Parenting advice from Grandma

my mil once told me to "prepare" my nipples for breastfeeding, i should scrub at them with a goldilocks. Yip. passed on that thanks

Don't let her babysit...hee hee

all sounds very silly now doesnt it?! but just imagine that in your grandmas generation those things were all quite normal! Good on her for suggesting you talk to plunket! LOL!

That's so sweet, sadly my Nana's are long gone and I would have loved some silly advice from them.

sandie wrote: every time my aunt sees me BF she comments how hard it must be for DD to drink lying down...we just use the plain old tummy to mummy hold... She has even tried to position DD straddling my knee so she is sitting... she tried this first when DD was 3 weeks old!

Actually Plunket Nurse suggested this sort of 'hold' for me to help reduce wind as DS got really bad bouts of colic - it did help heaps!

Classic!!

My MIL suggested I should add salt (to sweeten it) to the potato/EBM puree I had prepared for my 6 month old twins after they rejected it when I offered it in their second week on solids.
I thought she was joking until she told me to add salt to something else to make it 'sweet' so they would eat it.

Oh I have a whole family full of gems.

As I am leaving for the hospital - "If they offer you a c- section take it" BTW I had a no problem natural birth.

Dip the dummy in honey
She will have bandy legs if you let her stand up like that
Why have you got that child strapped to you again.

hehe, this gave me a laugh!

I wasn't given advice, but it amazed me throughout my pregnancy that my nana could remember all her pregnancies "Oh aunty such and such did that too" she had 9 children

The only thing she mentions is the fact that we aren't married, "why do young people insist on starting families and they aren't even married yet?"

Makes me wonder if our grandchildren will laugh at what we are doing now

* my Aunty gave me this advice - To stop baby from waking during the morning, start giving her water bottles, they won't bother waking for just water. When my girl was 5months old.

Edited by M2K

I was advised my then 3 month old should be on solids lol

It's not just grandmothers, my mother's generation doesn't seem to be much better. Much of the OP advice is very similar to mine and DHs plunket books of the late 60s/early 70s. I think the rosehip was for vitamin C perhaps? Karilac is mentioned in mine, as is castor oil and something else I've forgotten that I know had alcohol in it. I thought the brown sugar/water was for constipation. I apparently suffered from constipation (mum knows different now and 2 more children later) so I was given prune juice from a very early age - I wasn't even on solids then. Weaning seemed to be encouraged much earlier, DH was fully weaned in a week (my breasts would have died if I'd tried it that quickly) at 22 weeks old. My parents couldn't understand why I continued to BF my son past 6 months, and they've constantly asked when am I going to wean him. They can't understand why we didn't put honey on his dummy, why he can't have peanut butter, why I refused to give him biscuits when we started him on solids, or even why I offer him fruit or veges rather than a biscuit (no wonder my sister and I have been overweight so much of our lives). They can't understand why I don't add sugar or salt to his food, and as for strapping him into a car seat, sympathise with him when he moans about going in there.

I used to be told all the time "he's old enough, he should be sleeping through the night by now". He was about 6 weeks old when that topic started. When I comment that's not what my brother did, I got told "he was different".

All three of us were apparently at least 3 weeks overdue, and considering she never had a scan, one pregnancy was while on the pill and another with an IUD, how could you tell? She also reckons she had pre-eclampsia, but none of what she says about it sounds anything like what I know of it.

Mum's usual advice to my friends (but not me strangely) is to have a brandy before feeding to help the baby sleep.

It often astounds me we made it through infancy.

Actually, have just remembered that my MIL was really concerned that DS was in a capsule in the backseat of the car. She told me to always make sure someone sat in the back with him to make sure he was okay. Well meaning, yes, practical, no way.