It can be advice given to you or someone else; hell, it can even be advice you yourself that later caused you to grin in pride or to :smack:.
I’ll start with the worst advice I have heard recently. Someone recently told me, quite seriously, that I should not keep my emergency car battery charger in the trunk of my car, because it might get stolen. (Presumably by thieves with x-ray vision.) Instead, the advice-giver opined, I should leave it at home and only use it there.
Anybody else? Bueller?
(Pregnancy related)
Good advice: Lean forward as far as you can to pee, it helps get the baby off your bladder.
Bad advice: Don’t lift your arms over your head, it will make the baby suffocate.
Good advice: Don’t dip your pen in the company ink (Don’t go out with coworkers).
Bad Advice: Rebound girls are just fine to go out with.
Rebound girls are fine as long as you know what you’re getting into. If you’re looking for a healthy, long-term relationship, steer clear - but if you just want your hash browns smothered, go for it.
Good advice: however long you think you need to plan your wedding, add six months.
Bad advice: any advice I’ve ever given.
Good advice: If it smells bad, wash it.
Good advice II: Stay out of trouble or don’t get caught.
Bad advice: If you’ve only got a couple of hours of time to sleep then you’re better off just staying awake.
Presumably good advice from my father when I was 13 years old:
“Don’t buy your meat from where you buy your potatoes.”
Bad advice: Me replying, “What the hell does that mean?”
Good Advice : “Better to by tried by 12 , than carried by 6” Context of this is in a survival situation where as for example setting fire to an whole island to get attention although is illegal, it may save your life.
Bad Advice: “You probably need an operation, we can do it this afternoon” Probably? I asked him what he would do if it was his knee (torn meniscus), he kept on saying well its not his knee and wouldn’t answer the question. With that I opted out of them gasing me and slicing me open. It eventually healed on its own in two weeks. That was 6 years ago no problems with it to this day.
Good: stay out of trouble because one day you’ll do something stupid and if you have a clean record you won’t get into as much troouble.
Bad: get out of the Air Force and go to college.
Bad advice: I think we can fix this without back surgery. Let’s try this first. You can always have the surgery later.
Good advice: You need back surgery. In fact you should have had it 6 months ago. We probably won’t fix the paralysis, it’s probably permanent by now. But we can still get rid of a lot of the pain.
Good: Keep all tattoos where they can’t be seen by judges, interviewers, and potential in-laws.
Bad: Get that baby on a strict feeding schedule. (Didn’t follow, knew better…this time.)
Good: For the middle-of-the-night feedings of your newborn, don’t sing or cuddle or turn on lights. Get her up, change her, feed her, and put her back down.
She slept through the night starting at 6 weeks old, and never got her days and nights confused.
That advice only works for certain babies. Speaking from the grand experience of exactly two babies, it worked fine for one, not so much for the other.
I had a court appearance at 1:30.
My instinct: leave the house at 12:30, get there at 1. I didn’t want to get there too early because the waiting would just make me sick to my stomach with nervousness.
Everyone’s advice: Leave the house at 11.
I compromised and left at 11:30. What a splendid idea that was. I get there at like 11:45, and I have to wait outside the courtroom for a billion hours, sweating.
I mean yeah you should always aim to be early but holy shit, really? Why did I listen to people about that?
Yes, to both of these - I’ve heard the second one as, “you’ll wrap the umbilical cord around the baby’s neck”, specifically.
When I hear some of these, I always wonder how the people telling them think the human race survived.
ETA: More pregnancy related ones (people LOVE to give advice to pregnant women).
Good: Exercise & eating right helps pregnancy symptoms (at least it works for me)
Bad: Eat whatever you feel like, you’re pregnant, it’s the only time you can gain weight and it’s OK! (and then have to lose an extra 30lbs when I have an infant?)
Good:
Bad:
Aren’t these kind of the same advice?
Good advice from my wife after watching the World Trade Center collapse:
“This is probably a good time to invest in defense because whoever did this is going to have a lot of bombs dropped on them”
Bad advice from my father prior to meeting my wife:
“You should ask out all the prettiest girls because no one ever asks them out and they sit at home alone every Saturday night”
I hope these 2 weren’t from the same source.
Ooh pregnancy and baby ones I can do.
I had hyperemesis- which is like the super badass version of morning sickness.
Good advice
Eat anything you can stomach no matter how odd (I survived on pineapple, cheese baps and ice-cream for weeks).
Don’t eat and drink at the same time, wait a few hours after a meal before drinking.
Keep busy to take your mind off the nausea.
Eat little and often.
Bad advice
Drink ginger ale (it tastes foul on the way back up…which is mostly how I tasted it).
Make sure you spend your weekends resting in bed (where I had nothing to take my mind off the constant nausea).
Eat only bland foods, even if you’re craving something else (difficult enough to eat food I actually wanted to eat, never mind food I didn’t).
Baby advice
Good advice
Do what feels right and works for you and your baby
Stay flexible.
Use a breast feeding pillow.
Keep feeding until your baby pulls away or falls asleep.
Bad advice
Stick to a rigid routine/plan/regime.
Breastfeeding: “If it hurts, you’re doing it wrong”- nope it hurts for the first few weeks even if you do it right.
Make sure you time how long each breast feed lasts.