Saw a baby in a carriage...

amother

Pink

Fri, Oct 12 2018, 3:57 am

I know someone who did this to her son over 25 years ago. I was only a teenager at the time but even then knew it was unsafe. This woman was not the brightest crayon in the box though.

Truth is, having a newborn who rarely sleeps for more than a few minutes at a time at night because her pacifier keeps falling out of her mouth, I can totally understand why she did it. I would never do it to my child, but the thought has gone through my mind that it would really help solve the problem.

amother

Jade

Fri, Oct 12 2018, 8:27 am

These types of things haunt me.

Once I was driving through a bad neighborhood and I saw a mom holding a 5 year old upside down by his ankles. I assume because he wouldn't get in the car to go home from the park. I thought about calling the police but by the time they would get there she would be long gone. I couldn't confront her because it was not the kind of neighborhood you do that in if you want to stay alive. To this day I wish I could have done something. I hope the little boy is ok.

FranticFrummie

Fri, Oct 12 2018, 10:08 am

happymom123 wrote:

I don't think it sounds abusive. It sounds like she's not bright. Her baby probably can't keep the pacifier in but always wants it and this is the idea she came up with. Obviously she didn't think it through

I saw your post yesterday, and it haunted me all night. I had a baby who screamed bloody murder all night from colic, for the first 4 months of her life. Never, ever, would I do anything even remotely like that.

I don't care how "inconvenienced" you are by your baby, that is abuse and neglect!

I'd like to see someone tape a pacifier to your mouth for an extended period of time, and see how much you enjoy it. Mad

Stupid people should not be allowed to breed.

amother

Burgundy

Fri, Oct 12 2018, 10:45 am

I'm not sure why so many of you are calling this lack of intelligence. It does not take a high IQ to nurture a baby. This is abusive and neglectful. It is possibly mental illness or depression. It is possibly a mother who was abused/neglected herself. But this has nothing to do with being stupid.

amother

Orchid

Fri, Oct 12 2018, 10:54 am

amother wrote:

Did she appear angry? Was she shouting? Hitting? Shaking him? My kids loved being held upside down by their ankles, though I wouldn’t swing them around for fear of crashing into something. Don’t know that I’d do that on a concrete sidewalk either. Btw how do you know how old the kid was?

seeker

Fri, Oct 12 2018, 11:39 am

I don't know, I agree it is not the right thing to do and definitely out of the norm, but I definitely believe it is more likely stupidity than abuse or mental illness. Baby likes pacifier, baby keeps ejecting pacifier and then getting sad, baby does not have the coordination to place it back in his or her mouth. Very typical scenario. Mother possibly sheltered or possibly just not very well-versed in potential risks. If the baby were screaming and mom ignored it, then you could call it neglect. But as described, mom probably thinks she has come up with a genius hack that is keeping her baby happy and peaceful. G-d should watch over this baby and hopefully the mother has some helpful figures in her life who can help her develop her caring skills and safety awareness.

Not everyone is a genius and this doesn't even require a very deep level of dumb. I like to think of myself as fairly on-the-ball and yet I had to think for a minute to pin down what exactly about this was disturbing to me. So it makes sense that people would not come up with those reasons on their own.

If you see it again maybe you should say something though...

amother

Jade

Fri, Oct 12 2018, 12:05 pm

amother wrote:

He was screaming on the top of his lungs and she looked angry and it was a concrete sidewalk. Everything about it looked wrong. I don't know exactly how old he was. He seemed about 5 or 6.

thunderstorm

Fri, Oct 12 2018, 3:05 pm

seeker wrote:

I disagree. Baby likes fuzzy things on her face. Baby doesn't cramp when she lies on her stomache. But it's not safe to put a fuzzy thing in baby's crib, especially next to her face and she needs to sleep on her back because it's not safe to sleep on her stomache. Safety comes before convenience and comfort.
I literally sit for an hour next to my baby's crib every night while she spits out her pacifier and I pop it back into her mouth , back and forth , back and forth until she falls asleep.
There is an element of neglect to taping a pacifier.

Rachel Shira

Fri, Oct 12 2018, 3:16 pm

thunderstorm wrote:

Yes, but you and I know that fuzzy things in a baby’s crib are dangerous and why, and are educated about babies sleeping on their backs. If someone just plain didn’t know, why wouldn’t they put their baby on their stomach if they slept better like that?
I also do that pacifier thing at bedtime and you better believe I’ve thought about inventing something to hold it in. Obviously I would never do that. But if I didn’t know better, it might just seem like a good idea and nothing more than that.
I agree that this woman needs someone to tell her not to do that, but without other factors, I wouldn’t say it’s abusive.

happymom123

Fri, Oct 12 2018, 3:25 pm

FranticFrummie wrote:

Stupid people should not be allowed to breed.

I wasn't condoning the idea, I was trying to see the situation from the mother's perspective. The average woman doesn't want to hurt her baby, and being that there's no intelligence screening before women are allowed to have babies, she made a stupid and dangerous decision

amother

Lavender

Sat, Oct 13 2018, 2:33 pm

amother wrote:

I was shopping yesterday and saw a baby in a carriage with a pacifier taped to his mouth. Like, a regular pacifier, but it was affixed to his cheeks on both sides with the kind of tape you use to tape on a bandage so that it could not come out of his mouth.

I was very shocked, never ever seen this. My aunt is Israeli, and said to his mother in broken English "I think he cannot breathe this way" and the mom reacted the way any mom would react to unsolicited advice from a stranger.

I realize he could breathe, as his nose was not obscured, but I found this absolutely horrifying anyway. It was not a medical issue, I saw her later holding the baby without the tape/pacifier.

Is this something that is done???

OMG!!!! poor baby. I hope the mother is feeling well.
May Hashem Watch over this baby and the mother and all of Klal Yisrael.

amother

Lavender

Sat, Oct 13 2018, 2:39 pm

happymom123 wrote:

your sentence in bold made me laugh aloud. I hope you don't mind. It just sounded funny and I really needed that laugh.

Hey, I am IN NO WAY justifying the mother who taped the pacifier to her baby's face.
In fact, I have chills whenever I remember it.

seeker

Sat, Oct 13 2018, 8:01 pm

thunderstorm wrote:

Before SIDS became an item, people put babies to sleep on their stomachs and with fuzzy things all the time. Not due to mental illness but due to not knowing it was unsafe. So in this case I believe the latter is far more likely.

amother

Orchid

Sat, Oct 13 2018, 11:08 pm

seeker wrote:

When my bechor, was an infant, SIDS was very much a thing. We were all told very firmly to lay our babies on their bellies, so in case they spat up in their sleep, they wouldn’t inhale it into their lungs. By the time my youngest was born we were told to put him to sleep on his side. As if you can keep a baby on his side! One of the baby catalogs sold the most ridiculous apparatus, intended to keep a baby from rolling over, that I think was probably a greater hazard in and of itself.

The sad truth is there is no safe way to put a baby to sleep, things can happen no matter what you do, and what is “known to be safe” swings back and forth from one generation to the next. I fully expect that my grandchildren will “know” that the only safe way to put a baby to sleep is on his stomach, and their children will “know” just the opposite again.

amother

Pink

Sun, Oct 14 2018, 1:30 am

amother wrote:

Just an aside, but my one-month-old sleeps only on her side and has never changed position. Since she was born, this is the only position she's ever slept in with no problems. And I don't use any apparatus to keep her that way.

And she's my 12th child and most of them have slept on their sides.