Don't touch my baby!

The BBQ Pit
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[[So it’s not terribly unreasonable for a parent to be this concerned about germs. If the kid were four years old, or a junior in high school, this level of watchfulness might be overboard, but we are talking about a tiny infant here, and they can get very very ill VERY quickly.]]

This is why it’s probably best not to take an eight week old premie to a mall. Just about any pediatrician would tell you that as well. And if you have a small baby, you should wash your hands when you come home from any public place like a mall. I used to take my babies to the nursing home to see their grandmother and old folks sometimes grabbed em without thinking. A lot of these elderly folks are extremely lonely and a little feeble-minded. And some hadn’t been touched or been able to touch a baby in a long time. And they have a little problem with impulse control. Exactly the kind of people you might run into in malls, come to think of it, and beating them up usually doesn’t help, even if it apparently makes some mothers feel better. Guess I’m a wimp, but it never occurred to me to “kick their asses” or take em out for it.

Jill

[Edited by JillGat on 11-15-2001 at 06:01 PM]

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I have to nitpick about the overgeneralization. SOME people supported her reaction, some people understood but hardly applauded, some people disagreed, and some people discussed other things altogether.

Although I think we had a very vigourous discussion about things, I hardly think that the people who did think it was wrong to touch the baby applauded Bubblegirl en masse. There was a real range of opinions, and a lot of people just talked about the subject generally without talking about the OP situation specifically.

I realize I am stating the obvious, but this thread has become a jumping-off point for some sweeping generalizations (like “Newbies aren’t welcomed” or “Everyone is obsessed with my ass” or “babies are germ-ridden dirt machines”) and it’s starting to get to me. Your exclamation mark made it seem like you’re amazed that no one on the boards expressed anything but total cheering support for the OP.

FWIW, if someone wants to snatch a baby, they could snatch it at any time, even with you a foot away. That’s a very creepy thing to introduce into this argument.

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Just to clarify, there was no screaming involved.

Also, to clarify, we were told by our pediatrician to keep sick people away from her, and to not let anyone otuch her who hasn’t washed her hands. If it’s not necessary, we don’t take her out in public, but stuff comes up, you know? Even when we DO take her out, she stays in her stroller, and we keep strangers from getting to close (Close enough to breathe in her face). If someone’s coughing, they don’t get ANYWHERE NEAR her.

Finally, the only reason the stranger got lectured so harshly, is because she ignored BG, even though it was obvious she spoke English. If I had been in BG’s place, I can’t say that I would have been so civil about such rude behavior.

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I guess that much of the fervor here is because the baby is a couple of months old and at this age the body is susceptible to all sorts of sickness and such. I’m not a parent, so I don’t know anything about this but will trust the knowledge put out here by new parents who talk to pediatricians. But there is a lot of anger here that goes well over the limit. Why should a mother “bitch slap” some lady who is touching her child? A little excessive maybe? Perhaps I just come from a different background and don’t see this as a trespass. Granted the lady in the bathroom was over the line to an extent- but just twiddling a toe or chin?

Doesn’t it sound perverted to ask if one can touch someone’s baby. “Excuse me miss. You’re child is so adorable? Can I please touch it? Oh, I would just love to touch it!”
And what’s the deal with the guy who said something like - if you touch me, I can kick your ass for assault? No kidding? Really? So if you are in front of me in a crowded train and I accidentally step on your shoe or if I gently put my hand on your shoulder to tell you you just dropped a glove you can TRY to kick my ass? Let me see you try, ass-wipe. I’ll do a tarantella on your forehead.

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But she wasn’t touching the baby’s toe or chin–did you read the OP? The lady touched the baby’s hands. Babies put their hands in their mouths all the time. Would you put your hand in your mouth immediately after a stranger had touched it? After you answer that, think how much better your immune system is than a baby’s.

How is actually touching the baby any less “perverted” than asking?

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  1. You’ve gotta admire a man who lives in a world where ladies drop gloves. “Oh Miss, (tap tap) you dropped your glove. And by the way, your slip is showing”

  2. I may not have actually dropped a glove, but don’t you tell me I can’t understand the horror of Unimanual hyperthermia. I know the torment of one-sided frost-bitten fingers quite well, since I defrosted my ancient fridge last weekend.

  3. Oh don’t pay any attention to Redboss. It’s just more of his feeble jokes. He thinks he’s so smart, well he’s not!

  4. Opal! Nice to see you posting more. Your point of view is always interesting, and not aired often enough I think.

  5. Insider jokers in front of newbies are tiresome, aren’t they?

  6. I was a newbie once, and I made a fool of myself frequently. Although usually not in the presence of so many people, thank God.

  7. Who’s a gorgeous little thing then? A wuzza wuzza wuzza wuzzza! Yes she is! Yes she is! A wuzza wuzza wuzza wuzza - hey what th’- OW! that hurt lady! OOh! Waroooh! Stop it! OUCH! HEY! Okay okay, here’s your goddam glove back.

  8. (thinks) what a bitch! She’s obviously not gettin’ any!

  9. On the other hand you don’t have to be a newbie to be a fool.

RedfoolFREEasanoldcodger

[sub]I love youse all[/sub]

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You don’t need to say that. I think it’s appropriate to at least glance at the parent for approval before talking to or playing with the child. There are some parents who don’t feel comfortable with their children having too much contact with strangers. Others will smile invitingly or encourage the child to talk to you (with a smaller baby, they might wave the child’s hand at you or something). Whether the parent is being overly paranoid or not, he/she is responsible for teaching the child how to behave in public and towards strangers and may not want you to interfere with that. The parent is also more familiar with the child’s temperament. Some children may scream or cry when touched by a stranger. This is not necessarily the result of a paranoid upbringing - individual children are different from each other. When dealing with young children, I think the parents’ wishes should be acknowledged and respected.

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Tell me what’s wrong with a hovering hand, a glance at the mother, and a polite “May I?”.

To which the mother will respond with a nod and a smile, or “Oh, I’d rather you didn’t. She was a premmie, and her immune system isn’t very strong yet”.

How terribly simple and polite. And who would have thought that simply asking the mother’s permission would avert tears, tantrums and public abuse?

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setsail, you’ve gotten your point across. next time you’re in a public place, i will feel no qualms about coming up to you and pinching your cheek. after all, you don’t own the bathroom. if you were so worried about strangers pinching your cheek, you should have stayed home.

pennylane, i think you summarized the sentiment quite nicely. it’s her kid and she gets to decide. my sister-in-law’s kid is very sweet, but shy. doesn’t like strangers. she’d probably tell you that you can’t touch the baby. my step-kids are incredibly friendly, and (being toddlers) will probably approach you. have to keep a close eye on them, but i certainly don’t mind people in the mall shaking their hands and saying hi. the point is, it’s my choice (or their father’s). for my sister-in-law, it’s her choice.

oh, and by the way, i have a friend who’d likely bite your hand off if you tried to pinch her cheek. she has a paranoid fear of people touching her face, and when she’s stressed it gets pretty severe. luckily, most people know better than to randomly touch strangers.

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Bubblegirl never said that she screamed at the woman–just made sure that she got her point across to the lady, who was apparently intent on ignoring her. As she stated, she probably wouldn’t have gotten so upset if it hadn’t been for that one thing! It just seemed ludicrous to me that vocally expressing outrage to moronic rudeness by a stranger was considered by you to be crossing the line in protectiveness, then in the next breath you say that you would never so much as leave your child in the care of another adult that you KNEW, to step so much as one foot away. Ever stop to think that perhaps Bubblegirl might actually have done this woman a favor in the long run? Better a little embarrassment now, than to have her clock cleaned by someone else later. We all know that we can’t protect our kids from every danger out there–we can’t always have them in our view, can’t keep every germ from touching them, can’t keep them in perfect health all the time. Worse yet, we can’t be 100% certain that a stranger will never hurt them somehow. But we do our best, and when someone comes along like this woman who seems to feel that babies are public property, we go into tigress mode. No one would have expressed any surprise had Bubblegirl caught this woman rifling through the diaper bag and let loose on her. The woman might have been trying to steal her money, after all. But because it was her baby–a human being–that she got upset about, well that’s just too much? I guess I just don’t understand the mentality that says we must be polite, even if a stranger comes up lays hands on our kids. Maybe the woman meant no harm–I’m sure she didn’t. But it’s more than rude to go up and touch a stranger’s child–as has been pointed out before, the lady wouldn’t have walked up to an adult and started touching her hands and face! It’s not OK just because they’re babies and babies are so cute that we want to touch them–you still ask!!

I am mostly very non-confrontational. These boards are pretty much the only place I feel free to express myself so openly. But when it comes to my children, I am different. I still don’t like confrontation, but mess with them and you’ll get it from me, I guarantee! And sorry–I don’t care if that’s considered rude or over the top.

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We adopted our son while in the Peace Corps in Jamaica. To get on a Jamaican bus, you have to push and shove your way through a crowd to get on. There are no lines. That’s just how it’s done and you do it or you won’t get on. And when you get on, you usually stand most of the time. Crammed together with others, somebody’s armpit in your face, somebody’s butt pressed against your stomach.

Since I had a baby, I used the Jamaica “baby muddah” way of getting on the bus. Imagine the average U.S. mother doing this - I handed my baby through a window of the bus before i got on, and then the crowd would yell to the driver, “Let da baby muddah onna bus, a fi she pickney on!”
I’d always get on, but still didn’t get a seat. My baby got passed from one person to the other. They didn’t just touch his hands, they kissed him on the lips.

Too bad Opal wasn’t there. She’d a kicked all their asses! So I guess I didn’t think in terms of trying to avoid germs that much in those days as it was mostly completely out of my control.

You do what you can, and if you have a high risk baby, it’s probably best to stay out of crowded public venues like malls.

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Jill, I’m a pasty white boy from the Southwest. Little help?

“Let the baby’s mother on the bus” I get. The rest?

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I believe, the rest would translate as “That’s her baby already on the bus!” or words to that effect. Of course, I only hear Jamaican accents when my parents get nostalgic …

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If I might hazard a guess, “pickney” looks quite a bit like “pickaninny,” which is considered racist in the US but may well be inoffensive in Jamaican creole. From context, I imagine it comes to “…her baby’s already on!”

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I’ve skimmed through the posts, but there was so much glurge and off-OP shit that I just decided to post.

That said, aaawwwwwfuck… it must really suck to have to go around all day, every day feeling that every person you see is jack-the-ripper-cum-ted-bundy. The sorry thing about it is that in that case, that one lady was probably the person you would WANT to have touching, coddling, etc. your baby. She was probably clean, honest and caring. You want to have your children around those types. But Bubbles got in her face and bitched about the germs and shit; accusing a perfectly normal person of (near)child-molestation and disease spreading.

Note to the masses: If someone is going to take your baby, they won’t play goo-goo games with it in front of you. If someone wants to spread germs, they will spit on their fingers and wipe it on the baby’s mouth as they walk by. Otherwise put- the sickos are out of your control. The accidental bacteria spreader could just as easily coughed in the general direction of your pram. It doesn’t take hands holding to spread stuff around.

You WANT that lady to be there while you wash your hands. You want people like that looking out for you when your back is turned. If you turn your society into a bunch of fear-mongering sheep, then you are going to be the one to lose in the end. Because if you push people away, keep them at a ‘safe’ distance from you and yours, then they won’t be there when something REALLY bad happens. That lady would have noticed your child, given it love and affection, and then SCREAMED at the top of her lungs when Psycho-joe came by to steal it as you washed your hands.

But no, you’ve now made that woman scared to care. From now on, when she wants to be nice and social, she won’t. She’s going to turn the other direction because it’s not her kid, not her problem. The last time she cared, she got yelled at. Thank you, Bubbles, for turning another kind, caring, normal person into a cynical ‘hands-off’ person. And the sad part is, is that you will justify your actions to the very end. “The GERMS!!!” “Think about the GERMSSSS!!!” “She could’ve done anything to my child!!!”

I have no clue how to go on with this. It is just sad. I leave you to live in the hell that you have helped to create. You shun the people that will help, and allow the wolves that follow your rules (stay away, keep quiet, lurk in the shadows and watch, but don’t touch, until you…are…not…looking) a feeding ground.

As for the germs- well, if your kid is never exposed to them, then how can they build up nice, strong immune systems? Anti-bacterial soaps, sterile this and sterile that, baths everyday and twice after playing in the yard. You are going to create a child with the immune system of the boy in the bubble- never exposed, never in threat- until, until…

Ach. It is pitiful. America is such a great place, but y’all are just too scared of each other. I like living in a place where baby prams are left outside of stores and strangers come by to make sure the baby is covered up. Where people step in and protect someone when a drunk starts creeping out a teenage girl. Seal yourself up in the cubby hole that makes you feel safe- but my kids will look at the world as it really is- 99% safe, with some pretty scary 1%'s to watch out for. And they will know the difference because they won’t waste their time fearing that nice lady who made them giggle.

-Tcat

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uh huh.

So the women who steal babies out of hospital nurseries never cooed over them in public previously?

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It’s not “baby’s mother,” it’s “baby mother.”
That’s what you become when you have a baby in Jamaica. Unless you are the baby faddah. “A fi” is possessive. “A fi she” is “her,” “a fi me” is “my.” “A fi oono” is “your” (plural you). “Pickney” is a perfectly acceptable word for a child in the Caribbean. To pluralize it, you’d say, “de pickney dem.” Unnastan?

As for America being more dangerous than Europe for babies and young children, the main difference is that the media play up the freak accounts even more here. I think if you looked at the statistics, you would find that it is extraordinarily rare for a stranger to abduct a child in the U.S. It’s more important to teach your child HOW to speak to strangers, as a kid is likely to get lost but really not likely to be kidnapped.

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Tomcat–so it’d be OK with you if someone just came up to you and put their hands on you? Someone you didn’t know? Just came up and started fiddling with your hands and face? Right–you’d tell 'em to back the hell off–and you’d be perfectly justified in so doing. The same applies to my kids–unless I know you or have given you, a stranger, permission, don’t touch 'em!! It’s rude, at best.
That’s even if you are the nicest, most germ-free person in the world. You don’t touch strangers or their kids without permission, get it? Now that lady in the restroom does too, I’ll bet.

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One more thing, Tomcat. I’ll bet you’re the kind of idiot who takes their kids over to play with the neighbor’s kids when they’ve all got the chicken pox. “Let’s get their immune systems nice and healthy by making them sick as dogs!! Yay, hurray!” Don’t try to keep them healthy by AVOIDING sick people, keep them safe by EXPOSING them to illness. That has GOT to be one of the most inane ideas I’ve ever heard!!

You’d better believe I keep my kids away from those I know are ill and it ticks me off to the ceiling to only be told, “I (or my kids) have had a cold the last couple of days.” AFTER we’ve all shaken hands and such.

And as for making that “poor lady afraid to care now” that is just so much baloney. You don’t have to get up in a stranger’s face to show them that you care. I have seen kids left unattended before and I watch them from a distance till I see that they are once again with the people whom they obviously belong with. I don’t have to go up and put my hands on them.

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Tomcat - Thank you for saying the exact thing I have been trying to put into words.

I think it is sad that our society has gotten to the point of being so over protective that we have discouraged the kindness of strangers. As Tomcat said, this woman will most likely turn the other way the next time she sees a stranger’s baby. We are quickly turning into the type of people who look straight ahead and mind our own business in place of human contact with one another. It’s a pity.

Before I get slammed with the “the baby was a preemie and only two months old” argument, let me say that my daughter was born 7 ½ weeks premature. She too spent the beginning of life in a hospital incubator and was tiny and delicate. I took her out in public soon after she came home from the hospital. Not only did I let my nieces and nephews pack her around (with assistance and under my watchful eye), I let the old people in the nursing home where my grandmother lived pass her around, and even the neighbor girls come over and play house with her (again, under my watchful eye). She was tiny and cute with a headful of dark hair that strangers (especially old ladies) couldn’t resist. Strangers would always talk to her, touch her, make her smile, and sometimes even ask to hold her. They loved and she loved it. Although my two sons were not preemies, I raised them the same way.

I am not trying to belittle Bubble’s attitude about her baby and strangers, I am just offering a different view. My daughter will be 18 years old in a month and a half and whether or not it is a result of her exposure to so many people, she very rarely gets a cold, let alone anything serious. Not sure if it is a result of immunity to the germs she was exposed to or just luck. She is also very outgoing and probably the happiest person I know. Again, not sure if there is a relationship or not, but I tend to think so.