"Don't give him chicken, it will worsen his cough and create more phlegm."
For the umpteenth time, my 'oh-so-wise' babysitter finds it her duty to impart her 'wise' advises to me pertaining to the health and food intake of my toddler.
Barely able to contain my annoyance, I almost embarked on another endless argument on this pointless, baseless and not-scientifically proven bit of 'advise' with her. Fortunately, (for my blood pressure) sensing this, my husband intervened and immediately whisked us away all before I could gather my breath.
Don't get me wrong, I don't have much complaints about my babysitter as she is quite reliable, does not count the minutes that we were late in picking up my son, she keeps her house extremely clean (I swear, her place is probably cleaner than our apartment) and took good care of my son. Importantly, my son is used to her and gets along with the other kids she is taking care of.
Granted that she is not highly educated, I can't blame her for being loaded with gadzillions of old wives' tales that boggles the mind. However, when it comes to my kid, it sorta grated, especially when it is really senseless advise pertaining to certain foods and even my breastmilk.
I breast feed my child exclusively since he was born and we never gave him even a sip of formula until he turns one. To be able to do that when I go back to work, I expressed and kept by milk in the freezer as advised by paediatricians and lactation consultants.
Of course, my babysitter initially had a lot of complaints over this. The first few was the trouble having to heat up the milk by soaking it in hot water. To solve that, I bought a bottle warmer and it never came up again.
However, other 'good-meaning' advises surfaced.
"Giving him frozen milk is not good for him. It will give him a lot of stomach wind" was one of them. Hellllooo...the idea is to heat up the milk and give remember? But no, even if the milk is hot after it was reheated, it does not count. Anything from the freezer causes wind, regardless of whether it has been heated up or not.
Another advise, 'Breast milk is not good. Formula is much better for him. All the babies I took care of are stronger and healthier and have firmer flesh because they take formula. Your son is so weak and soft because of breast milk.'
Now, this comment really made me furious. I argued with her for months on this issue and we are still at a standstill up to now. She still stand firm to her argument eventhough for the first six months of his life, my son never caught cold, never got sick and was healthier than any of the other kids because he depended solely on my breast milk.
I blame this reasoning of hers on all the formula advertisements on television proclaiming its many benefits of added DHA, SHA and whatever-A to enhance IQ, EQ and whatever-Q they can think of. People like her who do not read about proper nutrition for babies from reliable sources, often gets hoodwinked by those advertisements. Who wouldn't believe a cherubic faced kid winning an adult at a game of chess in record time because he took so-and-so milk powder?
Whatever happened to breast milk is best for baby? That message seemed to be confined to the bottom of baby food packaging and in small print on milk powder packaging.
Anyway, back to my babysitter. My son became sick for the first time at 10 months old, which is normal since he is surrounded by three other kids of varying ages who often 'share' their germs and viruses.
My babysitter immediately pounce on this and said 'this is because you give him breast milk from the freezer. that's why he is coughing with so much phlegm.'
Tired of arguing with her, I ignored this comment. Then came her 'well-meaning' food advise.
"don't give him vegetables and fruits, it's very cooling and will make him cough more. Also no chicken or eggs, those also cause coughing and phlegm"
To top it all off, she again extol the many benefits of formula feeding and keep telling me to stop breast feeding.
If not for my strong conviction to continue to breastfeed my baby till he is at least two, I would probably have given in to her insistence as she often likes to add in 'trust me, I have so many years of experience in childcare. I know what is good for baby.All children under my care grew up to be big and strong.'
Yeah, and again, why must all those formulas compare themselves to breastmilk if they are better than breastmilk? Why use breastmilk as the benchmark? why use the phrase 'Almost as good as breastmilk' if breastmilk is so inferior.
As for the load of dos and don'ts, whoever heard of no vegie and no fruit diet for children? What's the food pyramid for, then? Decoration?
Unsurprisingly, my babysitter is not the only one with such believes as I know tonnes of other similarly stupidstitious people (the real spelling is superstitious but since it is so stupid, I have decided to call these believes stupidstitious).
So, if old wives' tale is to be believed, stored EBM (expressed breast milk) is bad, vegies are bad, fruits are bad, commercial formulas with all the extra As and Qs are good, lots of red meat is good, chicken and eggs are bad, and overweight, obese babies are good.
Go chew on that!
