Should Dads be allowed in Baby Changing Rooms?

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Totally! Today I’m going to touch on the subject of baby changing and nursing room. By ‘baby changing’ I don’t mean you go in there to switch babies! Get a grip of yourself, no matter how cute the baby on the next changing table is, you are NOT allowed to trade babies!

Now that I’ve made that clear, let me start my story. I was in a mall last weekend when a lady made a big commotion because somebody’s husband was in the Changing Room changing his son’s nappy. Let me try to explain how the Baby Changing Room looks like. As you enter the Changing Room, there are 3 separate rooms with curtains for nursing mothers and their babies. These rooms allow mothers (not fathers) to breastfeed their babies privately, because as far as I remember, we are not that advanced yet that the fathers are able to breastfeed. Opposite these rooms, there are 2 changing tables for you to clean your baby’s bum bum. Here is where you usually see couples (mother and father) working like a tag team getting rid of toxic waste and slapping on clean diapers (on their babies).

Since it’s not appropriate to take pictures in the Baby Room, I drew the above for you to understand better the layout :P

There has been a debate on whether fathers should be allowed in the Changing area. Seriously, I see no reason why they should not as long as they are not in the Nursing Room. After all, the babies are theirs too. In which rule book does it state that only mothers are allowed to clean dirty backsides? Unfair much right? What if the father is a single Dad? Where would you expect him to change his baby’s diaper? Do we downgrade him into the dirty toilet instead?

Ok, the reason why some mothers feel fathers should not be in that area is because they want to breastfeed their babies comfortably and knowing that there are guys in the baby changing room makes them uneasy. Come on, you nurse privately behind those curtains. Why still deprive those poor fathers of a public space? I doubt these fathers deliberately make their babies poop so they can bring them into that foul smelling Changing Room just so they can peep on other nursing mothers behind curtains?

Having said that, not all mothers nurse their babies behind curtains. There is also a sofa in the Changing area. I for one, prefer to nurse Ayden on the sofa instead of in the Nursing Room as Nursing Rooms can be a tad too stuffy at times. So what happens if a father comes in to change their baby’s nappy while I’m nursing on the sofa? Nothing. That’s what usually happens, NOTHING.

I was nursing Ayden on the sofa the other day when this couple came in to change their baby. Another lady came in to breastfeed her baby but she saw the man there. Before she entered the Nursing Room, she loudly exclaimed that the man should not be in the Changing area and an argument ensued between her and the man’s wife. I don’t understand what is that lady’s problem. She’s going behind the curtain, why the argument? I was the one nursing on the sofa in full view of everyone else yet I don’t see anything wrong with the couple changing their baby together. 

Many mothers out there bothers much with breastfeeding advocacy but what they actually do is put themselves above everyone else. It’s like a breastfeeding mom is Queen and nothing else comes second. What makes breastfeeding more superior than a baby who has just pooped and needed a change of diaper urgently? If the mother can’t do it, let the fathers do it. It is after all, a BABY room. It takes both a mother and the father to create a baby. Keep it that way, don’t chase the Daddy away. The next time you complain about the hubby not helping out much, think again if we are making it any easier for them. Sometimes, we are the one who create the distance…