Needed the toilet while shopping with pram… was I unreasonable?

I voted wrong. What you did was totally ok.

when did we become so fearful of others? 99.999999% of people are not going to hurt your child. You are allowed to trust people without feeling like you have given your child to a monster.

what did you retrospectively think was going to happen in the time you were in the toilet? Stop beating yourself up about it. If you had wet yourself because you couldn’t go to the loo you’d probably be writing about that instead!

id have done the same thing as you. Perfectly normal thing to do given the circumstances

We were on a long flight and a mother came to the back of the plane with her small baby who clearly needed a nappy change and a 3 or 4 year old who was adamant she didn't want the loo, the mother was saying she couldn't stay in her seat alone, I offered to let her sit with us and watch the TV which she happily did and the mother was very grateful although she was keen on rejoining her mother as OH was doing his grandchildren-entertaining funny faces for her!

You didn’t need to hesitate OP.

It was a female staff member. Assuming you’ve been served by her before many times.

Subconsciously, you will have felt safe and knew your baby would be safe too for the couple of minutes where you’d be behind a door.

It’s not like it was a random man stinking of booze who offered to watch your baby. Then -you’ll have hesitated.

@feelingbaddd you knew instinctively this was a safe person, that’s why you were able to trust her. That’s what our instincts are for. The fact that you are now questioning that shows what a good mother you are. A tiny tiny minority of people would harm a baby. My mother used to leave me in my pram unattended outside shops as did most mothers in the 70s!

I don't think there's anything unreasonable in the decision you made and your child was perfectly safe. I'm currently heavily pregnant, and whilst in the doctor's waiting room last week waiting for a midwife appointment, a lady with a toddler asked me to mind her child whilst she went to the bathroom. The options were me or two men, or the receptionist who was on the phone. I fully get why she chose me - she made a judgment that an expectant mother was a safe bet, plus there were other people and CCTV present. Please don't feel guilty!

Totally fine and normal.

I just pee with the door open and the pram in the door way these days 🙃 sorry general public!

I was left outside the bakery to 'mind' the pram with my baby brother, when Mum came out he was still there but I wasn't. Luckily she guessed where I would be, I'd crossed a busy road and gone to introduce myself to a very puzzled Head of the school opposite, I was desperate to start school! Once the Head had got over the shock she made a big deal of putting my name down to make me happy.

It’s what women do.

OP. Calm down about this. ❤️❤️❤️

This means your gut feels she is safe. I would be reassured by your lack of hesitation.

Fine I think. A random customer then no, but someone who works there and you’re in the loo for like one minute, it’s fine. Relax and stop overthinking it.

You knew she was employed there - even in the extremely unlikely event that she wanted to harm or abduct a baby, she would hardly do it where she could immediately be identified.

Fine! I've done it for a lady on the train. I was pleased she got back before we arrived at a station.. only cos she'd looked so stressed I thought she might leave the train and me holding the baby.

The chances of a perfectly ordinary seeming mum doing anything untoward in 3 minutes is minuscule. At a certain point you have to trust that most people aren’t complete monsters. You will be trusting her to nursery workers and teachers soon enough.

Defo Ok in my book.

Also I’m sure when my kids were little there was some advice to tell kids that if they needed help go to “a person that you can trust” for help/if lost... not just to say to find a mummy with children as that’s not always possible in some places.

the advice was to go to a bank police/fire station etc and I always said I thought a person you could trust was a person who could use the till (on the basis that they were trusted with all the cash so probably - if lost in Tesco or a museum etc the cash desk/till was a good place to go in an emergency).

Emergencies are never ideally timed but you found a person who you could trust and knew !! - the manager in charge. It wasn’t a stranger : it was a trusted person.

Keep an eye out for postnatal anxiety OP. I had it and worried excessively/felt massive guilt over minor things like this

This is totally fine OP! Also normal to be overthinking things when your baby is little. I bet nearly all mums have had to do something similar! Better you did this than had to leave the pram out there alone and you do know the lady works there etc. Once my 4yr old took off sprinting for a busy main road and I had to in a split decision run and grab him which left my new baby in a park where we live. I beat myself up after it too but I couldn’t have let my 4yr old get ran over and sometimes it’s split decisions.

I'm a nice granny who looked after baby twins because their mum needed a wee, and our local museum has toilets accessible by a tiny lift.
About 40 years ago I worked in a small branch of a local chain, and a customer was going to the main branch about ten minutes walk away. So she left her toddler with my colleague, a young man who was rendered speechless!

This wasn't a problem. The woman wasn't a stranger, you'd seen her consistently for 2 years. You must have been in the toilet about 1 minute and could hear her and the baby. It was a common sense judgement that was correct.

When did we all become do paranoid.

I hope you said thank you!

When does being kind become a suspicious act? You needed the loo and she did you a favour.

Total over reaction.

I believe that the average person (especially one you've seen regularly and who is in their workplace) is basically good and perfectly safe to trust with your baby for just a moment in a pinch. If it were someone you'd just met who had been following you around or otherwise acting odd, that would be very different.

You're being dramatic.

You are over thinking this.

Unlike my DH who when he had both DC for the first time on his own (they were 3 months and 2.5) realised he couldn't fit in a cubical with the pram so left both children outside the toilet block outside on their own

It was only after he was telling me the story he realised how badly that could have ended. He hasn't done it since