Apparently (just googled) the concern isn’t the soft-serve itself, but that the machines aren’t cleaned regularly and harbor bacteria. Not saying it IS a huge risk, just got curious and researched the rationale.
Yeah, I’ve known other babies not to like door bouncers either, but my daughter would have been happy to stay in it all day if I’d let her. OTOH, the one time we tried a playpen, at a different toddler group, she kept running at the netting like a puppy at a mirror. 
I was once walking along with my daughter in the sling and someone came up to coo at the baby, but I had to tell them not now, because she was breastfeeding. I took her to a few lectures with me, held her under a poncho, and the only way someone could have know she was breastfeeding is if they lifted up the poncho and leaned over.
It is actually possible for someone to not know if you’re breastfeeding. Perhaps it’s easier if you have small boobs (and a breastfeeding top).
Why are you acting so judgmental when you’re annoyed at other parents for being judgmental?
Because I’m being judgmental about Dr. Sears, who I have a problem with for the many reasons stated by myself and others in this thread.
Did she run into it, bounce back and fall back on her highly-padded bum? One of my cousins would do that, he found it totally hilarious and was royally pissed once he became too big for the game.
I’m with you on that, but your comments about playpens and breastfeeding are just a teensy bit judgmental too. I think I probably did something like attachment parenting - I wasn’t following any particular child-rearing method, just doing what worked for me - and there’s nothing wrong with that.
Nah, it attached to a door and you have to put the child into it. Like these. You mean a bouncer that you put on the floor, like this one; they’re just a slightly bouncy chair. They’re only intended for tiny babies, not babies that can run up to it. I found them annoying in a way, because you have to rock them with your foot and sometimes the baby will wake up if you stop rocking, but they’re fine as baby chairs.
Yeah, I wore my babies in slings all the time. And there were a couple of times that people reacted with surprise when I de-latched the baby, like, “Oh, I didn’t even realize you were feeding him.” Some of the “attachment parenting” practices are just normal things that some people do with their babies.
Dr. Sears has written a lot about parenting, and some of it is complete shit and some of it is OK. Shrug.
I am quite upset this evening, but you made me laugh out loud. Thank you.
By the way, I just wanted to thank LavenderBlue for that link to the Skeptical OB blog, which is awesome. I’ve been reading through the archives.
Amy Tuteur is quite awesome. I don’t agree with everything she writes. But she’s a marvelous change from the internet idiocy that often permeates anything related to birthing babies.
I didn’t intend to come across as judgmental about the practices, because I really do believe that every family needs to do what works best for them. I do, however, intend to be extremely judgmental and dismissive of Dr. Sears, who has gotten rich by exploiting mommy-guilt and is in the process of driving a whole generation of mothers crazy. Someone above said that some women are born with motherhood as their calling… and some make it their calling. My own experience tells me that to do all the things Sears recommends you do, motherhood truly has to be your one calling in life, and a damn strong calling at that. The rest of us just need a break sometimes. Except an awful lot of moms are exhausting themselves, exhausting their children, and going apeshit because of this man’s advice.
After thinking about it for a few minutes–why am I mealymouthing it in the pit?
I’ve been collecting all the editions of Dr. Spock’s Baby And Child Care. The third edition (1968) has an interesting section in the front in which Spock bellyaches about Modern culture and about the shift in childrearing toward the child-centric. By that, he means he thought that raising children had become the focus of the family and of parenthood… rather than raising children to be part of society. He thinks that children are happier and better-adjusted when they know that not just their parents, but society, has expectations of them, and that their purpose is to find a useful place in it and to do something that makes it better.
A big part of raising children with this attitude is for them to see their parents doing exactly that. So well-adjusted children need to see their parents focusing on other things–on things that help the community, on things that make the neighborhood better, and on things that make the parents themselves happier, broader, more engaged human beings.
Now. In my own opinion, if you are participating in a stable, happy household, you are doing something to make society better. However, in my own opinion, that’s the lowest denominator and a moderately bright adult really ought to be doing other things, too. And to do those other things you probably need to be away from the baby sometimes. And to be away from the baby… certain other things need to happen. Certain things that Dr. Sears and attachment parenting try to make you feel guilty about doing.
There. I have an opinion!
There’s really nothing about attachment parenting in general that is inconsistent with this idea. I will buy that Dr. Sears specifically might have said some things that don’t fit with this. I haven’t read much by him except for The Baby Book, and that was a long time ago. But you seem to be conflating the insane MDC-style “if you buy a playpen you are committing child abuse” people with attachment parenting in general. I’m not dogmatic about it or whatever, but I’d say that a lot of my parenting practices, especially with infants, are attachment parent-ish, and I assure you I do not spend every waking hour obsessing over and focusing on my children. Ask anyone who’s seen my Facebook feed. 
Yeah, I am associating the two. I think that Dr. Sears feeds into the insanity. I guess it’s true that these people would find something else to be crazy about if he wasn’t around.
My daughter is 32 years old, and we had a door bouncer for her, which she loved. Also a neglect-o-matic, which was a life saver. And I carried her around in a sling, mostly, though I had a stroller for her.
She usually went to sleep on Bill’s chest, clutching his chest or underarm hair. She’s always been a daddy’s girl.
No, no, I was talking about bouncing back from the playpen’s wall.
If I ever have a kid, I’m totally getting a neglect-o-matic, and door bouncer.
What’s up with people making their own baby food these days? I know two women doing it now and i’m sure there will be more.
I’m not trying to get into a big back and forth about it, but when I saw a few comments about how “awesome” Amy Tuteur and her Skeptical OB blog are, I couldn’t help posting the link to the post on Science-Based Medicine about her: Dr. Amy Tuteur has decided to leave Science-Based Medicine | Science-Based Medicine
The comments after the post pretty well sum up my issues with Amy Tuteur. It’s not that she’s always wrong, but she has a bad habit of hatefully trolling parenting boards and not having the evidence to back up everything she claims. And she treats people with differing studies and experiences as if they are total idiots.
I think there are lots of “right” ways to go about pregnancy, labor, and parenting, and I enjoy reading about those varying experiences. That’s not to say I believe anyone and everyone and the “woo” they peddle, but I do think there are reasonable arguments for many of the things Amy is so “skeptical” about, and even with evidence-based support for some of those, she still rails against them and acts like her opinions are fact. That doesn’t work for me, but naturally, YMMV.
Eh, making one’s own baby food is nothing new. You just look at what YOU’RE having for a meal, and then altering it for the baby. Now some things are not suitable, but it’s possible to mash up a segment of banana, for instance, or most cooked vegetables. Before we had food processors, we had blenders, and before that, we had food grinders and graters, which did a passable job of converting regular food into a paste so that Precious could manage it. And a lot of foods are soft enough on their own. Babies generally start getting a few teeth in at just about the right time to start eating solid food.
I made a lot of baby food myself, just from whatever my husband and I were eating. Partly because at that time, most baby foods had a LOT of salt and sugar in them, and partly because it was a heck of a lot cheaper than those little jars.
Yeah, I was born in 1978, and weaned on whatever the family was having, mashed up. I doubt my mum ever bough jars of baby food - she wouldn’t have been able to afford them.
Mind you, we ate much blander food back then - lots of meat, veg and potatoes, plainly cooked. I’d like to do the same for my baby (due in January!), but as we virtually live on curry and chilli, I’m not sure how that will work in practice!
On the subject of the OP, I’ve quite liked Mumsnet since I’ve been trying to conceive and now pregnant. On the whole, the advice is sane and sensible, and it’s very comforting to find out that no matter what you’re going through, someone else will have gone through it, and started a thread on it.
There are some bizarro posts and posters, but the poor spelling and grammar in the titles generally makes them easy to spot and avoid.
My daughter had one of those. She would bounce until panting with exhaustion, and then lift her legs and swing slowly until she caught her breath, and then be off again. We didn’t leave her alone in it though, mostly because it was so damn entertaining to watch.
We’ve got one of those too (which I’m currently trying to sell). When I next see you, Sam, I have an entertaining video involving the child and the chair to show you. The phrase “attempting to launch” is apropos.
I’m not sure whether our parenting style has resulted in a physically boisterous child or whether she’s naturally like that and we’ve just gotten used to it. All I know is that when for the umpteenth time the pre-school carer anxiously says “She’s been climbing up ” or “She fell off [Y]” I just ask “Did she hurt herself and cry?”. Nine times out of ten she shrugs off the new bruise and keep going and we’ve learned not to worry too much. Am I a bad parent for assuming that a broken arm is inevitable and not stressing about it?