Traveling with children is not always easy, and traveling with babies is probably even less. We can make many plans but in the end, fulfilling them all can become complicated because life with young children is usually very unpredictableand.
For example, they could have planned a family dinner but it turns out that it is time to put your baby to bed and he falls asleep in the hotel room before they could go out to dinner. What do you do in that case? Do they resign themselves to not going out and ask for room service or does your husband leave for something? Or do they leave the baby asleep in the room while they go down to the hotel restaurant for dinner?
The latter was what a British mother and her husband did, and she narrates it anonymously in an article for Telegraph.
She begins by saying that she was traveling with her husband and her 11-month-old baby to visit friends, but when they also had children at home, they chose to stay in a hotel to be all more comfortable. Being a first-time mother, she was tired after pregnancy and did not have the same ease of going out as she did before having her baby. So it was easy for them (and as she tells in the article, exciting) put your baby in your travel cot, turn on the monitor to monitor it and sneak out of the room to go to dinner.
I don't know if my reaction is exaggerated but when I read this I was impressed. Are you serious? Leave your eleven month old baby asleep completely alone in a hotel room just because you feel like going down to dinner alone I find it very risky. The truth is that I had never heard or read something like that, maybe that's why I'm so surprised.
I want to make it very clear from this moment that I am in no way judging her. I don't think she is the worst mother or a bad mother, nor do I think we should attack her for what she did. But definitely, I would not. It reminds me a little of some cases that I will never understand, such as mothers who leave their babies alone to leave home. What interests me with this article is to reflect a little, analyze the situation and answer the following question: Is she too confident or am I too paranoid?
In her story she tells that dinner was quick. Before 10 p.m. they were already back in their hotel room, brushing their teeth and putting on their pajamas "like ninjas" to avoid waking the baby. Until then she had not thought about her decision.
But it is the next day, when they meet with the friends they were going to visit and tell them what happened, that they begin to doubt having done the right thing after they reacted with a worried face. Their friends told them that hotels do not work for their family because they would never leave their children alone, since they find it very risky.
After that talk, during the course of the week she was talking with other parents and everyone agreed that what they had done was terrible and careless. What provokes me between curiosity and amazement here is her reaction to the responses of the other parents: "I'm sorry, but if you think that, you are letting the fear of the unknown - or at least the fear of very improbable things - drive your lives"Because according to her, all she did was let her baby sleep peacefully in another room, just like she does at home every night.
But we go, a hotel is not the same as a house. At home the distances are much smaller, there are no elevators or stairs far or very long. There is no key that you must enter to enter the room. At home you are in a small and safe environment. Well-known, familiar, comfortable, quiet. In a hotel, well, it seems to me that there are many things and situations that you could not prevent or control. The article does not mention which floor they were on, but even assuming that the room was on the next floor of the restaurant, you still have to travel a great distance and go through several doors to reach the room.
No way I want to sound paranoid but We have to be realistic: Many things can happen out of your control. For example, what would happen in the event that the fire alarm was activated and all guests began to evacuate? I am sure that trying to run against a crowd of people is not an easy thing. Or if for some reason someone saw them come down and try to steal your room? Yes, it is not a common situation but it is not impossible either.
The point I want to reach is the following: Is it worth risking your baby by leaving her alone in a hotel room simply because they wanted to have dinner alone? I do not think so. We are talking about a baby of only 11 months. The mother says that all the time they were watching her by the monitor, but I go back to the point I mentioned earlier: if something happens, the distances in a hotel are longer. It is not the same to run to the room upstairs in your house, than through doors and up floors in a hotel.
Well, in a way I am reassured to know that this is a very particular case and that it seems that most mothers agree with my point of view. The article was shared on the page of Mom Cave TV and the opinions of the mothers were swift. Most have been comments that make it very clear that none of them would ever do something like that, but others are very hard and even insult the mother and accuse her of neglect and abandonment.
On the other hand, some mothers even comment that there are several options that they may have taken to avoid leaving their baby alone, such as asking for room service, eating dinner early together to avoid interrupting the baby's sleeping hours or even checking if the hotel offered babysitting.
Hopefully this was just a hurried decision of a mother desperate to have some time alone with her husband and something that is not repeated, because according to her article apparently she is somewhat sorry to have done it (although the father does not mention anything). Fortunately nothing happened to his daughter, but I think when you have a child, there is nothing more valuable or more important than your safety.
What would you have done instead? Would you leave your baby alone in a hotel room for dinner?
