Hotel room on holiday - baby monitor and restaurant

[Northby]

Hello everyone
I've just been reading a thread where people were saying how much easier it is to go on holiday at a hotel rather than a self catered apartment. I had a genuine, if possibly stupid, question.

If your kids are in a hotel room and you have a video baby monitor, would you think it was ok to use a hotel facility? Like a restaurant downstairs. The door is locked, you can see and hear the kids via the monitor.

I don’t live in a palace so I feel like being a couple of minutes rather than up to ten seconds away is too far, in case something happens. (Also Madeline McCann’s story is seared into my mind as it happened when I was growing up.)

I’m curious, what does everyone else do?

How unnecessarily rude !
OP ,self catering is the better option . Early dinner out and then you have more space and a balcony/ terrace to sit at once baby asleep .
Staying in a hotel room sounds absolutely awful. My main concern about using monitor is that if a baby is crying it could realistically take a few minutes to get to them .

In my experience the easiest thing is to accept that holidays with very small children are going to be different than pre-children holidays. Lounging around, enjoying restaurants, sunbathing, sightseeing etc. just don’t work. Essentially you are parenting just in a different environment. This is why there are so many child-friendly resorts, to cater to the reality that families with children have different needs to child-free adults. Adjust your expectations. So, no, I wouldn’t leave my kids alone in a hotel room while having dinner for all the reasons PP outlined. Try get adjoining rooms and order in room service or eat on the balcony. It does gets easier the older they get.

We learned our lesson after an evening of hiding behind a hotel bed while our wired 1 year old did everything she could to resist sleep. Then we went and drank wine in the bathroom.

We always went self catering after that!

No I wouldn't leave them. When DS was younger we would stay in a hotel, take a couple of drinks back to the room and sit on the balcony whilst he slept.

I am afraid holiday with kids is different. Either have dinner early, nap them late and keep them up or have them asleep in the pushchair. Which option you choose depends on the child.
If they are in bed early you can hang out on the balcony watching the sunset with a drink and some snacks. Hopefully you’ve got a second room and can chill there. If they are anything like mine they’ll be up early so an early night is no bad thing.
I could never get over what happened to Madeline and the fact it wouldn’t have happened if she was with them

Lol, my kids would definitely not fall asleep if we had a light on. No chance!

Self catering is just better with young children I find. The single thing that can ruin a holiday is not getting good sleep and, for us, that does not happen all sharing a room.

On your question - in general, no, but it does depend on the hotel. We have stayed in a couple of hotels which are small family run, like a large house/BnB that do dinner in the evenings and I think that's different

I've heard of some hotels that have more villa style rooms, ground floor balcony where they will deliver your food/drinks and you get a at a distance view of the entertainment.

My children will not nap in the day and get up at 5 am regardless of what time they get to bed. So abroad holidays like this wouldn't work for us till they are a lot older. We stick to self catering/haven/centre parcs. Holidays are far more enjoyable when we cater to the children make sure they are in their routine not missing out on sleep or meal times. I just simply do not have children that will tolerate anything else.

I heard once upon a time center parcs did a babysitting service. Which would be amazing for us mine are reliable sleepers and very very rarely wake up in the night or evening. So having a trusted person just sitting in the lodge so we could have a meal together or actually go swimming instead of just taking turns to hold the stuff or children. Would be amazing. We have no friends or family willing to do this so this would be our only opportunity.

As it is we are just patiently waiting for them to be old enough so my husband and I could have our first holiday ever together just us. Just 13 years to go 😂

No way, 100% no, I bet madeleine McCanns parents wish everyday they'd never left her alone.
Never ever leave your children alone on holidays or at home.
Take them with you.

Absolutely not. We didn't go abroad until DS was 3 missed the essay baby bit because of covid, then I didn't fancy sitting in dark hotel rooms. We now always book a room that has a separate bedroom for DS and a balcony for terrace for us. We have dinner earlier than we would just as a couple holidaying then go for a walk or watch the hotel entertainment if there is any, the last one had some great acrobats! When DS is tired we take him back and put him to bed (usually later than his usual bedtime but he won't sleep in a pushchair at his age) , we then sit on the balcony and have a glass of wine, chat, play cards etc. it's different than before DS but that's what happens when you have children

Have you not heard of Madeleine McCann … seriously I hate the word stupid but this is stupid … either get a 1 bedroom or a balcony room but holidays are not the same as pre kids

I seriously can’t believe you would ask this …

Clearly it's not seared into your mind as no sane parent would consider doing this. NEVER LEAVE YOUR KIDS.

Absolutely crying with laughter and how true this really is.

Holidays with young kids are exactly what it's like at home except, you worry more about the neighbours and a noise complaint, you don't have your usual things to hand, your kids are out of sorts more so at night being in strange place, everything 3 x harder and you leave your holiday with your sainity in shreds.

As for dinner, we just went earlier and then would walk baby around until they fell asleep in the stroller and then did a quick night cap before heading up and resettling baby.

I wouldn't want to personally run the risk. Sit in a quiet room with a 4 minute timer on and close your eyes. It's actually a long time.

Never leave them.

This is why we didn’t stay in hotels with children - always self catering, so we could socialise in the evenings on the terrace / balcony / garden while the children slept.

I’ll also never forget the tragedy of Madeleine McCann, and couldn’t / wouldn’t risk it. I’d get no pleasure in that hotel restaurant with my baby upstairs in a hotel room any number of people could break into!

The few times we were in a hotel we’d take the baby / child to the restaurant and try to get them to sleep in their pram (eg a walk first to send them off then blanket over the top to encourage them to keep sleeping while we ate) or we’d stay in the hotel room. Once or twice DH and I had our evening glass of wine in the hotel bathroom 😀

The macann case is nothing like the situation you're describing. 3 very young children were left in an unlocked apartment where they could have wandered out into rhe road, the swimming pool or the sea. There was no baby monitor.
If you are in range so a monitor works, and the door is locked imo that's not an irresponsible risk in the way the above scenario was.

From experience, I wouldn't.

My parents left me and my DSis alone in a hotel room when we were about 3 and 5 (I'm 52 now). They wanted to watch some entertainment thing going on downstairs. We were in bed and I suggested to DSis that we could hide, so we went into the wardrobe. Yep, it fell, with us in it, and we were trapped in there until my parents eventually came back.

Hotels can work if you have kids that will stay up so you can have a bit of an evening. I struggle to keep mine up past seven, hotel was just miserable.

Self catering works so much better as we can just get a nice takeaway or even cook something nice once they are asleep

We've always done hotel rooms with a separate bedroom for the kids- so one main door but then 2 bedrooms or a lounge so we can enjoy the evening.

I wouldn't leave them with a baby monitor expect maybe in tiny bnbs- there's one we've been to that only has 2 rooms to let and is smaller than our house. I'd be ok going downstairs then.

If you're abroad in Europe with small children the best thing to do is keep them on UK time so they stay up a bit later and wake up a bit later. Helps as restaurants often don't open until 7pm in southern Europe.

You just accept this is life with young children. You either stay in an apartment, the children stay up later, you sit in the dark (and be grateful that you have a bloody smart phone to keep yourself occupied because some of us are older than that and didn't have such luxury items back when our children were little) or you don't go on holiday. They do grow up and then you have more options open to you. My children (21 and 18) actually miss being in a family room. We try to get interconnecting Premier Inn ones now.

Not Dow everyone but when our children were you g we didn't stay in hotels we stayed in villas or apartments so that the children could go to bed and we had a sitting room to ourselves.

I would never leave children in a hotel whilst on holiday.

I think the monitor would pick up the noise of a wardrobe falling, it's not the same scenario.

You sit on the balcony with a glass of wine and chat, read a book, scroll mumsnet etc.

Nope would never do this, even if the room was close by to the restaurant. Some hotels offer babysitting for a fee, or just do what I think the majority do and put the kids to bed and then sit on the balcony with a bottle of wine and a book/cards. Or book a hotel that's totally geared up for the kids like we did this year....kids buffet at dinner that they could help themselves to, an hour or two of kids disco/evening entertainment and then back to the room where they're so tired they pass out quickly!

No, I absolutely wouldn’t. This is one of the many reasons that I always found self-catering was so much easier. You can sit have adult time if you need to put dc to sleep in another room. You get to choose your food. And you don’t have to sit through 3 restaurant meals a day with small children.