Active discussions

Meet the Other Phone. Only the apps you allow.

Meet the Other Phone.
Only the apps you allow.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Talk
AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

Babies on the tube at 11.30

270 replies

CoughLaughFart · 08/08/2017 23:53

I've just spent 20 minutes on the tube listening to not one, but two babies screaming at top volume. It's nearly midnight! Who is that irresponsible?

OP posts:
DJBaggySmalls · 09/08/2017 00:37

What time is curfew?
How will GP's/hospitals manage if they have to keep people overnight so they don't break curfew?

CheshireChat · 09/08/2017 00:38

I actually think it's good to be reasonably flexible with bedtimes, otherwise you get kids you can't take out anywhere in the evening.

Which is doubly annoying if you don't have anyone else to watch them so they have to tag along.

Iwasjustabouttosaythat · 09/08/2017 00:39

This is hilarious! OP, if you are a genuine poster you are really embarrassing yourself. You asked AIBU. This is a unanimous YABU. If you are for real please just accept that you've behaved like a selfish jerk and get on with your life. If people raising children upsets you this much you should get a hobby. Or move well away from society. I'm sure then you'd complain about baby owls hooting in the trees. Selfish bastards.

GammaDelta · 09/08/2017 00:39

Scrowy .... that's awful what your cousin had to go through

Original poster
CoughLaughFart · 09/08/2017 00:41

OP, if you are a genuine poster you are really embarrassing yourself. You asked AIBU.

I really don't need consensus to have an opinion.

OP posts:
CheshireChat · 09/08/2017 00:41

Wooo, just remembered we were doing a small shop at around the same time and the woman at the till was distinctly unimpressed we had DS who was tiny with us.

GammaDelta · 09/08/2017 00:42

OP I am curious do you have kids... n if you do, Do you follow a strict schedule with them?

Beeziekn33ze · 09/08/2017 00:42

Maybe some posters are worried that children out late will get darked on!

CheshireChat · 09/08/2017 00:44

Just thought, OP are you my MIL?! She didn't agree with any small children taken out after 6-7.

CheshireChat · 09/08/2017 00:45

Love the darked on comment though.

HiJenny35 · 09/08/2017 00:49

It's the school holidays so even if it was a school age child what would the issue be?
Also my 4 year old is more than able to go to bed at a reasonable time for school from Monday to Friday and then stays up late at the weekend, and has even... Stop the press... been on the tube at nearly midnight after a show in London followed by a meal out!!!!!! We had a brilliant time and she even went to bed when she got home, slept later the next morning and got up for school on Monday. Lots of kids manage fine with a routine which allows for change. And my 8 month old was still awake on holiday last week at 11pm and we took a bus back. Why don't you understand that it's none of your judgemental business.

ClopySow · 09/08/2017 00:58

Were they older mums? They had probablt missed the boat.

Choccywoccyhooha · 09/08/2017 01:03

I will be on the tube tomorrow night with my 3, 6, and 7 year olds, after the athletics finish, so bewen 10 -11pm. Do give us a wave if you see us OP.

Frazzledmum123 · 09/08/2017 01:04

You're entitled to an opinion but we are equally entitled to tell you the popular consensus is you are being very judgmental and to be honest, your post doesn't even make sense. You're AIBU was about a baby on a train and has now become school children during term time, so you saw a baby on a train and are now judging parents who may take older kids out late during an entirely different month??!! If you actually knew a person who regularly kept their 6 year old up all night and you knew all their circumstances then maybe you'd have a point but to call a random stranger taking a baby out, irresponsible is mad!
In holidays my kids, 6 and 4 have been up very late on occasion and slept in for a couple of days after. They don't need routine and personally I'm glad about that as it means we can have some amazing adventures from time to time. And a baby really doesn't need a routine, the reason they wake so often in the night is that their body clocks don't work like ours, they don't know night from day so I doubt it cared it was past midnight!

minisoksmakehardwork · 09/08/2017 01:05

I agree that children need a routine of sorts and mine just ends up being A then B then C, rather than A at 6pm, B at 6:30pm etc, but if the parents in question were relying on public transport to get from A to B it is quite possible that they got held up somewhere and were just incredibly delayed. It happens. Babies are relatively portable and perhaps they just didn't like the tube, they might have been like that at 10am as well.

melj1213 · 09/08/2017 01:06

Christ on a bike, never go to mainland Europe, OP we keep babies out till all hours there!

My DD was born in Madrid and we lived there for the first 6.5 years of her life. It was not unusual to go out for dinner with friends and/or family, taking DD with us, at a normal dinner time, so around 8/9pm ... we'd sit out on the terrace of the restaurant and If the babies fell asleep during the course of dinner they'd be put into their buggies and left to sleep while everyone else continued dinner - some restaurants would even have blankets and/or spare cushions (usually kept in storage until winter when they would be provided for anyone who wanted to sit out on the terraces when it was chilly but not freezing) and they would be more than happy to let us have them to set up a space for the babies to nap on safely & comfortably.

We'd usually try to be finished before the last metro home (the night bus was always an option but we lived a 2 minute walk from the metro but a 20 minute walk from the nearest night bus bus-stop) so it would be a totally normal to take DD in her buggy or sling for the last metro home at about 00:30 and she was rarely ever the only one.

Even if it wasn't a planned outing sometimes DD just wouldn't go to sleep so I'd take her for a walk in the hope the white noise of traffic, the cool night air and the bouncing of the buggy would soothe her to sleep ... I'd never plan a specific route so, quite often by the time I had walked DD to sleep I'd be a couple of miles from our apartment and I'd be exhausted and potentially not 100% sure of the most direct route home. Rather than wandering the streets for another hour or so at midnight, I'd just find the nearest metro stop and hop on a short train trip home.

MommaGee · 09/08/2017 01:11

I took my son on the bus at about 11 pm a few months back. I'm sure we got some judgments made. Week day, term time, although he is only 2.

What people don't see are the hours and hours I spent in PAU with him, the wait whilst my husband found a pharmacy open so late, pushing the food nurses politely for discharge papers, the desperation not to spend the night in hospital with a toddler who has spent too much of his life in hospital.

No car seat because I'd taken him up in the daytime on the bus after calling 111. No taxi because no car seat.

At least he got home to his own cot.

Salva · 09/08/2017 01:14

Definitely don't visit the Middle East op, it's only gets busy after 9pm in most places and the whole family is in tow.

Pallisers · 09/08/2017 01:15

is it that hard to understand that children need routine?

Is it that hard to understand that they don't all need the SAME routine.

Salva · 09/08/2017 01:16

Definitely don't visit the Middle East op, it's only gets busy after 9pm in most places and the whole family is in tow.

nikiforov · 09/08/2017 01:21

But there wasn't a school age child on the train at 11:30pm?

You literally know nothing about the situation. A kid could be on the train past school time with parents or carers for a multitude of reasons.

Theresnonamesleft · 09/08/2017 01:26

Although routines might be the norm, it's
Also easier to through in some random stuff because well life happens.

I have been on the tube several times late at night with my children at various points in their life's.

I have also taken out a baby at 2 in the
Morning. Don't drive so a walk round in the buggy was the next best thing to try and coax a non sleeping baby to sleep.

Argeles · 09/08/2017 01:28

I'd much rather put up with hearing babies crying on the tube, than inane drunken chatter from co-workers making their way home after after-work drinkies.

EnthusiasmIsDisturbed · 09/08/2017 01:31

Oh the obsessive routine brigade Hmm

I didn't follow much of a routine and shock horror ds would often be out after 10pm he might cry if he woke up but soon fell asleep

And I never have issues getting him to bed or up for school and never have

But apparently it was all terrible for him and he would never cope with school hours according to those obsessed with routine

RaspberryRuffless · 09/08/2017 01:33

My school age child is in a routine. He goes to bed later and gets up later than what's probably considered "normal". That's what works for us. Just because it's a different routine doesn't mean it's not a routine.

Swipe left for the next trending thread