And the consequence was.....

......that some rather nice, pleasant people came over here and stated moderate views on the subject in a polite and respectful way. And the people who'd compared CIO to abuse/refused to believe that Julie might actually know her own child better than they do/thought it was terrible that she'd admitted to a friend that she found the early months of motherhood really hard? Nope. No sign of them. Bah. And there was me really looking forward to telling people just what I thought of their comments.

On the plus side, it does mean that there's been some nice, civil, amicable discussion, and I appreciate that greatly. Thank you all.

Anyway, some comments on things people have said, both here and back on the mama-drama forum:

Yes, I agree that whatever your feelings on CIO, actually advising a parent to go where they can't hear the child at all is worrying. Fair point. Regardless of what Julie did, that does seem to be what the neonatologist advised. Though I suppose it's quite possible that she and Julie knew each other well enough to know that this was meant tongue-in-cheek.

No, I do not agree that Julie 'changed her story'. She clarified her story. There's a difference. Both versions of her story are completely consistent - we just had a couple of extra bits of crucial information in the second bit. Some people on the mama-drama forum seem determined to think Julie's a liar, just because they don't agree with her over the CIO thing. Yes, of course, because posting something as contentious as the fact that you let your son CIO (under a title that shows that you know perfectly well the kind of reaction it's going to get) is exactly what you do if you're the kind of person who's so desperate for approval that you're willing to lie about your actions to avoid opprobium from random strangers.

From reading Julie's blog for quite a while now, I do think she may well have had clinical PPD in the past (she was certainly going through a very rough time). She seems to be doing a lot better now, though. I didn't read her reaction to letting Charlie cry as being indicative of PPD. I think it's more likely that she genuinely has good instincts for his distress levels and can tell the difference between an "I need help!" cry and an "I want playtime!" cry, and I found her reaction to be reassuring evidence that, yes, this is what's working OK for her and Charlie.

No objection at all to people posting whatever links they want to post (well, as long as they're not to child porn or anything like that), but the Sears link that was posted doesn't seem to work. It may not be worth you posting a corrected version - I can pretty much guarantee you that the only people currently reading this blog are the ones who came here from mama-drama and have read that stuff already, plus two friends of mine who have no children and are probably so bored with this debate already they'll never visit this blog again - but you're more than welcome to do so if you want to.

Thanks for the invite, but, no, there isn't the slightest chance of me becoming a regular poster on mama-drama. Right now, I need another forum to spend my time reading somewhat less than I need a hole in the head. Even an interesting, friendly, witty forum. Sorry.

Thanks also to the people who said they'd love to read more about me. I do plan to post stuff about my life at some point, but one of the fundamental things about me is that I love debate, and I love giving my opinion on contentious topics. And that was really the main reason I went ahead and got this blog, now that I think about it. But, yes, I will hopefully get round to actually writing stuff about me in between spouting off about my disagreements with various bits of the world.

And thank you for the sympathy about the London bombings. My mother and sister live in London, but fortunately are fine, as is a friend of mine who was in London at the time. I am so sorry for those who were not as lucky.