Saw this on a pram today! 😀

You can get these for dogs I’ve seen them wearing like a little harness type thing saying “Anxious dog- don’t touch”!

To be fair, my SIL had to do this because people kept touching her very premature baby! (Born at 28 weeks I think)

Sorry you think it's twee to be concerned about health risks to a preemie baby?

My now 17 year old was hospitalised as a baby because someone held him who had a cold.

On the opposite side my 4th dc caught a hospital bug and had to be barrier nursed. I was worried about people catching it from him but the amount of people who would try and touch him, including hospital staff. I would beg them to please wash their hands because i was so worried about another baby catching it and being really poorly.

A stranger did exactly this when my youngest DD was a baby. I was horrified. What were they thinking? (Obviously not much)

This is very cultural too . Where I’m from nobody bats an eyelid if people touch your baby , if you go to a local cafe they will probably ask you to pick up the baby or offer to have them while you eat .

Good on them. They could be immunocompromised or perhaps their parents just don’t want people thinking they can help themselves to a squeeze of their baby. I got an absolute pasting on here some years back when I told an elderly man off for reaching inside my DDs pram and pretty much wiping his hand all over her face - before my own mother had even met her due to covid and lockdowns etc. Got a load of grief for ‘ruining his day’, poor elderly gentleman etc etc. F that. I will die on that hill.

A woman at my school has this on her pram, I saw it and thought fair enough!!

Good for them.
It's shocking how fast someone can touch your baby (absolute strangers) and how even the most outspoken person can freeze in that moment.
I walked through a supermarket with my newborn in pram and while I tuned my head to glance one way someone just touched my baby's face.
I don't know what their intentions are because I don't know them.
It could be an innocent little stroke for an irresistible little baby or they could have just scratched their arse and wanted to wipe shit on her - because people can be bloody weird and frankly it's bloody weird to touch a strangers baby.
If the sign gives someone pause, even if the child isn't vulnerable, it's not a bad thing.

Why would you want to see a stranger’s baby?

I found strangers trying to kiss or touch my babies, especially without asking, really annoying. Not so much a health worry (though the time someone came up to them in the doctor’s office while I was filling in a form did hit that button for me) as they would wake them from sleep, annoy them and make them cry (then look at me like it was my fault!), make me feel like I needed to be smiley and personable when I was feeling exhausted and curmudgeonly, etc.

So I have some sympathy for the sign even if there were no health concerns. I wouldn’t have used one, though.

I respect whatever parents are any but o find it so odd personally . Those and the people who refuse to leave the house for weeks after birth , it’s such a odd concept to me , I used to love showing my babies to friends and the oldest kids loved whee I picked up from school with the baby

Babies in my care have been stroked on the face in their pram by strangers before I’ve had a chance to ask them not to. I wasn’t particularly happy as god knows where those hands have been, but I’d be really annoyed if my baby was vulnerable. Not old ladies either, reasonably young women. Maybe this was a particularly cute baby that had met one too many over-friendly strangers

But they clearly do as otherwise they wouldn’t need the sign?

My baby was about one month old and started crying in the pram when we were in a shop. An old woman suddenly appeared and shoved her pinky into my baby’s mouth. I was too shocked to speak but managed to react enough to push the pram forward out her reach. She just mumbled something and walked off, didn’t even look at me.
Afterwards I thought of many things I wish I’d said - or even just shoved my finger in her mother’s to see how she liked it! I’m assuming she though my baby would think finger was a dummy or that she was teething but fuck knows 🤷🏼‍♀️ It still grosses me out to remember.

A friend of mine had one of these for their twins pram BUT their twins had cystic fibrosis…catching a cold could literally kill them and you’d be surprised at the number of strangers who think it’s acceptable to stick their hands/heads in a pram. My eldest was born during Covid and we still had people in the supermarket thinking it was acceptable to try to stick their heads under the hood of the pram to have a look 🙄

An older gentleman did that to me in asda. He tucked a pound coin in my son's pram. I was bemused, but he told me you should always cross a new baby's palm with gold. Perhaps there is a gap in the market for signs about small change too!

This happened to me quite a lot when I was pregnant 30-40 years ago. It certainly startled me, but I never felt the people meant badly. I did find it hard to cope with though!

True, but I don't know anyone who would touch a random baby anyway. Maybe family/friends (even then, I'd wait for my mate to pass me her newborn when I visited, not lift her out the pram if I bumped into her in Tesco), but I wouldn't ever touch a stranger's baby. Don't think this is a modern thing either? My grandparents wouldn't touch strangers' kids.

That's awful 💐

Did they at least put money in? (That's an old lady thing where I am!)

I wouldn't touch or kiss a strangers baby but in ye olden times I would have put a 50p in the pram. (When 50p was worth more than it is now, obviously 🤣)

My six month old was kissed by a stranger last week (in a lift, no escape!). Happened before I could stop her. I would have loved a sign like this...

(Especially after covid and with measles outbreaks, plus big standard flu etc)

People are worse at keeping their germs to themselves post Covid.

We used to find people incredibly polite and helpful about DDs health pre-covid. We'd get a heads up about any illness in people we were meeting so we could make the choice to stay away or not. Post lockdown people are much more "oh I've just got a cough/cold/sniffle, but it's fine..."

We've even had two incidences of people actively hiding chicken pox - once because they didn't want me to cancel my kids going to their child's party as their child would be very upset (the mum's sister found out and made her tell me) and the second one was because they didn't want me to cancel the play date as they were working and needed the childcare.

The balance between my other children living normal lives and keeping DD4 safe for as long as possible is much harder post-lockdown.