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Unbelievable places parents have forgotten their children

Parents have shared their tales of forgetting children Photo: Getty images
Parents have shared their tales of forgetting children Photo: Getty images

There’s no shortage of embarrassing ‘baby brain’ moments floating around, but when a plane was forced to double back after a mother left her baby behind at the airport last week, people were understandably shocked.

It turns out however, that many people out there have suffered a similar lapse in memory when it comes to misplacing their bundles of joy.

While none have quite reached the level of leaving their baby in an airport, when users were invited to share their worst tales of forgotten children on a thread on Gransnet, the stories that emerged were jaw-dropping.

If you needed to feel better about a recent parenting fail, then this thread has got you covered; from a handbag mix-up at the hospital, to a baby left on the bacon counter, to an unintentional night camping in the backyard, the terrible fear of losing a baby has never felt so real.

Confessions

“I left mine at the nursery,” one parent revealed. “She slipped in and joined the other children on the mat while I delivered her older brother and I walked the very short distance home without missing her.”

Oh My God Wow GIF - Find & Share on GIPHY
Oh My God Wow GIF - Find & Share on GIPHY

“The nursery staff alerted me; I was mortified!”

Another mum temporarily misplaced her child in a hospital, after she doubled back to retrieve a forgotten handbag.

“As she was leaving the car park someone came running out to say she’d now left her baby on the ward,” a gobsmacked onlooker revealed.

Another parent mixed up their kid with the groceries while doing the shopping: “I left my son at the bacon counter in Asda (a supermarket chain)… (my husband) was pushing the buggy and I the trolley. We were at the checkout before we realised he was still there!”

There seemed to be a theme of shopping-induced memory loss, with many other confessing to similar incidents.

“I left mine outside a shop and got a bus home,” one parent admitted. “Amazing what baby brain does when you’re overtired.”

“I left my three week old son asleep in his pram outside a department store,” another parent confessed. “I was halfway up an extremely long hill before I began to get an uneasy feeling that I had forgotten something.”

The guilt

The baby was quickly recovered, but the parent admitted they felt ‘wretchedly guilty’ afterwards.

Another family misplaced their baby among moving boxes. While moving house will inevitably result in things getting lost, you’d hope to lose an ugly lamp or an old sofa over your own flesh and blood.

Oh My God Wow GIF - Find & Share on GIPHY
Oh My God Wow GIF - Find & Share on GIPHY

“We left 7 month old son in his carry cot on the floor of the living room when moving house,” the mortified parent admitted.

“We had filled up the van to move ourselves, putting him in the empty living room until the last minute, and then locked up and drove off!”

Thankfully the missing bub was discovered within minutes of leaving, but for others their babies were misplaced for far longer.

One user recounted a tale her mum had shared of “a neighbour a few doors away who left her baby outside in its pram overnight at the bottom of the garden!”

“She had a large family of about 9 children and apparently didn’t realise that the baby was still outdoors,” the user said.

Safe to say a few parents will be double checking their shopping trolleys, or moving boxes, when they next leave the house.

via GIPHY

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