Needed the toilet while shopping with pram… was I unreasonable?

[feelingbaddd]

I was out shopping with my baby earlier today and I feel really bad about a split second decision that I made. I needed the toilet and it was one in a coffee shop where 3 individual toilet cubicles were behind a door with a keypad, so toilet use was customer only. I have been using this coffee shop for 2 years. I am a regular customer and used to get a coffee most days on my commute to work pre mat leave and would chat to the manager every day.

She followed me to the toilet today to unlock the door with the code, and then told me apologetically that the disabled toilet was out of order. I wouldn’t have been able to fit the buggy in the normal cubicle that was available. She offered to wait right outside the toilet with the pram (ie behind the main door, but outside the cubicle). I immediately said yes and thanked her and went to the toilet. At the time I thought nothing of it. I know she has a son of her own and always seems friendly. I could hear her chatting away to my baby the whole time but I have reflected on this since and feel like it was such a poor judgement call. Sure I talk to the woman but I don’t KNOW her personally.

I don’t know where my sense of safety was and I feel so terrible about it, I basically left my child with a stranger! Would anyone else have done the same or was it as bad of me as I am thinking it was?

I might be being dramatic, I am really sleep deprived. I can’t help feeling like a bad mum.

YABU - I wouldn’t have done this
YANBU - nothing wrong with this, forget about it!

Keep an eye out for postnatal anxiety OP. I had it and worried excessively/felt massive guilt over minor things like this

Defo Ok in my book.

Also I’m sure when my kids were little there was some advice to tell kids that if they needed help go to “a person that you can trust” for help/if lost... not just to say to find a mummy with children as that’s not always possible in some places.

the advice was to go to a bank police/fire station etc and I always said I thought a person you could trust was a person who could use the till (on the basis that they were trusted with all the cash so probably - if lost in Tesco or a museum etc the cash desk/till was a good place to go in an emergency).

Emergencies are never ideally timed but you found a person who you could trust and knew !! - the manager in charge. It wasn’t a stranger : it was a trusted person.

The chances of a perfectly ordinary seeming mum doing anything untoward in 3 minutes is minuscule. At a certain point you have to trust that most people aren’t complete monsters. You will be trusting her to nursery workers and teachers soon enough.

Fine! I've done it for a lady on the train. I was pleased she got back before we arrived at a station.. only cos she'd looked so stressed I thought she might leave the train and me holding the baby.

You knew she was employed there - even in the extremely unlikely event that she wanted to harm or abduct a baby, she would hardly do it where she could immediately be identified.

Fine I think. A random customer then no, but someone who works there and you’re in the loo for like one minute, it’s fine. Relax and stop overthinking it.

This means your gut feels she is safe. I would be reassured by your lack of hesitation.

OP. Calm down about this. ❤️❤️❤️

It’s what women do.

I was left outside the bakery to 'mind' the pram with my baby brother, when Mum came out he was still there but I wasn't. Luckily she guessed where I would be, I'd crossed a busy road and gone to introduce myself to a very puzzled Head of the school opposite, I was desperate to start school! Once the Head had got over the shock she made a big deal of putting my name down to make me happy.

Totally fine and normal.

I just pee with the door open and the pram in the door way these days 🙃 sorry general public!

I don't think there's anything unreasonable in the decision you made and your child was perfectly safe. I'm currently heavily pregnant, and whilst in the doctor's waiting room last week waiting for a midwife appointment, a lady with a toddler asked me to mind her child whilst she went to the bathroom. The options were me or two men, or the receptionist who was on the phone. I fully get why she chose me - she made a judgment that an expectant mother was a safe bet, plus there were other people and CCTV present. Please don't feel guilty!

@feelingbaddd you knew instinctively this was a safe person, that’s why you were able to trust her. That’s what our instincts are for. The fact that you are now questioning that shows what a good mother you are. A tiny tiny minority of people would harm a baby. My mother used to leave me in my pram unattended outside shops as did most mothers in the 70s!

You didn’t need to hesitate OP.

It was a female staff member. Assuming you’ve been served by her before many times.

Subconsciously, you will have felt safe and knew your baby would be safe too for the couple of minutes where you’d be behind a door.

It’s not like it was a random man stinking of booze who offered to watch your baby. Then -you’ll have hesitated.

We were on a long flight and a mother came to the back of the plane with her small baby who clearly needed a nappy change and a 3 or 4 year old who was adamant she didn't want the loo, the mother was saying she couldn't stay in her seat alone, I offered to let her sit with us and watch the TV which she happily did and the mother was very grateful although she was keen on rejoining her mother as OH was doing his grandchildren-entertaining funny faces for her!

when did we become so fearful of others? 99.999999% of people are not going to hurt your child. You are allowed to trust people without feeling like you have given your child to a monster.

what did you retrospectively think was going to happen in the time you were in the toilet? Stop beating yourself up about it. If you had wet yourself because you couldn’t go to the loo you’d probably be writing about that instead!

id have done the same thing as you. Perfectly normal thing to do given the circumstances

I voted wrong. What you did was totally ok.

Oh no not the "dad faces" 😀

You can change your vote. Just click on the other option.

Hope you feel reassured by these responses op.
Just today I went to the toilet in a cafe and both toilets were occupied. The toilets are down a corridor and out of sight from the cafe.

As I waited a small boy came up and clearly needed a wee so I let him go first when the toilets opened.
But he didn't lock the door and I didn't want anyone walking in on him so I waited until he came out.
My point is that I don't have or want kids but most woman would care about the welfare of a child.

It takes a village to raise a child. You knew where she worked.

You could hear her talking to your baby, which is probably why she did it: to reassure you she and the baby were still there.

Most people would have done exactly the same.
There isn't danger around every corner.
You left a staff member to watch your baby for a couple.of minutes at the most. She was in a public place and perfectly safe
I think tiredness and hormones may have got the better of you.
Try and relax a little and be kinder to yourself

Nothing wrong with what you did at all! in that moment you’re instincts would have told you /known all was fine it’s just you’re mind over thinking things now x

If I wanted to steal a baby, I would get a job in a large hospital. I would not run a café and hope that at some point in the next 20 years a mother would leave her baby with me for 3 minutes, so I could steal it, rush home in the middle of my shift, and hope nobody noticed.

This sounds like a completely safe appropriate decision to have made. I really can't imagine anyone saying or thinking this wasn't an inappropriate thing to do.