Pink is for girls and blue is for boys, right? Well only since the 1940s surprisingly! Before then, blue was especially associated with the Virgin Mary, and therefore better suited for females. Pink was thought to be more masculine, because red is more bloody and violent.
Babies used to be kept much warmer than they are these days, with layers upon layers, some that this generation hasn't even heard of - binders and barras anyone? And what exactly is a matinee coat? Apparently these were typical everyday wear for newborns for our grandparents, with a vest and a nightie too. Phew!
Your mum might have tried this traditional cure, but it's something nobody would dream of these days; rubbing brandy or whisky into a baby's gums to stop teething pain. Gripe water, to help babies suffering with colic, used to contain alcohol too!
Or worse, what about dipping a dummy in some laudanum (containing opium) and honey to send your child off to sleep? Laudanum use is thought to have inspired Lewis Carroll to write Alice in Wonderland. Those babies in the 19th century must have had strange dreams. Oh yes, and that honey could have been carrying botulism too!
Two or three generations ago, it wasn't uncommon for married couples to honestly not know exactly why they kept having babies. Some pregnant women did not have a clue how their first child would actually appear, even as labour began! Those women must have been terribly shocked by the birth.
Throughout history of course, most births took place at home. In the 1920s, relatively recently, 80% of babies were born at home. Wealthy mums could afford a nurse or midwife to assist, but before the NHS arrived in many cases women had to make do with family members.
At some times in our history it was considered quite ordinary for infants to be swaddled for most of the time, for maybe months at a time! Swaddling was supposed to help babies to grow properly. Modern swaddling is a different concept - wrapping the baby up snugly to help him to sleep at night.
When you were a baby your mum and dad were probably advised to put you to sleep on your front. However, it has been shown that putting babies to sleep on their backs reduces the risk of sudden infant death syndrome, so nowadays we do the opposite.
Your mum might have been told to put rusks or Arrowroot biscuits in your bottle when you were just a few weeks old to make you sleep better. These days we wait a lot longer, as it seems that holding off until six months before giving your baby solid foods helps to prevent allergies.
Until the '80s mums didn't really have to struggle with manouvering their prams around as much as we do nowadays. If you were going to pop into a shop and didn't fancy the stairs, you'd just leave the kids outside to entertain themselves for 20 minutes!
