To ask a parent to move their buggy from a café so I can sit down?

Explaining to you that that it’s not just prams for transporting children and this means things are different when using a sling.

Exactly!!!! Agree with you 100%. Interestingly, I noticed that when it was dd and her dad (while I went off to do the grocery shopping) he and her were regarded with absolutely no contempt, or unreasonable expectations or unreasonable demands! No one treated him as if he had no right to be in a cafe with a baby in a pram. He was never expected to make room for anyone. He has never ever experienced any issues that I as a female parent had experienced. Dad and baby: oh how wonderful 💖💖💖💖 Mum and baby 😡 entitled bitch with her baby!

Yeah! But where are the prams if your at a tiny table for 2?
Most of which have about 40cm gap between them

Which is presumably why this mother is using a pram so what’s your point?

I assume you’re the one doing the joining mostly which would explain why this seems to happen more often in your life than other people’s. I’d argue that makes you the socially awkward one as perhaps you can’t read social cues.

It’s not a public space. That would be something like a park bench. It’s a privately owned cafe that customers are paying to use. HTH

It’s not hard - if all the tables in a cafe are occupied, either get your coffee to take out or go somewhere else. Would you walk into a restaurant and demand to be seated on someone else’s table if they said they were fully booked?

You were super unreasonable OP. For obvious reasons.

When you use a sling instead of a pram/pushchair you have to adapt to your child’s needs. No hot drinks and no difficult to eat hot (warmth not spice) foods. The reason for this that when you sit down your child is on your lap and if you are standing up your child is against you. I didn’t carry my child on my back which changes standing and eating.

If the woman was sitting at a three person plus sized table with her pram placed two where other people could sit AND there was an alternative, convenient, easy to access space next to her for the pram YANBU to ask nicely.
If you expected her to collapse the pram or move the pram away from next to her or for her baby to be anywhere other than when it was or ot put herself to a great deal of faffing about then YABU

YABU. I hate sharing tables with strangers and would have said I minded if you asked me.

Didn't you check to see there were spaces before you ordered?

There’s nothing wrong with a baby being in a pram while you eat your lunch though! What sort of mummy martyrdom is this where you expect someone to organise themselves to focus on their child’s needs by forgoing a 2 handed lunch!! This is crazy.
There’s nothing wrong with having a coffee or lunch while out with a baby 😂

The comparison to public transport doesn’t work. We get on a bus / train knowing that strangers might sit with us.

If I was in a communal changing room, I’d think nothing of someone changing in the space next to me. I’d think they were mad if they suggested they shared my cubicle.

You realise this is MUMSnet? Yet you've chosen to go with that angle. Right.

As I pointed out last night, OP made no mention of a spare CHAIR.

Secondly, the day all mums with babies stop visiting cafés and paying £3 for a cup of tea is the day those cafés shut up shop for good, having gone out of business. Cafés need all customers, possibly with the exception of people who bring a laptop and stay for the whole working day, nursing a single coffee.

Would your discrimination stretch to a mother with a child in a bulky wheelchair?

Changed my vote from YANBU to YABU.
I thought you meant the pram was blocking the way for you to sit down at a table.
You wanted to move the pram to sit at her two seater table though?!
YABU as there'd barely be enough room for her and the baby without some randomer pitching up at the table as well.

It happens all the time!

The babies are in the prams whilst the carers eat and drink.
It’s not easy looking after a baby. I never had a hot drinks whilst out with my kids or anything tricky to eat. I used a sling instead of a pushchair. At home I was mindful or hot drinks and avoided these. A hot cup on a coffee table is a danger. I organised myself to focus on my child’s needs.

It’s not really the done thing to ask to share small tables in a cafe. Nothing to do with whether there was a pram or anything else in the space that you wanted to sit - the fact is she was using the table and the space wasn’t free.

FYI on a crowded train eating and drinking is also completely unreasonable

Don’t be silly. You surely know that a train/plane isn’t comparable to a table in a cafe.
Just for the record, I hate it if someone sits next to me on a bus, but I suffer it because it’s socially acceptable.
I have never needed to sit next to a stranger on a plane as I’m seated with family.

Yabu. One of the worst things about the Internet today is that you will 100 percent find other like minded people who will tell you that you're reasonable but the majority are already saying you're not. I wonder if it will change your mind in future?

That’s your experience and it’s different to mine.
You’d be troubled on public transport because in trains it is usual to have some one next to you or across from you eating and drinking. On a plane people eat and drink. It’s the same in cafes - well those that I go to.

This is bonkers. You really encountered a mum at a cafe with her kid, using a 2 person table, just sauntered up and asked her to move her baby so you could sit there instead?

You the CF!!

It is just as odd here. I don’t understand why people are pretending it isn’t. The baby in the pram is irrelevant. Even if the OP was alone at a 2 person table it would still be extremely weird to want to join her.

It's very much unusual IME!

I've never asked someone if I can share their table, and I've never had anyone ask me.

If it's so busy that there's no tables then I go somewhere else or order take away. I'd never ask someone else if I could sit at the same table. I certainly wouldn't ask someone on a 2 seater to move their belongings (or baby!) to let me sit.

If she was on a 4 person table then YANBU. If it was a two person table you essentially asked her to remove her baby from the pram, fold it up, find a space to store it and then locate a highchair and settle her baby. So yes OP you were being unreasonable!!! She’s probably sleep deprived and trying to enjoy a cup of coffee in peace and you’re there asking her to move heaven and earth so you can share her TWO person table?!

Cafes and restaurants are for eating and drinking, trains are for travelling. It’s really not a comparable scenario.
No I don’t think I should have to hold my baby in my arms while I attempt to eat my lunch with no free hands because someone who arrived after me wants the space I’m using.