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!

Realistically what do you think could have happened? She’s the manager of the coffee shop. She not going to run out of the shop with your baby and leg it down the road. Yes she’s a “stranger” but not a “random stranger”.

I do understand because you feel so protective over your baby but this wasn’t a random stranger - you’d seen her regularly, you know where she works. Also she is a mum herself (fine to leave your baby with someone who is not a parent too, but this is additional reassurance) and you could hear her. Using the loo is a basic need and you’d have only been gone for couple of minutes.

Do not stress over this. It’s nothing. Time was that people could ask an acquaintance to do exactly this and would return the favour too.

I remember being little and a stranger holding my baby brother for my mum while she got the pram collapsed down to take it on the bus!

It’s what community is for and you do know her, she’s the gal from the coffee shop. In other countries this would be considered wholly normal and a complete non event.

You have done what countless thousands of mothers have done, myself included. I have also been asked many times to keep an eye on a child for a short time. It's perfectly normal.

When I take my baby swimming I often ask any other lady I can find to hold my baby whilst I go for a wee…better than baby sitting on the toilet floor! Don’t think twice about it

I offered to keep an eye on a toddler in a shopping trolley in the supermarket queue the other day as his mother had just remembered something she needed. He looked a little solemn so to chat to him i said which eye should i keep on you then...........he hesitated, thought very carefully and replied 'both of them'.......made me laugh, told his mum when she came back and she said to be fair with him he needs both👀🤣

This sums it up perfectly

Oh yes. he had a great repertoire, twist his ear and put his tongue out was a favourite!

I once sat a friend's 18 month old in my trolley when her older child was tired but I then forgot she was there, it was BC, I went through the checkout and was packing to one side, wondering what was wrong with that yelling child. Then I realised, she still speaks to me after almost 50 years!

It takes a village.

We stayed in a small apartment complex in Italy when our 2 were small and the older one, about 4, used to disappear into the back room if we went into the games area when it rained and would be found playing with the owners' children.

Honestly I think the problem here is that the disabled toilet was out of order. A shame for disabled people.

It's fine. I was a receptionist, and minded lots of babies for people while they did something else.

Someone did the same when I was travelling on the national express, but as a hungover student being handed a crying baby was less lovely

Thing was, we hadn't even left the station yet so I could have easily walked off with her baby. I must have looked trustworthy!

You’ve done nothing wrong. You could hear them the whole time. The vast majority of people are good and like to help.

@FlibbertyGibbitt reminds me of going to an appt in the heart clinic for me when dd3 was 6 weeks old. It was full of very old people and me. The nurses swooped on DD and carried her round to meet the entire department. Made a lovely change for them!

It’s so sad that we think like this- the risk in this situation is really non existent. I remember a lovely lady walking up and down the aisle of a trans-Atlantic flight for ages with my dd who wouldn’t be put down. I realised half way through the flight that she was Nanette Newman (one for the older posters there!) It was 25 years ago, and I still remember her with gratitude..