Strangers touching my baby

Just had a particular unnerving experience in a waterstones cafe where one lady touched my two week old babies face when I was holding her and a man pulled open my cover when I was breast feeding to look at my baby. I repeat, a stranger, a male stranger, pulled open my cover exposing my breast and the baby because ‘he wanted to see the baby’.. I’m still outraged about it and to be honest I didn’t react negatively enough as I was so shocked by this. I’m still getting used to going out in public with my baby but feeling like I now just want to stay in the home/garden. Point to this post is why would a stranger feel like they can touch someone’s baby, especially a newborn. Feeling like a terrible mother for not realising what she was about to do and stopping it before hand. Anyone else had anything like this? :(

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You’re absolutely not a terrible mother, they are terrible people with no respect for boundaries. Lifting up the BF cover of a mother is akin to lifting up someone’s skirt, absolutely vile. I’m so so sorry that you had to experience this but please don’t feel guilty or like you did something wrong!

This is horrific! I'm so sorry you've been through this. I would ask Waterstones for CCTV regarding the man as that is completely unacceptable and should be reported to the police. I hope you are doing okay x

General touching happened to me a few times with my first, so now I'm careful not to let people get too close. E.g. coming up with an excuse to move away or putting the sun shade on the pram. The BF example is a bit terrifying though, sorry you went through that 😞

So sorry for your experience. Absolutely unacceptable to lift someone’s BF cover. There is a reason why the cover was put in place, but don’t beat yourself down. You certainly did not see that coming. I would probably be too shocked to react too. I wish he got a piece of your mind later on though so that he doesn’t repeat.

This is unacceptable 😤

Absolutely shocking! That’s so wrong for anyone to do let alone a stranger! I hope you’re okay lovely, you’re doing everything you can and are certainly not to blame! Xx

I’m so sorry you had that experience while bf, absolutely awful and must have left you feeling very violated. Weirdly the same thing happened to a friend whilst we were out (it was a woman not that it makes it much better) and we were completely the same we were all so shocked that we didn’t react. Hope you are okay and don’t feel put off feeding again in public, I can assure you that was most likely a one off !

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