A lot has changed in 70 years

Celyn · November 2011

I found my mother's baby book. At 10 days old, she was put on goat milk because she couldn't tolerate cow milk. At 3 weeks, they were giving her "mush" and orange juice. But the OJ didn't agree with her (shocking...), so they gave her Vit C supplements. She was eating fruit at 6 weeks, veggies two weeks later. A cup was introduced at 6 months (so that's one thing she and my kids have in common).

Anecdotally, she has a ton of food intolerances/allergies (but eats it all anyway), suffered from severe asthma as a child (and still has bouts with it), and has had extreme migraines all her life.

She was also crawling to and peeing in a potty at 9 months, with BMs under control at 11 months. Amazing. Modern conveniences really messed with that one, I think. That's about the same timeline for most ECers.

melgrady · November 2011

Yeah, a lot has changed. My mom told me that her dad was mashing up pork and beans from a can for her at a month old. Now I know why I am getting so much flack for waiting until six months to feed Rose solids.

kittylove · November 2011

My husband's baby book is much the same as your mom's. He had pudding at 4weeks! Amazing how much has changed (for better and worse) when it has come to parenting.

jsugrin · November 2011

I'm surprised at that age that she wasn't breast feed, or BF by a family member if your grandmother had milk problems. I think food stuff and how much that had yo-yo'd back and forth throughout the generations is one the most surprising thing to me in looking at who different generations approached different parenting aspects. Totally agree on the PT thing, to me it's kind of like the focus on the "terrible two's", you get one person who says something that for whatever reason goes "viral" and everything else gets lost. Somewhere along the line some said it was traumatizing to kids to "force" them to PT and it spiraled into this whole thing of waiting sooooooo long.

fjaril · November 2011

My baby book had me starting oatmeal at a few weeks and by 1.5 months I was eating peas. I was pt'ed by 9 months also.

Celyn · November 2011

In the 1940s, the average age of weaning was around 2.5 years old, so it was common and nearly everyone nursed. Quite a bit different than my generation.

My grandmother wanted to breastfeed, but for whatever reason wasn't able with her first (my guess is that it was mostly because he was kept away from her for nearly 4 days -- I don't know more to that story, but she had a daily record of her visits in his book, so I know that much). From my mom's book, it doesn't look like she tried to nurse her second. My grandma was an only child, without any local aunts or cousins, so I don't think that support was there for a wet nurse. I'm not sure that was very common in San Francisco at the time.

I wish she was here to ask Going through her trunk of keepsakes this weekend was tough.

jsugrin · November 2011

Celyn:
In the 1940s, the average age of weaning was around 2.5 years old, so it was common and nearly everyone nursed. Quite a bit different than my generation.
My grandmother wanted to breastfeed, but for whatever reason wasn't able with her first (my guess is that it was mostly because he was kept away from her for nearly 4 days -- I don't know more to that story, but she had a daily record of her visits in his book, so I know that much). From my mom's book, it doesn't look like she tried to nurse her second. My grandma was an only child, without any local aunts or cousins, so I don't think that support was there for a wet nurse. I'm not sure that was very common in San Francisco at the time.
I wish she was here to ask Going through her trunk of keepsakes this weekend was tough.

Being an only would certainly make it more difficult, I'm guilty of automatically assuming people of that generation had at least one sibling Embarrassed I had never even heard of wet nurses until my paternal grandmother was talking to me about nursing her sisters child. My grandmother's were born in 1913 and 1915 respectively. Her sister was incredibly lucky that she and my grandmother had their first children within months of each other and my grandmother was a prolific producer. No idea why her sister had such trouble but my grandmother was very frank about the fact the baby would have died had she not had milk to share. They lived in what is still very rural Montana at the time.

My mother is in her mid 60's, raised in N.Ca and I know that my grandmother and all of her sisters (6 girls total) nursed. In fact, it has only been my exposure to other parts of the country on the Nest that opened my eyes to how different people fee about bfing. Everyone assumed I would bf, everyone I knew bf, so to hear so many other people talk about how much flack they get was eye opening for me.

Lot's of empathy as you go through her things. We are in the midst of doing that with my grandmother and it's so difficult.

EmmieB · November 2011

also - I just read last night that at the turn of the last century they were putting morphine in teething medication.

Celyn · November 2011

Have a Coke and a smile, EB

EmmieB · November 2011

Celyn:
Have a Coke and a smile, EB

:-D

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