Baby hates public toilets

[Prebtaf]

Five month old baby has started to show fear when I take him to be changed in a public baby change space. He starts to look frightened and makes a scared face as soon as I put him on changing area then cries but in a fearful way.

I have no idea where this has come from as I've always been with him - could I have made a fearful expression one time and he's picked up on something? I did show fear once during bathtime as baby bath nearly fell off its stand but I scooped him up in time and he was unharmed (physically) but perhaps the incident has scared him permanently? This was over a month ago and I promptly got rid of the stand and changed approach but he's been more subdued at bathtime since.

I try everything I can to make him feel better - talk to him and sing him songs while trying to change him as quickly as possible. Can't help but worry I've done something wrong with bath incident and scarred him for life or set him up to be an anxious child. Obviously I have to change him when we're out so can't avoid this and don't want to avoid going out but I feel so heartbroken when I see how scared he gets.

My four year old still hates hand driers!

It's probably the hand dryer, mine cried every time someone set one off until they were 4/5. I think little kids hear a wider range of frequencies, and the dryers sometimes hurt their ears.

It's cold bright and noisy, and possibly smells. The hand dryers are probably scary for him too. Don't worry at all you haven't done anything wrong! Its simply that none of us would want to go for a lie down in a public toilet and he doesn't either 😁

As an aside, I just don't see the point of hand dryers. They don't dry your hands very well. They're noisy and a bit sudden/startling even for a grown up. They take a full 20s or whatever so sometimes you have to queue for it.

I know that napkins aren't great for the planet but a green solution is those scrolling flannels that get washed