Bad Advice

Worst advice - don't feed rice cereal until the baby is 6 months old. Are you kidding me? The boy was starving! He ate rice cereal at 8 weeks (at 5 weeks he was up to 6 8oz bottles a day) and has been fine ever since - he's 17. My daughter was 2 weeks old and my husband was gone to a family funeral out of state. I needed sleep. I fed her the cereal. She slept through the night.
Best Advice - You do what works best for you.
And
Nobody knows their kid better than the mom.

i was transitioning my baby from straight breast-feeding to supplementing with formula, but he'd had a bad rash from even before the transition. the very sweet pediatrician we were seeing insisted it was from the formula and had me switch to soy. the rash didn't clear up and he started projectile vomiting, but she was convinced that soy was best and told me i hadn't mixed it in with the breast milk sufficiently. i put him back on 100% breast and found a new pediatrician who said it was my laundry detergent causing the rash, which proved to be correct, and the supplementation to milk formula went without a hitch from that point on.
it was awful, but it was the final thing that brought home to me that doctors are not omniscient, and that it was up to me to observe and intuit carefully and make the best decisions for my babies.
khairete
S.

I know this isn't exactly like what you mentioned, but I was healthy and fit before I had my son, but had a terrible pregnancy. My mom told me I would have had a better pregnancy if I just lost weight (I did have about 10-15 lbs that I could have lost, but I had great blood pressure, cholesterol, wonderful eating habits, etc). Then I got pregnant with my daughter (at 40 lbs heavier that the Dr couldn't figure out why I couldn't lose weight; he kept telling me I was eating twice as much as I was, and put me on a diet that he was certain would help me lose the baby weight-instead I GAINED 10 lbs in 2 weeks). I was so terribly sick with her and so weak-and my mom told me I just wasn't cleaning enough and being active enough. I've since been diagnosed with hypothyroidism (by a different Dr.). And I refuse to tell my mom anything about my next pregnancy-she won't even know that I'm pregnant until I absolutely HAVE to tell her (or I'm showing).

Best advice ever, and advice I still think about as my daughter (now nearly 9) goes through each phase and stage, was given to me when my daughter was little, by a friend with three wonderful adult daughters: "She won't go off to college in diapers." Translation: It seems like forever when a child is going through any stage (from diapers to potty-trained, from clingy to independent, from sassy to polite, from not listening to obeying, etc.) but the phase WILL end and they will turn out all right. Just not necessarily on their parents' schedule!

Pretty much "you MUST" do anything is bad advice. My husband and I have just felt our way through parenthood with minimal stress.

We got the scare tactics about co-sleeping and I was told that my birth classes didn't matter.

The deep cleansing breathing from my childbirth classes are particularly valuable when I get unsolicited parenting advice. Little did they know.

worst advice I ever got was being told it was my job as a parent to "control my children as long as they live at home." Ummm WRONG ... it's my job as a parent to TEACH my children to control THEMSELVES so that once they DO leave home they don't become insane monsters who have no clue how to function in life.

As for lactation consultants ... I will NEVER EVER EVER recommend anyone use the ones from The La Leche League. EVER. I had TWO different ones flat out accuse me of abusing my two oldest children because I stopped nursing the oldest after 3 days, and the second I didn't nurse at all (tried .. it didn't work). Excuse me if I think my children being unable to nurse and me refusing them food from a bottle is more abusive than not popping a boob in their mouth. I still get pissed off over that one and share that experience with EVERY new mother who talks to me about breast feeding. I'm not against breast feeding (far from it) just the militant idiots.

"Just put Vaseline on it." Could have cleared up many a diaper rash more quickly if I had just used Balmex like I wanted to.

The BEST advice I've ever gotten was from my pediatrician. NEVER WAKE A SLEEPING BABY!! EVER!! Let her sleep when she wants for as long as she wants. My daughter was breastfed and even though sometimes shed go a long time without waking up for a feeding or if I thought she was sleeping for a long time, it proved to be the best advice ever as she is now a beautiful sleeper whether it be for naps or through the night. (shes 2 years now)

The WORST advice, my husband convincing me that it was ok to give our three month daughter back the binky when she had just kicked the habit on her own. Granted she was young and he did this on his own in a panic the FIRST TIME I left him alone with her to do some grocery shopping. But now, two years later, shes still got it hanging out of her mouth come bedtime.

Good question! I've heard so much bad/horrifying advice that I think I've blocked most of it from memory or I may have never talked to the folks again :) Here's a few I recall:

-Whiskey on gums
-Clothespin soaked in whiskey to chew on
-Wearing wayyyyy to many clothes or always having a blanket on (can you say 98 degrees does not require a blanket??)
-If your child has red hair, he/she will be a target to teachers so watch out!
-Medicate them (ya know, for anything that person can't handle - ha!)
-Teach your child that he/she is not allowed to say no to adults (um, hello?? how can he/she protect themselves if they are never allowed to say no?)
-Make them kiss and hug you (or others)

OK, I'm done. This is working me into a tizzy. LOL

i think one of them was, you dont have to worry about blood pressure until you are 40, not a parental one, but a doctor told my husband this about 10 years ago when his BP was 200 over 100, and now 10 years later has severe kidney damage

The WORST advice I ever got was from our first pediatrician who told me to stop breastfeeding and switch to formula. My son was 8 wks old when she first said that, and at 10 wks I gave in a stopped breastfeeding. He's almost 19 mos now and there isn't a day that goes by that I don't regret listening to the pediatrician.

WORST Advice that I received from my oldest daughters pediatrician was to wake her up every 2 hours during the night to breastfeed. She had been sleeping through the night so I would set my alarm clock and wake her up at the two hour marks and she wouldn't even want to nurse. She would nurse for about a minute or two and then fall right back asleep. So the next night I said forget it I'm not waking her up so guess what she walk up automatically every two hours! She still didn't feed well and was difficult to get back to sleep. Worse advice ever!!!! She kept waking up during the night until she was about 1 year old.

I didn't really listen to any advice, but I have a favorite one to give that goes along w/ your post. About only putting your child to nap in his/her crib...
Whereas that advice can be helpful for some children, for others its not...just like in your case. Some kids will ONLY sleep in the 1 spot they've only ever slept in. Which puts you in a box. And so it goes w/ everything else you do for your child, or let them do... Its good to have stability, consistency, whatever you want to call it, but its also very helpful and smart to be flexible.
I made sure I was out for some naps, in for others. My kids will sleep anywhere, even at play dates. My friends always thot it funny when my son would fall asleep, like clockwork, at 10am, in the middle of a play date. He'd climb up on my lap and out he went, lol.
Same thing applies to pacifiers, co-sleeping, bottles/sippy cups. Be careful what you start, you may want to stop one day. :)

My ex-MIL told me to rub whiskey on my son's gums when he was teething. I know that's an old wives thing, but I couldn't believe anyone this day and age thought it was a good idea. I never did it, of course. She also offered lots of other really weird and outdated advice.

My sister had a rough time with the lactation consultant at the hospital where she gave birth to her first baby last summer. The woman totally demeaned her, told her she was doing everything wrong (she even said that my sister wasn't supposed to be using the boppy while sitting up in bed and had to be in a chair to use it!) and pestered her and made her keep breaking suction and adjusting instead of just letting the new pair figure it out for themselves, which frustrated both mom and baby of course. They were doing fine until she stuck her nose is. My sister almost gave up nursing right then and there because she didn't feel like she'd ever get it "right". I was so pissed, and that lactation consultant is lucky I was 3000 miles away at the time. My mom and I managed to help my sister salvage the situation, but that's an example of way too much of the wrong advice, since we all know nursing moms and babies should work out what feels right for them.

Anyways, there's lot of bad advice out there. Find someone that you consider very successful with their own children and use them to bounce ideas off of. Ignore the rest.

Dear K.,
I don't rememebr gettign any truly horrible advide but remember when i wa sa first time mom buying A LOT of needless junk and wasting $$. Like those wipe warmers..all they did were turn the wipes brown and just a lot of other thinga that a baby really doesn't need.
Pammy
PS good question!

"Don't let him nurse for longer than 10 minutes a side." Thanks Doc - I ended up struggling for over a month to boost up my milk supply in-part due to that HORRIBLE piece of advice.

My parents told me that I shouldn't give my daughter table food until she had a full set of teeth (her first tooth didn't come in until 11 months). To date, she is the pickiest eater. A nurse in the hospital told me that my son would be flexible with a bottle and nursing if i just started both at the beginning. Not sure how wrong she was, but 4 days later he stopped nursing.

My bad advice was from also from a lactation consultant at the hospital. I was one the fence about bottle feeding or nursing. I have a physical disability, and was worried that I wouldn't be able to nurse correctly. Plus, the regular nurse said that he had to supplement bottle feed due to low iron. "Nonsense" she says! Takes my son from me, orders me to 'pop-one out' and forced him on me. I stuck it out for 3 weeks trying to nurse/bottle feed. I became depressed, exhausted and basically didn't get dressed or leave the house for 3 weeks. My son was constantly crying, unless it was just after a bottle. I finally got hubby to say that it was up to me, just get back to normal, and then I switched to full bottle feedings. I handed hubby a bottle and the baby and went to bed! When my daughter was born, she was strictly bottle fed and I don't regret it!