Some time ago we commented. Many of our fathers and mothers, including grandparents and grandmothers, can barely help us because in their time the knowledge had already been transferred to health professionals, who were the ones giving the recommendations, many considered wrong today.
Just look at what they said to nursing mothers in the 70s to understand why most lactations failed.
It is normal that now they complain and sing the "to see if the doctors clarify, that then they told us one thing and now they say another", as the protagonist of today's post does. The problem is that in his intention to help us, he screwed up by telling the mothers who breastfeed that "on demand is the path you should not follow."
They do not agree with the "fashions"
Several times I have seen the text shared online in recent days. Published in El Periódico de Extremadura as an opinion piece, an institute director, already a grandfather, complains that mothers are breastfeeding on demand at the present time, supposedly because that will cause many behavioral problems to the children.
If you want to know what his words are, you can read them directly in his writing. If not, you can read them below, when I comment on them.
Those of us who were fathers in our day and now we are lucky to be grandparents, we have no less to be surprised by a new fashion that is spreading in a dizzying and dangerous way through all the maternity hospitals and hospitals in our country. And, look that it is difficult to surprise those of us who have been hearing throughout our lives what they have been recommending us in hospitals and in private consultations of pediatricians, about the care and attention of our babies! First they told us that it was convenient to make sure that the baby always slept on his stomach, and that it was extremely dangerous for him to do it on his back because they could, and in fact it seemed that there were many cases, to have asphyxiation problems.
So is. It was believed that cases of sudden death were high because many children slept on their backs, suffocated in some way by regurgitating milk, so they recommended that they be turned upside down considering that the risk of suffocation would disappear.
After a while, the fashion of sleeping on your stomach changed and, of course, it was much better and more advisable for babies to sleep on their backs, although we were also advised to try sideways, first the left and then the right, before that.
Well, I wouldn't call it fashion, but perhaps a wrong recommendation. The evidence showed that the solution turned out to be an even bigger problem: no fewer children died, they died more, so they modified the advice.
It is likely that some pediatricians, suffering with the contradiction of seeing themselves recommending the face down, and then recommend facing up, decided to say "sideways", so that the change was not so dramatic.
This recommendation was given in 1992, so the professionals have been recommending that babies sleep supine with their heads to the side for 25 years. The evidence supports the advice, so "fashion" could already be a custom.
With the pacifier he spent three quarters of the same. We had to try, then, by all means, that the children did not use the pacifier. It seemed that it deformed their small and tender gums, so the parents of that time had to endure with true and stoic patience, until their baby, totally exhausted, had just given up and, exhausted, finally fell asleep.
And before that they said it was very positive, so apparently they have been modifying the advice as they thought it was. But that does not mean that the child has to be calmed down, and we all know that a baby does not need a pacifier (let's see how our ancestors did it, if the pacifier is a modern invention), so although I understand the anger at seeing the changes, I do not understand that your children will end up exhausted and rendered crying. Didn't the parents of that time have arms to calm their children?
This practice did not last, however, because, in a few years, the use of the pacifier became fashionable again. Moreover, it was very advisable, because it avoided many perrengues and anger at children and, above all, fathers and mothers.
And even for prevent sudden death of the baby is recommended, although the evidence is not very clear yet.
And don't you think of putting on a hat for the baby who, with all the love in the world, the caring grandmother had woven. They told you that it was not healthy for the baby because he had to have the head clear so that the fontanel was closed and closed well. And now there is no boy or girl who comes to this world that does not appear in his first mobile photo with his hat already placed!
All the reason, and that the evidence already says that the hat is not necessary in the first hours, unless the child goes out and it is cold.
With regard to the umbilical cord, we have gone out of fashion to make daily cures and well covered, until not touching it much, do not throw anything and preferably into the air.
In fact, we have moved from mercromine and povidone iodine to alcohol and soapy water, and now it depends on the hospital, says one thing or another. There is still a recommendation to be extended that in the West there is very little done: breast milk. Surprisingly, it seems that it is the best cure.
And what about the sterilization of the "bibe" and the pacifier? If you had the bad luck of rubbing the pacifier a second on the floor, you had to spend almost an entire hour between boiling it, cleaning it and drying it to kill all the bugs. Now it seems that it is not so bad and it is not necessary to boil so much.
Before, our pets have taken huge fights and the occasional broom bite for having sucked our child in the hand. Well, now it seems that it is great and very advisable to contact the baby with pets and even a good lollipop of a dog on the whole face of the child is the best remedy so that it is not constipated throughout the year.
It is logical. At a time when there was still little evidence regarding microorganisms and pathogens, it seemed logical to avoid anything that could pose a risk of infection to the baby.
Recently it has been seen that the immune system needs some dirt, because if it does not "bundle" and begins to act in situations that should not, producing allergies and other immune diseases.
When it comes to breastfeeding or bottle feeding, pediatricians and nurses were taxative. It was necessary to organize a schedule in which the shots were always produced at the same time. You should not breastfeed the baby, even if he was asking for a live tear, if it was not the time previously set to eat.
And we will agree, I imagine, that it was a true aberration. So much so that the numbers of breastfed babies beyond three months were very low, ridiculous. But not only because of this: if no hungry adult waits to eat at a certain time (a day when he has no obligations), why was it done with babies?
Because it was thought that they had problems digesting and had to wait until there was no food in the stomach to give more. The problem was that the three-hour estimate was exaggerated and the children were very hungry; In addition, the premise was wrong, healthy babies do not care if they eat with food in the stomach. As with us, nothing happens to us if after a while we finish eating we decide to eat something else.
The new fashion of giving "on demand"
Well, now it has just been imposed, not long ago, the new fashion that I referred to at the beginning, and that is what has been called "on demand". That is, what the baby wants and when he wants. And this is where my guts are stirred as a father, grandfather and, above all, as a teacher. How "on demand" and so tiny? That is the path we should not follow.
No man, fashion was the other, to let the child mourn hungry for no reason and set a schedule for each meal. As a father, grandfather and teacher, you will know that the clock is a very recent tool as well. How the hell were they breastfeeding at the time when there were no watches? How did they know when to give it? Were they guided by the position of the sun? And at night?
We are already too permissive in childhood and adolescence (everything that children ask for by their mouth they have it at the moment and without any effort to get it) to begin to make them see that, since they leave the mother's womb they reach this world " request".
But it is that one thing has nothing to do with the other. Food has to be on demand, love too. The rest depends. It depends on what you ask. If your grandson asks you for a while with you, to read him a book, to explain some interesting story, of those that as a teacher he knows, if he asks you to help him with the sums or to explain to him who he thinks built the pyramids, Are you going to deny it? Is there a time to respond? Will you tell your grandson that he will not give you such information because today's children are too accustomed to having everything at the moment and without effort to get it?
Since they are young, on all their birthdays, we care that they have, in addition to those at home, 28 or 30 more gifts, as many as classmates have in their class. They don't have time on that special day to even open them all to play and enjoy them.
However, pediatricians and educators do nothing but recommend that the amount of gifts be limited. The gifts yes, but not the food of a baby, who needs to feed to triple his weight in the first year of life. Or are you one of those who feed children less than they need to eat, for those who go hungry so that they know what it is to suffer for food, and find for themselves how to get their food? Because it could touch the mistreatment by omission of care ...
There are schools and institutes full of boys and girls who come from home being convinced that, in this life, everything is achieved effortlessly. I don't think it's good to raise a child "on demand." If, since birth, we organize your life with a message as unusual as "Come, child, ask for that little mouth that here we are all for what you want and when you want!", We will end up making unsupportive, selfish, demanding, vehement, nervous people , impatient, unpresentable, in short, small monsters that, from their earliest age, we have been teaching them to do what comes out of "their demands".
But it is not said that to a child. It is only told, to a baby who has no reason and works based on instincts (like an animal baby), to let us know when he is hungry, to feed him, and to let us know when he is not, to stop offering The first to feed and quench your hunger and thirst, the second to not feed more than necessary.
It is nothing more than that. Caring for the newborn, a totally dependent being, based on their basic needs. Feed him, shelter him, put a blanket on him when he cries because he is cold, change his diaper when he complains because it is dirty, take it in his arms when he complains that he feels lonely.
Or are you one of those grandparents or parents who consider the baby to be the last to know what they need? One of those adults who believe they know more than the children themselves and who, therefore, consider that their grandchildren have nothing to teach them? Because then it would be a shame, but especially for you, for having lost the ability to be amazed, and your grandchildren the opportunity to want to explain how they see the world.
Note that I agree with you on one thing: children should know the effort it takes to get things, and must learn to do many things themselves, that parents are not their stewards, but their guides and the example in which to look to learn to live for themselves.
But man, this does not begin when a baby is born ... this begins when a baby has the ability to reason and, above all, to find solutions for himself.
That I say it all without going to the evidence, with what I would have finished much earlier: what you call "fashion" is the best way to feed a baby, take a bottle, take a tit, as recommended by the competent bodies in terms of child health.
Photos | iStock
In Babies and more | The bottle is also given on demand, What it means to breastfeed "on demand", Why it is said that breastfeeding is on demand (I) and (II)
