickup or bath.

After settling in my arms (or if he hasn't settled but DC1 needs looking after) DC2 goes in his Moses basket which comes with us from room to room.

True the language could have been subtler and made clear its one way to approach things, but I equally get frustrated with some of the advice on MN which often seem to be along the lines of "yes that's shit my DC was like that it will get better in a few months". Whilst it's good to know that others have gotten through the same issue, it can also be pitched (or read by new mums in that way)as some sort of right of passage to get through, trying different approaches like the routine suggested here is no bad thing.

I would also add that the word routine seems to be a dirty word. Routine doesn't have to mean GF and from a MH perspective I know for me personally that it was only when I started to have a small routine and an understanding of what my DCs liked /didn't like as babies that I felt better and more able to cope when said routine went sideways.

Whilst I'm ranting - napping in your arms. It's lovely to do this and I still do this with DC1 on occasion. But I also accept that it's not optimal in terms of getting them to sleep on their own. It's a choice I make because I want to bond/do skin to skin/ have time to cuddle/ can't deal with prospect of screaming/no nap at that point. As we have no family both DC1 and 2 have been looked after by a nanny (whilst I look after the other) and both sleep and have gone to sleep more easily for the nanny become she is much clearer and stricter on routine.