Becoming a parent invariably makes you a target for advice - and usually lots of it! (As if the pregnancy wasn't bad enough!) It can start as soon as the baby is born (and probably never really ends), but for some reason, everyone you deal with, know or meet seems to be an expert on parenting (or is capable of criticising how you parent).
Some advice you receive will be invaluable, some very impractical and some just plain confusing when it starts to conflict with information you have already read or heard about. The advice you get can be fact or fiction, researched based or common sense, tried and true or a perennial myth that has filtered down from past generations about what you should (or should not) do with your newborn baby!
While this website doesn't have all the answers (and we fully acknowledge that it will also be part of your 'advice input'), we feel it is important to explore the subject of advice, where it can come from and how it may make you feel. We will also provide some suggestions on how to cope, when negotiating this potential minefield of information.
Professional advice
Family, friends and strangers
Advice from partners
Coping with advice
A note for health professionals who become parents
Professional advice. In the early days after the birth, your main source of advice will come from the midwives and mother craft nurses in the postnatal ward, or during home visits if on early discharge from the hospital or after a homebirth. Once this care is completed (generally sometime within the 4 to 10 days after the birth), professional advice will usually come from your
early childhood nurse at the baby health clinic, or your local doctor.
Other professional advice can come from your pregnancy and birth caregiver,
paediatrician,
lactation consultant, local pharmacist and/or community support services (such as the Australian Breastfeeding Association). These will be discussed in greater detail later in
immediate community services