Babies and water

Of course, use commonsense when it is very hot. And as babies get older & feeding is well established, water may be a good idea.
But indeed, for over 40 years (to my knowledge) the advice has been NOT to give breast fed babies water until feeding is well established.
Bottle fed babies are slightly different but with modern formula would not need water unless it was hot.
Of course, once feeding is established you can be more flexible, and certainly they need water once mixed feeding has begun. I'd also second elegran's advice - but only for an older baby who is feeding well.
So much depends on the age of the baby as a 2 week old has to be treated completely differently from an 8 month!

Yes I had one almost as bad as that Flickety. DGS is remarkably tolerant, but it's a nightmare if they hate being strapped in.

To be fair, DD loathed any form of constraint and getting her into any child safety seat or belt was a battle, particularly as she learnt uncommonly fast how to undo them. She was kept in her seat by dire threats from me about what would happen if she undid her safety belt. And as she told me as an adult a real belief that I might make her get out and walk home and no, I never did, but I did once pull into the side of the road and stop the car and undo my safety belt when she was being really obstreperous.

No Flickety the idea is that if a child is rear facing they are less likely to suffer a broken neck in a head on collision. I believe Scandinavian countries have had rear facing car seats for older children for a long time. My DGS is still rear facing in his parents' car at 3 and a half and is remarkably settled there, even though he has been forward facing in my car for about a year. My car seat is not as all singing all dancing as theirs. Transferring him between the two has never brought about any protests!

Is the idea that making sure all the child can see is the upholstered back of the seat they are strapped on will induce a state of hypnotic trance that will send them to sleep?

From 9 months onward DD would have been be wriggling and trying to turn round and yelling because she couldn't. Generally causing the driver (usually me) an awful lot of stress and distracting me as I drove. I would not have been satisfied to know her rear facing car seat saved her from the harm caused by the accident resulting from her behaviour in said seat distracting the driver!

We always were, and still are safety conscious in cars. We fitted and wore safety belts ourselves long before the law making them compulsory and our children were always secured, first with straps for the carry cot, then Britax seats and then child seat harnesses, all before they were mandatory.

The first day DS was strapped into his Britax seat, we had a near accident when someone turned from a side road into a main road without looking . DH breaked hard, and took avoiding action by taking the car left just missing the offender but running onto a grass verge and into a hedge. No damage to the car, or to any of us because we all had seatbelts on, but without them, I would have gone through the windscreen and if I had had DS, aged 6 months, on my lap...........

www.parentdish.co.uk/baby/child-car-seat-confusion-guide-to-the-new-regulations-and-products/#!slide=aol_1003905

The rear-facing law is only going to apply to children aged 15 months and under, apparently.

There are very good reasons for recommending that children travel backwards up to the age of four or five though. I had those straps that attached the carrycot but unfortunately I also had a child who could pull himself out of the carrycot when he was still too small to go in a baby seat. And the baby seat I had didn't have a crotch strap so it's a miracle he didn't shoot out from underneath the waist belt at times . I think all safety restraints were pretty rudimentary in those days. They're a lot safer now but they're just so damned big and they weigh a ton.

I would think putting a child prone to travel sickness into a seat facing backwards would be a recipe for a very unpleasant and stressful journey.

Why are these recommendations always made on a standalone basis and not on a 'whole experience' basis?

I think car seats were, in fact better in those days (unless you have isofix) because the straps reached back and bolted to the floor of the boot, instead of relying on the passenger seat belt. Of course, they were only designed for ages 9 months to about 4 or 5, so before and after those ages - nothing!

We had fitted straps to hold the carry cot in place. They were a new thing from Mothercare. We got them after an emergency stop resulted in baby, still safe in carry cot, being deposited in the back well of the car. She was fine but the carry cot was wedged and a bit of a b****r to un-wedge.

You don't agree with the 'Back to Sleep' advice then NannaAnna?

Ana I remember wedging the carrycot into the back by pushing the front nearside seat right back to jam it in!!! As rosequartz says, there were no seat belts! I also remember as a child myself, there being 6 of us untethered kids in the back of the car
Car safety is vital. I've seen, when living in the Middle East, the aftermath of an 'In'shallah' fatalistic mentality amongst the local population. It's nevertheless almost criminal how expensive each progressive stage of safety seating is in this country. It causes a financial struggle for many families.

… On the babies sleeping on their backs matter: This has resulted in the need for a 'Tummy time' campaign! So many babies now have limited opportunities for tummy time, which is vital not only for spinal development but also for digestion maturity, that it is creating its own concerns. I'm with NfkDumpling on a bit of individual common sense versus 'one size fits all' uniformity!

Personally I hate travelling backwards.

No seatbelts in the back either, let alone booster seats!

ANA you are so right, they are such Bossy-boots , really gets on your pip, how on earth did we suvive ?

(I do realise that that wasn't safe, but I'm getting fed up with having to buy different seats/booster seats etc. for my twin GDs as and when the Authorities dictate!)

Oh dear! How on earth did we and/or our offspring ever survive in an unsecured carrycot on the back seat?

I wish Health Visitors would give advise depending on circumstances, the child and it's mother rather than laying down absolute 'Thou Shalt' rules regardless. I'm glad cot death numbers have dropped. Laying weaker babies who could not lift their heads on their tummies seems as silly putting sicky babies who throw up and have reflux on their backs. I've never been able to discover why it's wrong to lay them on their sides - lower arm forward stops them rolling onto their tummies - I did this with DD1 who was very sicky.

(I learnt today that the latest recommendation is that all children should travel in cars facing backwards until at least five years old.)

Yes, they would have been giving the best advice and carrying out best practice with the information available at the time, as of course they do at any point in time.

Research results in new theories and advice and in fact sometimes reverts back to what our mothers told us was best.

I understand they thought they were giving the best advice at the time Elegran. My mother was a specialist nurse on the Premature Baby Unit and like all her colleagues in Maternity, cared deeply for the babies in their care.

I'm just delighted that the incidence has been halved. Now if only we could find causes for the remaining SIDS deaths. I heard that one line of research is looking at vitamin D levels. Certainly with Sudden Unexplained Deaths in Childhood there is a sharp rise during the darkest months.

In fairness, the reason for advising that babies slept on their fronts was because they could choke on regurgitated milk while lying on their backs. While I was in the maternity ward, a baby did choke, and was in some difficulty until he was lifted and turned over to clear the vomit.

It wasn't just a random idea, and it was combined with a ban on pillows - obviously they could smother if they got their face into a soft pillow and could not lift their head away - and advice to keep the room a bit cooler so that they did not overheat. It is apparently easier to dissipate heat from the tummy while lying on the back than from the back while lying on the tummy.

And SIDS had already been a cause of mystery deaths in baby for ages. they were doing their best to lower the incidence in the light of what was known.

Shows how things chance as putting baby on tummy is now linked to SIDS. Death rates have halved since the 'Back to Sleep' campaign.

Surely water is a common sense thing, such as during heat wave or if baby is vomiting a lot. My son had pyloric stenosis as a 5-week old baby and for a whole two weeks water was the only thing that stood between him and severe dehydration.

It seemed to be more than a recommendation at our local health clinic, more of an order to 'put that baby on its tummy immediately!' Making you feel like a Very Bad Mother if you dared to disobey. DD1 hated being on her tummy, from birth she was lifting her head, she has always been inquisitive. Having no mother nearby to advise, I was very unsure of myself.
By the time I had DC 2&3 I was more relaxed.

In very hot weather 40 plus years ago, I was with a friend with a very new baby, breast fed, who was very fractious. I suggested that, given the heat, he might be thirsty. She gave him some boiled water and he settled.

I think like everything, you cannot be rigid. In very hot weather adults and children have to guard against dehydration and drink more fluids, why should small babies be any different? Whether babies should have water regularly is another matter.

Since the recommendation most of us had to lie babies on their fronts has been changed to lying them on their backs the number of cot deaths has plummeted.

My three were far from perfect but thankfully after the first few settling in weeks they all slept between feeds. I think having to cope with two hourly feeds would have finished me from having more than one. It is amazing though how you tend to forget the bad bits.