WIBU? Baby Change Room Etiquette

[HappyIdiot]

I honestly don't know if I was unreasonable in this situation, happy to be told I was.

I was at a motorway service station yesterday on a very long road journey with my family. I took DD (13mo) to the baby change room. There was a couple already waiting outside. I got talking to the woman while I was waiting, she had 19mo twins with her. She said that they had already been queuing for 15-20 minutes, which I was a bit surprised by.

While we were waiting, another 2 families joined the queue, with toddlers a similar age to DD, plus 1 older sibling. So, a total of 6 babies/children waiting plus various adults.

after waiting somewhere around 5 minutes, maybe a bit longer. I knocked on the door and said "sorry, but there's a bit of a queue out here" to which I got no response. After a couple more minutes, the door opened and out came a couple with a very young baby, maybe about 6 weeks-ish?

The woman looked a bit upset and flustered and said "sorry, I had to feed her" and then left. I know how hard it can be to get feeding going in the early days, especially in public and I feel bad if I've upset her. But also, I had a very pooey, grumpy DD who needed changing.

For info, there were no other changing facilities in the other toilets, and the change room was one of those that doesn't have a toilet, just a changing station, a sink, nappy bins and a chair for feeding.

So, WIBU for hurrying her along and potentially upsetting a new mum or was it ok for me to have knocked, bearing in mind I didn't know who was in there or why they were taking so long?

I'm a new mum, and on my first outing into town with dd, she needed a feed. She was 6 days old. I went into M&S expecting there to be a feeding room. There was just changing room which stank, but I didn't know what else to do. I started feeding her, but could hear the queue outside so after about 3 minutes I left as I didn't want to inconvenience anyone. So YANBU...yes she's a new mum, but she must have realised other people needed to use the room too.

Surely if you are using a baby room for feeding in then you shouldn't lock the door so others can still use the other facilities?

Penguin.

You could have sat on any customer use seat anywhere in M&S

Just in case any new mums are reading, John Lewis are fabulous and usually have a parents' room. The one in Edinburgh has plenty of chairs, a water dispenser, a change area, bottle warmers, a double toilet for toddlers and an adult toilet, as well as an amazing view.

I take my first time pg friends there as a sort of 'ta-dah!' moment...

Sorry for highjack.

Mother of a 5w old here and would always choose the car over a changing room. I'm not entirely sure I fancy a public changing room apart from the ability to dispose of the pooey nappy- lack of queue in car also relevant as someone gets cross as soon as the nappy is even mildly dirty... 20 minutes and we'd be deafened!

You could have changed the baby in the car but I don't think she was right to hog the room.

"Mother of a 5w old here and would always choose the car over a changing room."

You may want to revisit this when you have a huge kicky toddler who has filled his nappy with an adult-sized giant stinking poo...

YANBU

You didn't know what they were doing, but also, it's a really odd place to choose to feed a baby.

Why not do it in the (stationary)car as others ahve said,or out in the cafe. DP could have got her a nice drink etc and all fine and dandy. Silly attitudes making the poor woman think she had to go into the change room.

Mind you I would have changed a 13 month old either in the car or the ladies loo, lying on my bag if he/she couldn't stand or standing up if they could. I normally change ds standing up now (18 months).

I can't bear waiting in queues though!

I agree with knocking being a good idea as some one might be ill or collapsed (or there could be no one in there and the door mysteriously locked!).

I've tried feeding my 3week old in the car and he wasn't a happy bunny!

I'd choose a changing room over the car.

What is unreasonable is having the same room for both purposes.
A pull down changing table in the ladies/ gents is no good for a bigger child. We can still get our 9 year old on the big service station changing tables which is much better than the disabled toilet floor.

Neither of you were BU. The long queue shows that the changing rooms they had are inadequate in relation to the number of users.

I share the bf mums self consciousness even more acutely, as I exclusively expressed all my DCs milk for the first few months. Anyone who thinks that there's still a bit of a stigma against breastfeeding in public can imagine how impossible it is to find somewhere to hand express if you don't have a car and are far from home.

We really should have more feeding areas (to be used for expressing also) separate from changing areas.