To leave Dd alone in hotel room?

[Shelby2010]

More of a WWYD really. We are going to be staying with Dd (18mths) in a hotel next month on holiday & then overnight for a wedding in July. How safe do MNetters feel it is to leave their sleeping DC in the room with either the listening service or a normal baby monitor while eating in the hotel restaurant or attending an evening reception?

Am I being very PFB to worry about how many members of staff could access the room (especially with programable card keys)? The fact that hotels do offer a listening service suggests that many parents are ok with this. I'm torn between thinking I'm paranoid and thinking that they always tell you not to leave valuables in you room except in the safe..... Help!

We were away recently with my parents and got two rooms across the corridor from each other. We put DD to bed in our room with the monitor and went to my parents room to eat room service, drink wine and chat for the rest of the evening. We checked on DD every 20/30 minutes or so.

Funny, the one thing I never thought of was fire but thinking about it now, I don't know if we would have been able to use the electronic room key to get to her in that situation? Having read the thread, I am not sure I would do that again unless we had two rooms with proper keys.

Prior to reading this thread, I would have been with the OP leaving her DC in the room with the listening service and monitor, given it is small hotel and booked out for the wedding. Having read the posts about fire and not being able to get to your room in that event, I too would take DD with me and put her in a buggy in the corner if she drops off (unless it is a family wedding and some kind elderly relative offers to babysit while you party of course.......)

We got stuck in terrible traffic once getting to a hotel where we were staying overnight before a wedding the next day and didn't get there until 9pm. DD1 was about 8 months old, I had fed her in the car and she had had her bedtime milk and had been asleep since about 7pm, so we just put her to bed in the cot - still well asleep, and went downstairs to the bar to grab a bite to eat, as they stopped serving food at 9.30pm. We kept taking it in turns to go back to the room - my biggest concern at the time was her crying and disturbing other people, but she didn't wake up at all.

We took her with us to the wedding the next day for the daytime bits and arranged a babysitter (Safehands) to sit with her after we put her to bed before the evening reception.

If I had to do the same thing again we'd probably put her in a buggy in the bar with us, but it didn't occur to us at the time.

We left DS sleeping in a room at a girl guide centre and took the monitor with is tp the activities. He was 4months.

it doesn't solve the fire issue but friends of mine have set up a video link with two ipad's skyping - we sat at dinner with a video monitor of the baby sleeping at the table with us . i'm sure you can also get video monitors for babies? actually i think i'd rather have that than an audio monitor anyway...

it was a small and quiet hotel and i know that if the fire alarm had sounded the mother or father would have been up the single flight of stairs to get her before most people had even registered they were to evacuate.

Sorry, me too - I couldn't do it.

Reading this thread made me wonder about the relativity of risks to our children, and whether I might be worrying about the wrong things, so I did a little reading up which might be interesting so some others on the thread.

According to my brief review of the data offered by the office for national statistics, around 6,500 children under the age of 14 died in 2010.

It would seem that the things worth worrying about (i.e where parents can influence risk levels) are:

asphyxiation
head injuries
infectious disease
SIDS

which combined accounted for around 1,500 deaths in 2010.

The vast majority of other deaths were small individual numbers for named medical conditions i.e things broadly outside of parental control.

Relative to this thread, fire/smoke accounted for 7 deaths, and assault accounted for 29 deaths (of which most I assume were assaults in the home, although I have no evidence to back this up).

For comparison, land transport accidents accounted for 25 deaths.

the data is here if anyone else is interested.

How many were kidnapped AuntLucy? Because you know, that's a serious risk according to some posters.

I wouldn't based on having worked in a hotel

and had a friend who worked for a reputable babysitting service that only hired "highly trained and skilled staff" - only they didn't specify her training - she had a degree in an area completely un child related! plus they did CRB all their staff, but they let them start while their CRBs are being done. It is a favoured job amongst travelling auzzies because the start is so quick and easy - get to work straight away no hanging round for references and CRBs

plus a listening service can't smell a fire

Yes, though this was (just) pre McCann I must admit DD1 being kidnapped was never in my thoughts...

kidnapping IS common round here, but it's usually estranged fathers or in laws, not strangers (not when it's young children, there are a lot of attempted abductions of older school children)

Kidnapping wouldn't be my worry in a hotel, fire would!

My concern would be the child waking (every chance if people are being noisy as they pass the door) and exploring a room that was not child-proofed. Pulling on a lamp cord and being injured by the falling lamp, looking in your bag and finding pills/things to choke on. Wandering in to the bathroom and playing with hot taps, toiletries. Reaching for the television to try and turn it on, sticking fingers in electric sockets. And if the room is darkened, triple these dangers....

Fires are much less likely since they banned smoking in hotel rooms.
All corridors have sprinkler systems and very sensitive smoke alarms.
I'm damn sure that if the smoke alarms went off, you'd be with your kids within seconds.

How many hotels fires were there in 2010? Just out of interest?

emmanana, course you wouldn't hear any of that on the baby alarm would you?

"I'm damn sure that if the smoke alarms went off, you'd be with your kids within seconds"

I've heard of parents being physically blocked from going to a "fire zone". People are only allowed out not back in, and there is some mention of key cards not working in a fire too!

also a local fire in an accomodation wing wouldn't immediately alarm in the restaurant in the hotel I worked in, reception would investigate it first before causing alarm

We've done this - but not with a hotel baby listening service.

We used our own baby monitor, and conducted a careful path loss trial, so we knew for sure that it reached reliably from bedroom to dining room and bar. The size/layout of the hotel matters enormously: we were somewhere small, the room was just upstairs (like being at home) and no one could get up their without passing the receptionist, or get out without doing that or setting off an alarmed fire door. It was only for a quiet dinner after their bedtime, though.

We have always had sitters if we left the hotel, and I would get one if we were going to a noisy event like a wedding reception where wine is likely to be free-flowing and good abstemious intentions too easily overlooked. And we would have got sitters (or eaten early, or something else) if the baby monitor had not transmitted reliably or if the hotel was vast and the room distant.

"emmanana, course you wouldn't hear any of that on the baby alarm would you?"

with the hot water, no you wouldn't hear it till they had actually scalded themselves!

None of the child waking, exploring the room hazards were going to happen when she in a cot she couldn't get out of. Once she was in a bed and more likely to get up and explore the room there was no way I would have left her.

Do the people worried about fire etc never leave their children upstairs at home?
Assuming the child is at no risk of escaping from a travel cot, I don't see the problem if within range of a baby monitor - even if it's too loud to hear you can see the flashing lights.

I'm with Rhubs

hotel listening systems vary significantly. Some hotels have a consant line through to the room so that any noise ends up transmitted at the reception desk (Calcot Manor do that, & dining room is close to the rooms so we've used the service there).
Other hotels have to periodically ring in to the room to listen. If they don't happen to ring in at the correct moment, who knows what on earth could have gone on - have stayed in hotels like that, and the DDs dine with us or we eat in the room.

Baby monitors these days pick up every little sound, including the sound of running water. They even pick up changes in the child's breathing!

Fire is a risk no matter where you are. But that's why I asked about hotel fire statistics, just to put the risk into perspective. After all hotels have to undergo strict health and safety checks and have fire doors, sprinklers, smoke alarms, evacuation procedures etc. All electrics are routinely checked including electrical equipment. So a hotel is safer than your average home.

my sitting room/kitchen to child's bedroom route is in no way comparable to the restraunt bar to room route of even the smallest hotels I've been in. There is a smoke detector outside his room which we would hear anywhere in our home, it would take less than 5 seconds to get there. I've stayed in some pretty small hotels but none where the room was a 5 second hop from the dining room!

by the time the hot water is running on them rhubarb, the damage is done!

obviously another thing to note if you use a constant monitoring system is that you do have to remember to turn the unit off once you get back to your room otherwise your post-night out celebrations will be transmitted to the entire reception desk.

Hot water in taps these days should not be hot enough to cause a scald AFAIK. After running for a minute it might be hot enough to be "ouch" but wouldn't cause actual skin damage.