Mom Warns The Nation About The Dangers Of Public Changing Mats After Making One Sickening Discovery
When you're the parent of a defenceless baby, you're constantly having to be aware of all kinds of potential dangers that your little one could be vulnerable to. It's sort of part of the job - in fact, it's a massive part of the job. Because if you're not always alert as far as the safety of your child is concerned, well, things could take a very bad turn.
But as concerned as any good parent is about the health, safety, and happiness of their infant, you do eventually realise that their crying is usually nothing to be too worried about. I mean, that's famously what babies do: they cry... a lot! Sometimes it's because they're hungry or need a change of diaper, but a lot of time it's simply down to them being bored and in need of a change of scenery.
That's why it's pretty easy to dismiss a baby's crying as being no cause for concern when in reality there could be a very serious reason as to why your child is acting up. Hayley Turner, a mother from Berkshire in the UK, had to learn this the hard way when she went into a public restroom to change her baby boy's diaper.
Credit: Facebook / Hayley Turner
While inside the restroom, Turner saw that a changing mat had been provided for public use. Now, Turner had used public changing mats plenty of times before so it seemed like the most ordinary thing in the world.
But this time it was different - something utterly bizarre and actually quite sinister was going on. The moment Samuel was placed on the changing mat, he began screaming in what appeared to be sheer agony.
Initially, though, Hayley just thought he might just be tired and didn't think much of it. However, when she lifted him back up, she was alarmed to see that his back had turned red.
Credit: Facebook / Hayley Turner
She then inspected the changing mat and was truly startled by what she saw.
Hayley described exactly that in a Facebook post which has since gone viral with over 100,000 shares:
"I don’t normally post things like this but I’m guessing if it happened to me it could happen to someone else, so I thought I’d spread a little word of warning to prevent it happening in the future....
Today I changed Samuels' nappy on a public changing mat, somewhere I trust to be a safe place. When I led him down he screamed. I dismissed it as him being tired, cold and grumpy so I changed him as quickly as possible so I could give him a cuddle and calm him down. It turns out some lowlife scum thought it would be 'fun' to deliberately put drawing pins in the bottom of the changing mat. Our poor baby boy was led on pins!!! And because he isn't old enough to tell me it hurt, he now looks like a pin cushion with 5 holes in total! Angry doesn't even cover it. It's quite sad to think this has to be done but my word of warning is to CHECK YOUR CHANGING MATS!!"
Credit: Facebook / Hayley Turner
In a later post, Hayley wrote:
"Samuel is fine and has since forgotten about the whole thing. His back is much less red now too. I, on the other hand, am just in shock that people can be so cruel."
Thames Valley Police is now saying a second baby was hurt by the hidden pins at Standlake Village Hall, Oxon, and are investigating.
A spokeswoman added: "Police are investigating this assault and in the meantime, safety advice has been given to those involved."
It absolutely defies belief that anyone could ever think that playing a "prank", with an injured baby as the butt of the joke, could ever be an acceptable thing to do. We can only thank Hayley for bringing attention to an awful incident of this nature so that other parents can make a better-informed decision about how best to go about changing their child's diaper in public.
Let's hope it doesn't become some sort of sick epidemic.