Sometimes you’re better off not asking the world for an opinion. As this Mum quickly discovered.
A mum who left her 11-month-old alone in a hotel room while she ate dinner downstairs has been the topic of a major online debate after asking the Internet whether she was wrong to do so.
In a brutally honest article for The Telegraph, a British mum — who uses the pseudonym ‘Frequent Crier’ admitted she checked in to a hotel on Friday night with her husband and then left her baby in the room while they went out for a meal.
In the article the woman claims she is “new to motherhood” and, like most new parents, “missed my freedom and the ease with which I wined, dined and speed-dialed an Uber home without a second thought”.
“It was with some excitement then, that on Friday night, my husband and I put our daughter carefully in her deep-sided travel cot, flipped the switch on the video monitor and tiptoed out of our hotel room to dinner.”
She said the couple checked on the bub regularly and asked hotel staff to alert them if they heard her crying.
The couple returned to the room that night to find their child still asleep however when revealing to friends the following day what they had done soon felt the disapproval of their peers.
“It was only the next day that I realised I may have made a serious error of judgment. There was rapid and wholehearted agreement around the table: we were the only parents prepared to leave our baby sleeping in a hotel room on her own….”
Mumsnet’s Beansonapost read the story in the UK paper and then posted a link, asking other mums in their community what they would do and whether they would leave a child in a hotel room unattended.
Many agreed with the author’s friends that the child should never be left alone whilst others claimed it was irresponsible and dangerous. On the flip-side others dared to admit they had done the same thing, with the ‘safety of a monitor’ to keep them updated. Of course asking the internet for an opinion on anything is always opening a can of worms and there’s hundreds of very split opinions to enjoy!
Would you ever leave your child alone? Let us know below.
6 Comments
Child neglect
Have you never heard of Madelaine McCann?
Absolutely not
Never ever what we’re you thinking you have only been a mother for a short time, don’t you realise the things that can happen in your absence. Why didn’t you put your bubba in a crib and take her out to dinner with you? I’m totally gobsmacked. Hyour child deserves your attention for a long time, I don’t want to hurt your feelings, but babies are so precious, I still worry about my 40 & 37 year old & will do so until the day I die.
You betcha I’d do that with a monitor and me onsite! Baby cries, up I go to bring her down. No fuss, no muss. What do people think could happen that sitting ten feet away while baby naps could prevent? I don’t stay on the same floor of my own home with my infant while she naps; why should I do it at a secure hotel while I have a monitor?
For me depends on how far from the room they were. We attended a family members wedding and brought our 1 Yr old. Our room was directly over the restaurant and we did the same. We were directly below the room and had a video monitor.
We settled our daughter before we left and then went to dinner. Only family were staying in the hotel as a small boutique hotel. Like 50 guests max.
This is only reason we did this but if a big hotel or mixed guests, we wld not have done this. To be honest, our daughter sleeps further away at home.