to get annoyed when total strangers touch/stroke my baby without asking?

[GreebosWhiskers]

ds is nearly 6 months & fair enough he is gorgeous (not that I'm biased or anything) but why do total strangers feel the need to have a grab at him when he's in his buggy? Doesn't matter where we are, on the bus, in a shop, whatever, there's someone stroking his cheek or grabbing his hand. I see their manky fingernails or nicotine-yellow fingers & shudder!
I know babies are cute & soft & cuddly but I'd never dream of touching someone else's baby without at least asking first.
So, AIBU?

Yes ... past few days I have noticed a wheeze (like a sharp intake of breath) coming in after a little cough

my mum was here this week ... and I kept hearing her say ///oh that's a nasty cough ... so i don't think I am exaggerating ...

as a new mum i worry that i look for things that aren't there

dd1 is 7 and never formally dx as asthmatic, but has been on inhalers since she was a baby. her first serious attack which resulted in being hospitalised was when she was under 2. before that was a cough, you will hear a lot of 'we cant diagnosed asthma in the under bracket' from doctors, but generally i have found them to be correct with rehards to dd1.

dd1 rarely coughs at night on holidays hills. i think its alovely mixture of damp salty air that helps.

we live by the sea and dp is no better unfortunately

right, am really off this time!

my dd2 had really bad lungs when she was born, she had phnemonia(sp?) sceptiacemia and meningitis (a gbs infection) I was told to move to the sea side, so I did and she has been so well, my dd1 had asthma and it cleared up within a week

i am so glad we dont live in an inner city with loads of traffic, they would be so much worse

yes totally agree, hayfever plays a big part in it though too I find.

yes, this time of year is awful for asthma eczema and hayfever in this house.

am just packing dd1 bag for school trip tomorrow, having to put aveeno and piriton in. she is going to a bird of prey centre, and she will be handling some of the birds. eeeek! no idea if she is allergic to birds yet, but am giving her piriton anyway as its outside and in the countryside, wil help with her hayfever.

no, no nut allergies. yet. i say yet as she seems to be collecting allergies/reactions each year.

I'm afraid I would hate it if a stranger put anything near my baby's face - hand, face, anything. Hate hate hate it.

Gosh don't leave England will you

I've just returned from a week in Spain where I couldn't move without waiters and random men on the street picking them up and cuddling and kissing them - every few minutes! And giving them handfuls of sweets!

I can't help think how lovely it must be for Spanish children to grow up in a culture where they are fawned over and so obviously loved rather than told to ShutTheFuckUpAndSitDown.

(That should of course say "Don't leave the UK", for geographical accuracy )

I love that too MP. We went to Portugal when DD was just over a year old and DS#1 was 3. They were always being chucked under the chin and cuddled and fussed ove. Lovely!

Orm it was great

It was quite SHOCKING at first - esp. because it was mainly MEN who were doing all the touching and grabbing

When we entered a cafe they would lift the children into chairs and bring bowls of crisps and sweets!

Their cheeks have never been squeezed so much

The baby's fat legs were being squeezed all the time and I was a bit worried about HER passing on her slightly oozing fat-fold ezcema to strangers!

It was lovely

On the train we were the only people in the carriage and people got on and sat in the seats NEXT to us with big grins - can you imagine in the UK sitting NEXT to the only table on a train carriage with a young family in it?!?!?!!

We landed back in the UK and the baby started pushing her buggy through the terminal and about 100 people started tutting and sighing because the children were "in the way" and I thought ah yes - back to normal life where we all hate kids.

I like sitting near a family with young kids because they make me smile! I am always the nutter who ends up entertaining other people's LOs in queues - making faces and chatting. Thank god I'm not old (yet) or I'd be told to get stuffed 'you old witch' like my mother was a few months ago .

that is 1000 times worse than anyone touching a baby

My dad lives in Singapore and they LOVE kids out there, especially white skinned, blue eyed little ones like my 3. The first time we went I was a bit taken aback by the amount of attention they got but it didn't bother me.

The one thing that really did freak me out was the way some people wanted to hold them and have their photo taken with them. That's just weird but it seems to be tourists from a particular class and nation so it must be a bit of a cultural thing.

TBH, having someone coo over my dcs when they're driving me demented makes my day!

I think it's lovely when people coo over my babies but I hate it when they touch them without asking, especially when it's hands and faces.

Colds are not purely airborne, they're very easily spread by contact as well. Viruses travelling from hands to face for instance, by direct contact.

Just because all our children will end up playing in the dirt happily as crawlers, toddlers and older doesn't mean that as babies they'll benefit from being touched by lots of people outside their family/household - if my baby's going to get a good dose of germs I'd rather he got them from me, not for him to be the first person in our household to catch a particular illness (at least then I'll have started making a few antibodies in milk that might get through to him).

It's perfectly reasonable IMO to be pissed off when people touch a baby's hands or face without asking. That's not the same thing as wanting to keep a baby in a bubble! After all, if people ask, we still have the option of saying yes! (Or of saying yes more often as the baby gets older, and depending on whether we know the person's just been eating/smoking or not.)

I suppose if you really wanted to you could extrapolate wildly from someone's dislike of their baby being touched without asking, to them wanting to keep that baby somehow sterile forever, for the sake of starting a row, but it seems a bit pointless. Oh look, it's been done...

Avoid elderly Asian ladies at all costs then, all 'don't touch my baby' types - the lovely granny lady who runs our paper shop came running around the counter when I first brought dd in in her pram and, without a moments hesitation, reached in, squeezed her cheeks and squee-ed 'Chaddy chaddy chaddy!' at her (which I assume is Hindi for 'big fat baby squidge cheeks'...?) I thought it was really lovely, actually.

DD is now slowly losing her squidginess and reading the lighter parts of this thread has made me incredibly broody... mutter mutter... who's going to lend me £6k for another round of IVF, then??

hurtigrute

quad - your kids had GERMS??? omg, why didn't you say??

but then, my ds is very strong and resilient with no health ishoos yet (except a wee bit of eczema on his face) so i count my blessings every single day.

KerryMum - what you went through sounds horrific. i am in total awe of you!!!

Hurtigrute - couldn't agree more on all your points.

"We landed back in the UK and the baby started pushing her buggy through the terminal and about 100 people started tutting and sighing because the children were "in the way" and I thought ah yes - back to normal life where we all hate kids."

You're right MP - that's the culture here and it is so very sad...