But yes, I’ve heard nothing from the Health Authority against gripewater and they are really good about letting mom’s know about stuff like that at the weekly clinics and classes. For example, I’ve been told so many times about sugar sweetened teething cookies, honey, proper carseat use, ban on walkers… they tell you straight out and/or you get papers telling you what the latest recommendations are (and I do read them). You have everybody and his dog telling you, so it would be hard to miss having been told about gripewater.
Flutterby, does the gripe water in Canada contain alcohol? I can’t tell from your post. There are certainly several brands now that don’t, those are legal here in the US.
Anyway I’m here to tell nyctaea that she may be interested in Eric Burns’ book Spirits of America: a social history of alcohol. I haven’t read it yet (getting it through ILL so it’s taking a while), so I don’t know if it’s good or bad or has any information about children in it. But it’s worth a try.
My mother was told when I was colic-y that since she was breast-feeding she ought to have a couple of beers a day since some of the alcohol would get into her milk and it calms babies… :eek:
Sometimes I think someone is yanking Dear Abby’s chain, wring stories that are outrageous but juuuust barely believable. I read one one time about a cleaning lady at a doctor’s office who was concerned because the doctor was throwing used needles into the wastepaper basket, and they were poking her when she took them to the dumpster. The idea of an M.D. who would not only not put needles in a designated sharps biohazard container, but would throw them in a wastepaper basket, is a little hard to believe.
My grandmother gave me alcohol on occasion. When I had a hard cold, she would make me Hot Toddies, which, for those of you who’ve never had one, is whiskey, honey, and lemon. She also gave me a little wine when I was teething, and I was allowed small glasses of it at occasional dinners as I grew up.
I certainly wasn’t harmed by it, nor did it lead me to want to indulge in much drinking as an adult.
My dad used to rub whiskey on my gums when I was teething-all he did, though, was dip his finger in said whiskey and rub it directly on my gums.
Coffee was another thing children seemed to be allowed-one of my favorite books is A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and Francie and Neeley seem to be drinking coffee from the time they could have solids.
These things always make melong for specifics. It does seem odd to keep a whole beer just for the baby – are they doing the liquor-on-the-finger thing for teething and found that it works better when the beer is cold? Or are they using the occasional sip of cold flat beer as a colic cure? Or are they honest-to-God letting the baby swill at length from his own personal bottle of Corona? What, specifically, is meant by “routinely?”
There’s alcoholism on each side of the family, is there? To what extent? Every family has at least one problem drinker somewhere. And what is meant by “heavy drinkers?” My sister’s Mormon in-laws considered our dad to be a heavy drinker (her sister-in-law actually asked her whether or not we were ‘troubled’ by his drinking). Dad, at the time, drank about a 6-pack of Bud Light a week. On the other hand, my grandmother was a heavy drinker – at her peak she drank nearly a case of Coors tall-boys a day.
Given the scanty information we’ve been given, we could be dealing with a nice couple who drink a 12-pack of beer a week between them and feed their baby a tablespoon or two of flat beer occasionally to calm his colic. Or, we could be dealing with a pair of 5th-a-day barflys who put beer in their baby’s bottle to keep him quiet so they can drink in peace. Personally, I’d want to know which end of the continuum I was dealing with before I considered recommending a call to CPS.
Well, if it’s U.S. beer, there shouldn’t be any problem.
Now, this may be a silly and/or ignorant question, but if the mother is an alcoholic and drank heavily while pregnant, could the baby conceivably be an alcoholic? (I’m thinking along the lines of “crack babies”.) Maybe the parents quickly discovered that they just needed a little booze to get the baby to stop crying for its “fix”. (Of course, if the mother did drink heavily while pregnant, the baby may have a lot of other problems.)
I was pretty disgusted by the mom in the check-out line in front of me the other day who put Mountain Dew in her baby’s bottle…but beer??? yick I think a lot of modern American parenting “rules” are overzealous and reactionary , but even I find that downright disturbing.
And as others have pointed out, there are safer alternatives for teething pain these days. Infant Tylenol, Infant Motrin for older babies, heck, we even used Hyland’s teething tablets (one of those dreaded “homeopathic” remedies) with great success. I think the little Daxling liked the sugary flavor No need for whiskey on the gums.
I was going to post a rant on this subject but I see bughunter has beat me to it.
I’d be more upset about the Mountain Dew in the baby bottle than a sip of beer.
And BTW, beer does contain some B vitamins, IIRC. (I’m sure a licensed nutritionist will correct me if I’m wrong.)
It’s all a matter of degree. Kids who have an occasional sip usually come to regard beer, wine and spirits as no big deal. It’s the ones for whom it’s forbidden fruit and proof of “adulthood” that are more likely to get into trouble with it, IMHO.
My Italian side of the family would routinely give babies wine and water to “help them sleep” The “victims” are all now 50 or older, so the practice stopped (to the best of my knowledge) some time ago. One is an MD, all turned out fine, so I don’t think it hurt too much.
Well, actually, beer with a low alchohol content is a pretty good substitute for milk; it’s been done in Europe for decades. So there’s really nothing wrong with giving a kid something like O’Doul’s.
I think a lot of modern American parenting “rules” are overzealous and reactionary , but even I find that downright disturbing.