One day old baby in pub

My local pub has a children's menu, Colouring things and even a kids zone where they can get books or games.

A pub in England at lunchtime, which serves food, will not have drunkeness and fighting. It's unlikely at any time, in fact, though evenings can be noisy. A pub restaurant is just a restaurant and a perfectly fine place for a baby to be with its mother.
It's true there will be some drinking of alcohol, of course, it's a pub. 🙄

I think that's sad. Perhaps she has no-one to support her, all her friends are her age and don't have children. The saddest sight I have seen in a pub (so not the saddest thing ever) was a young woman in our local with a baby in a pushchair and a toddler, both fractious. It was seven or eight in the evening on a summer's day, but she appeared to have no-one with her, it wasn't an afternoon out with the DC, she was just on her own and craving company. It made me want to weep.

When I had my first born in SW London there was a weekly morning NCT breastfeeding drop in clinic / coffee morning meet up and afterwards we often went to the pub across the road for lunch and a drink. They had plenty of space for mums, babies, buggies and the occasional dad or grandparent .

brilliant actually. So I don’t see the problem at all!

If you're going to places where you see drunkeness and fighting in a pub on a Wednesday lunchtime, you're going to the wrong places...

I’m going to guess you’re not in the UK. There won’t be drunkenness and fighting in a UK pub restaurant on a weekday lunchtime, it’s very unlikely at any time, actually.

Behind all this is a young mum who will face enough judgement in her life , I hope she never comes across this thread and I hope her journey is continuing nicely. I notice op hasn't commented in a while.

I found this post on an article online. It said the comments were leaning towards the OP being unreasonable, and what the mom did was ok. I was right in assuming people would think differently if it was posted somewhere else. The comments on the article agreed with OP. They said a newborn baby doesn't have a good enough immune system to be out and about. Also, there might not be smoking, but likely to be some drinking. People can do dumb things when drinking, like fighting. Not sure why anyone would take these chances with a newborn. Not about the mom feeling up to it, but what's best/safest for the baby.

Nice! Maybe the new parents know that if they were at home they’d have to wait on all these guests 😆

I’ve seen 2 separate tiny newborns in my local since this post appeared. Both groups meeting up with friends or relatives in the first few days of their babies’ lives. So it’s clearly not an unusual occurrence. And they weren’t even eating a meal - just having a drink!

@AussieManque

so a beer garden would be ok then?

But hospitals should not be badly ventilated! They have a duty for infection control and should be safe spaces, not places where we are put at risk of catching illnesses. We shouldn't have to worry that our newborns will fall ill as a result of a well-baby check.

Speaking of which, here's a petition calling for better infection control through clean air measures in hospitals. Did you know that in Wales (the only UK country tracking this), on 13 April 2025, at least 81% of inpatient Covid cases were the result of hospital-acquired SARS-CoV-2 infection? There's plenty of evidence that applying ventilation and HEPA filters massively reduces airborne viral spread in hospitals. It's shocking that nothing is being done to mitigate risk for people visiting hospitals and healthcare settings, who have no choice but to be there.
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/700304

It’s like their only frame of reference is the ‘Queen Vic’ from EastEnders!

I’d love to know when some people on here last went in a pub 😂. The ideas they have are hilarious.

I had DC2 in the early hours of the morning and then later on that day had a houseful of visitors I couldn’t escape from that I had to provide coffee and biscuits for. In between the birth and visitors turning up I also had to negotiate central heating repairs and stick the hoover round. I’d rather have gone to the pub too in hindsight

The sort of pub serving food on a weekday in the UK can't be assumed to fit the dank, stale aired stereotype either. Especially not on a warm day when people may well have been sitting outside anyway. I was in a similar pub that week and the windows were all open!

There's also no reason to imagine a pub will automatically be crowded either.

Babies have to go to crowded indoor spaces all the time. My first 2 were born on a monday so for their 5 day checks we had to take them into hospital on a saturday as the midwives only did home visits mon-fri. Waiting room full of other monday-born newborns with a couple of adults each and all the germs that entails. This was pre-covid so you can bet no-one was hand sanitising or wearing masks. Not much difference to a pub.

I didn't say the mum has to stay home, going out is fine but choose locations wisely. Crowded indoor spaces are risky. I took my 4-day old baby to my elder son's birthday party, it was outdoors and kept the baby away from the crowds, but we were out and socialising while minimising the risk of the newborn being infected with anything. A pub, which is usually badly ventilated with stale air, is higher risk. Incidentally, so are most GP clinics with their tightly shut windows so that everyone breathes in the exhaled viral particles of infectious patients... Ventilation is super important!

If a 1 day old baby has a sibling, home isn't going to be peaceful anyway. Hospitals also aren't peaceful.

At a pub, baby can sleep in a pram or in mothers arms. The pub will have a changing area. During an afternoon, it is unlikely to be super busy too.

where in hospitals is it hygenic for nappy changes? more than in pubs

Of course it does. Are you imagining somewhere nappy changes would take place on a sticky table top inbetween half drunk pints or something?

Because a baby is not a toy, a 1 day old baby is a tiny human being with needs: sleep, a hygienic place for nappy changes, a peaceful surrounding. A pub offers none of that.

My nights in hospital following the birth of all 4 of my children are some of the worst experiences of my life. I was post c section with them all, on a ward where nobody came when I pressed my call button and I was left, post operation with a newborn, exhausted, to fend for myself. Special times indeed.

😁😁😁

Was that a hospital for baby soldiers? 😁