Until the last couple decades it was widely believed that the placenta completely protected the fetus from anything the mother consumed: alcohol, food, cigarettes, drugs medicinal or recreational. We now know this is not the case, and we may have gone overboard in the other direction.
Parents were once advised to put their babies to sleep on their tummies, to help them sleep "better", which is to say, longer and deeper with fewer partial or total awakenings. We now know that this is the single biggest contributor (with parental smoking being the second biggest contributor) to SIDS, and as of the early 1990s Back to Sleep Campaign we tell people equally adamantly to put their babies to sleep on their backs. And we worry a lot about flat heads and insist that parents put their babies on their tummies during the day while awake. What will the next change be? (Worth noting that the tummy strategy did get babies to sleep longer; so does feeding them formula. Pity about the dead babies, isn't it, when otherwise it "worked" so well?)
Alcohol advice has swung all over the place, but in the US is tending towards complete abstention by pregnant and breastfeeding women. In my opinion, this makes it hard for people to find effective help at reducing consumption. It further encourages early weaning by women who are sick of not being able to have a drink now and then.
For a while there, it was all but criminal to sleep with your baby. A group of researchers are now pointing out that this is cross-culturally normal, definitely not unsafe if done correctly, and possibly helps keep a baby prone to SIDS from dying while asleep.
For the most part, the advice was not to take the risk. Briefly, there was a study suggesting that babies might not like the breastmilk of a woman who just exercised, and some books continue to advocate a pump-and-dump strategy for those women who choose to breastfeed -- which is an anti-breastfeeding strategy if there ever was one. There is now a large body of research supporting to benefits of exercise for pregnant and breastfeeding women, and the problems of being completely sedentary.
As a perfect example, Grantly Dick-Read recommended particular exercises as beneficial for pregnant women, but discouraged athleticism in general. A recent reprint of his book felt compelled to note that one of the exercises he advocated is absolutely not a good idea for pregnant women.
This one was lethal for babies and bad for mothers, too. All but the most out-of-touch are now advocating salt-to-taste.
Previous advice was to gain nothing, or very little, and to lose it as quickly as possible after delivery. The low birth weight (and dead) babies that resulted eventually led to a change in advice. There is no decent research to support the current guidelines. Most good midwives and even some ob/gyns advise eating a healthy diet, eating to appetite and not worrying about it too much, and to expect it to take at least a year to lose the weight. While many breastfeeding advocates note that pregnancy weight comes off faster for women who breastfeed, this is only true to a point; as long as a woman breastfeeds, she will probably weigh slightly more than she will after she weans.
Many women were advised not to breastfeed, that they would not be able to produce enough milk to keep their babies healthy and thriving. Formula was advocated -- and in many places still is advocated -- as a cure-all for all kinds of infant problems from colic to sleep "disorders". The tide is turning, slowly, with the widespread lipservice to breastfeeding, and a small minority of mothers who are adopting historical (2 years or later) weaning practices and weaning to food, rather than to formula or follow-up milks or even cow's milk.
Potty training was expected to occur by a year of age until comparatively recently, when Brazelton's advice to let the child lead, and his developmental guidelines put potty training off to 2 years of age or later. We are seeing already a return to younger ages of potty training through natural infant hygiene/elimination communication/infant potty training.
Episiotomies were advocated as being easier to close and heal. They turned out to be neither. They were also defended as preventing larger tears. That also turned out to be dramatically and tragically false. Circumcision was pushed for a long time as hygienic and protective against STDs. While there continue to be efforts to demonstrate this, the weight of the research is very much to the contrary and finds new bad effects all the time.
Inhibited the development of a bond, interfered with breastfeeding, led to many more and more serious infections in infants. What was the goal? Well, maybe to get mother more sleep, but often, because mother wasn't trusted to take care of her own baby.
Copyright 2006 by Rebecca Allen.
Created February 1, 2006 Updated February 1, 2006