Online parenting info can be ‘frightening’
Thinks things were a lot simpler when you didn’t need an app to be a parent.
Felicity Price
There were no apps for parenting when I was struggling with sleep deprivation, feeding and whether to put my newborn on his front, side, or back.
Parenting information and forums on the internet, and baby management apps, are aplenty now and what they don’t know, Google does. Or thinks it does.
‘‘Back sleeping’’ produces over four million results on Google now, and more than 100 million for ‘‘baby not sleeping’’. My babies were born before 1989 when the internet arrived in New Zealand – digital mobile phones were a few years away still and Google wasn’t even thought of.
But given the tremendous swathe of online and electronic assistance, I’m beginning to think we were better off when less was more, when a few basic books and magazine articles got us through without so much confusion and conflicting advice.
There are online forums for pretty much everything associated with babies, but the tricky bit is whom do you trust and what can you believe.
‘‘Google can come up with some great answers to common problems,’’ my daughter says, ‘‘but it can also frighten you.’’
When I was a young mum, there were time-honoured gurus like Plunket founder Sir Frederick Truby King (becoming discredited then for his strict regimen of sleeping and feeding times, and a 10-minute daily limit on cuddles), and Dr Benjamin Spock, whose 1946 parenting bible Baby and Child Care is one of the best-sellers of all time – apparently second only to the actual Bible in its 52 years on sale.
His mantra to mothers: ‘‘You know more than you think you do.’’
The parenting bibles in my time were Dr Sheila Kitzinger’s Complete Book of Pregnancy and Childbirth and Your Baby Your Way, closely followed by anything produced by Penelope Leach. ‘‘Listen to your child and to your own feelings,’’ she wrote, ‘‘there will be something you can actually do to put things right or make the best of those that are wrong.’’
All along, of course, we trusted Plunket and still do. These days, mums can also get advice from lactation consultants and sleep consultants.
They can download apps like The Wonder Weeks (based on a bestselling book that helps mums understand a baby’s development during the first 20 months), which fills me with wonder at how my daughter knows exactly when her baby is likely to be ratty for a day or two while he has another developmental leap.
Another app that can help is Sound Sleeper (white noise is supposed to help a baby go to sleep). Or instead of an app, mums can buy the Baby Shusher (a small gadget that produces white noise in a repetitive ‘‘Shhh’’). I can report that it does work, eventually, but so does Ennio Morricone’s The Mission played on loop.
But no matter how many parenting apps we have, no matter whose theories we believe, we are likely to find conflicting advice on the internet or in the pile of books and baby magazines out there.
The Plunket nurse is just one of hundreds of experts young mums today are likely to check out. And when the Plunket nurse’s or midwife’s advice is different from something that resonates in an online forum or on a trusted App, that loads up the guilt and anxiety about which one to follow.
There are so many more parenting resources available now compared with 30 years ago, but I suspect it has all become commercial overdrive and information overload.
Did you know that there are 32 million results on Google for ‘‘Why is my baby’s poo(p) green?’’ Apparently it’s a very common problem from the baby getting too much low calorie ‘‘foremilk’’ and not enough higher-fat ‘‘hindmilk’’. If only I’d been able to find that out 30 years ago!
Felicity Price ONZM is an exjournalist who now writes bestselling chook lit – funny, fast-paced romance-suspense for the over 50s. Read more on felicityprice.com.