Changing "Rules" in Baby Care

A doctor pal was laughing recently about her grandchild aged 4 months. Babies mum is following the no weaning to 6 months rule, gran doesn't interfere, but wishes things were less rigid. She 'knows' the baby is hungry and ready for solids.

Poorer children/adults were often healthier in Tudor times (provided they had sufficient food) as they ate a mixed diet with plenty of fibre. The rich thought that veg was peasant food and kept their children on bread and milk rather than giving them proper food.

Without knowing that the ideas of the time were based on the theories of Truby King a NZ who had observed cows looking after their calves!!, my mother in th elate 40s did what she was told (she was only in her early 20s) & shoved us down the bottom of the garden in all weathers & fed us every 4 hours on the dot. [I hate the cold & cannot keep to time schedules] . In the 70s, I had 2 of my 3 at home against the trend but did what was recommended & they slept on their fronts. I was a great cow so the girls survived 6 months on milk alone but at 4 months son screamed until I realised he was hungry & started weaning at 4 months.
Now with one lot of grandchildren the 'rules' have changed between each & everything has a label so it was babyled weaning & finger food with the second. Neither have had a bottle in their lives & have hardly been left with a babysitter (what happened to babysitting circles?). The other grandchild was weaned mainly on bottles of babyfood but he has the best appetite for real food now. He's also been at Nursery full-time since 10 months & is often left with babysitters all day. I just have to keep my mouth shut about very different things with each family! The big difference now I think is the internet with so many sources of information readily available & the loss of confidence in parents in using their intuition & really listening to their child's needs.

I have just been reading about Anne Boleyn giving orders about the weaning of Princess Elizabeth when she was 2 years old! Apparently they were on milk only until they were 2 and then weaned onto bread and milk as grown up food would be much too rich for them. One wonders how any of them ever lived to grow up!

My grandson now five was 6 months before food was introduced. I watched him have his first spoonful of food. It was very funny as he grabed the spoon and frantically sucked on it and wouldn't let go.

My daughter now has a baby girl three months and tells me the thinking has changed and weaning should start at four months.

Deedaa Oh this had reminded me of when DD1 was only six weeks old I was told at the babyclinic to give her egg yolk. They were crazy about protein in the60s. She is now seriously allergic to eggs which makes life difficult for her and even as a child didn't like them.

I have not yet confessed to her that I gave her egg yolk as she is herself a midwife and a breast feeding expert. I was more careful with DD2 as I lived then in Germany and it was not thought wise here then, to give solids so early. Breast feeding was considered advisable even then and the Germans are not prudes, you have always been able to breastfeed anywhere you happen to be.
Still we didn't kow that huge milk concerns were behind the bottles when we used them.
As to fashions in parenting I think that babies today are just carried about too much. I remember one son-in law picking up a sleeping baby when he came in from work and carried it around, woke it up and than had enough. I could only zip up my lips and say NOTHING.

coastwalker My thoughts exactly!

I think we need to listen to babies. They're far more aware of their needs and communicate them than we think.

Mine screamed and struggled and fought and went red in the face if you tried to swaddle them. They still do, aged 41 and 39 (years not months)

My eldest screamed unless she was swaddled. Something about it made her feel secure.

The bit I hate is not being able to cover them up and snuggle them in at night. My little man sleeps in a growbag thingy and is probably perfectly warm but he looks so forlorn just dumped in the middle of a huge cot just lying there.

I religiously put my daughter to sleep on her tummy but I couldn't help noticing that she seemed to sleep much better if she happened to roll onto her back!

I had a friend whose children were about 10 years older than mine. She was continually nagging me about how often I breastfed my son and telling me how both her children were started on solids before they left hospital. She never seemed to link this to the fact that her two were allergic to a whole range of foods!

There is 16 years between my eldest and my youngest and not much changed during that period. Things seem to be galloping ahead now.

Reading all your comments above, I, too,had my three babies, with a longish stay in hospital, nursed on tummies, early weaning etc, etc, amazing how we all got through that, even a G & T whilst pregnant, and now DD is expecting her first baby at 34 ( I had had all mine by then) I find its all changed so much, what advice mightl she expect from me?!

Well it's a miracle
1) we survived
2) our children survived!

We were told to prop the baby on it's side rather than on it's stomach or back so the poor thing lay like the filling in a sandwich with blanket rolls on either side lol

I was told to go with my instincts and the baby's needs regarding weaning. I had very big, very hungry babies who all went onto solids between 6 and 8 weeks but they were all gluten free .....mainly baby rice or mashed potatoes/carrots from my plate. The health visitors advice was if the baby wasn't ready he/she would either not be able to swallow or the stomach wouldn't digest it and I'd just get it back in my lap or over my shoulder lol.

My girls were told in no uncertain terms that they had to wait until their babies were at least 16 weeks no matter how hungry they were. Then they were also told off because their babies appeared to be failing thrive. Eventually after several days and nights of screaming hungry babies or babies who tried to drink so much they were sick my daughters finally decided to trust me and not some young woman who had no children but had 'read the books'. Each time the poor baby wolfed down the baby rice and slept contentedly for the first time in ages. No colic, no hunger just a nice full tummy.

We had Dgd 3 the other day and DH got into trouble for pressing the wrong foot on the lullaby playing purple bear as 'she won't go to sleep'. She did!

Eleothan the on the tummies advice was that of Benjamin Spock, based on his instincts. This has proved to be a very bad instinct as research has now shown that lying on tummies leads to a significantly higher rate of cot death.
I was urged by the health visitor, in 1971, to start giving DS cereal at 4 weeks . He was gaining 1lb a week on my milk. I ignored her. We now understand that early weaning can contribute to obesity and allergies - giving wheat for instance when the baby's gut is not mature enough to cope.
So some of these changes are distinct improvements.
I do remember when GD was a baby though, the complicated instructions about putting her in her cot, which way up, which end and then you had to get the baby monitor set correctly. Not easy when you only did it occasionally.

Eleothan the on the tummies advice was that of Benjamin Spock, based on his instincts. This has proved to be a very bad instinct as research has now shown that lying on tummies leads to a significantly higher rate of cot death.
I was urged by the health visitor, in 1971, to start giving DS cereal at 4 weeks . He was gaining 1lb a week on my milk. I ignored her. We now understand that early weaning can contribute to obesity and allergies - giving wheat for instance when the baby's gut is not mature enough to cope.
So some of these changes are distinct improvements.
I do remember when GD was a baby though, the complicated instructions about putting her in her cot, which way up, which end and then you had to get the baby monitor set correctly. Not easy when you only did it occasionally.

I suppose some things have changed but not hugely. I had a Moses basket in the living room & that's where my babies slept during the day, I took them to my bedroom when I went to bed. This was pretty much what my daughter did too.

I would take mine out in the pram every day, they normally fell asleep on the return walk from the shops so I would leave them in the pram in the garden. My own mother was surprised that I didn't strap my children into the pram indoors as she had done. My MIL used to wheel her pram into the field behind the house so she couldn't hear the crying baby

My daughter didn't need walk to the shops every day and often went out in the car if she visited friends or family, so the pram wasn't used as much. I think each generation has just adapted the same basic methods to suit changing lifestyles.

When I had my babies the mother and child had to stay at home for the first ten days on pain of the wrath of a formidable midwife. This allowed the mum and baby to bond, mum to rest and gave baby a chance to get used to being 'out' before facing the germ filled whole world.

Now mums visit people on the way home or even go shopping in TESCO. When I was at work one mum had her baby in the morning and collected her other child from school at 3.15pm. I hated seeing all the germ manufacturers known as 5 and 6 year olds touching and kissing a new born. The mum seemed oblivious to it all.