Mum Diary: Should babies be allowed in quiet carriages?

You know how dreadful it is being stuck on a train or plane or bus with a howling baby? Well, it’s even harder for the parent, as I found out this week.

I had to take seven-month-old Olly on a three-hour train journey to Edinburgh and back in the same day. Six hours of train travel; it was pretty clear he wasn’t going to sleep the entire time while I blithely read the novel I had optimistically added to our bag.

Thankfully, I was able to leave my toddler Harry with his father for the day; he’s a handful in a restaurant waiting 20 minutes for his meal, I think he might actually implode if I tried to get him to sit still on a train.

But I thought that Olly could probably manage it. I packed the bare essentials a baby needs to get him through the day (they filled three large bags), bundled him up in some warm comfy clothes and we were on the platform for 7am.

At first, Olly was a big hit with our fellow travellers. They were all coffee-swilling commuters at that time of day, and their faces lit up when they glanced up from their Metros to see my smiley baby beaming at them.

However, when I wrestled the pushchair onto the train and found a seat, I noticed we were getting some pretty angry looks. There was even a scary-looking man with ‘hate’ tattooed down his neck but he was glaring at me as if I was the anti-social one.

And then I saw it. The ‘quiet carriage’ sign. If we’d been in a film, there would have been a sinister music sting, and a close-up of my face falling.

[Mum Diary: How do you discipline a two-year-old?]
[Mum Diary: Should my baby eat better than me?]

Children aren’t actually banned from the quiet carriages; it’s more about keeping electronic noise down. However, I was pretty sure that there would be even less patience if Olly started to wail in this carriage. I wanted to move, but by this point the train had filled up, and I wasn’t able to wrestle the buggy past people.

So that was my challenge – three hours of keeping Olly as quiet as possible.

The first thing I had to do was feed Olly his breakfast; I thought that keeping to his routine would help so I hadn’t fed him at 6am when we got up. He had a pot of mushed up fruit and some biscuits. Have you ever turned a blender on without putting the top on first? That’s pretty much what Olly looks like after a meal; it goes everywhere.

But today we were on a train and I didn’t want to leave our seat caked in pureed apple for the next passenger. So I covered every available surface with muslin squares and spooned it into him as fast as possible. To my pride, we didn’t spill any – it was only on the journey home eight hours later that I discovered the perfect apple handprint right in the centre of my top.

After breakfast, it would normally be time for his nap, but he was sitting on my knee looking wide awake and waiting for me to entertain him. So I pulled some faces and rattled some toys – only to have Olly erupt in a fit of the giggles.

Hmm. Giggling baby is definitely not as annoying as crying baby, but I wasn’t sure if it was too loud for my fellow travellers. My attempts at being slightly less hysterically funny where met with the same noisy enthusiasm – Olly is a very easy gig.

I was rummaging in one of my three bags for toys when the ticket inspector came round. Fortunately, I’d had the foresight to leave the tickets on the little table ready. Unfortunately, Olly had grabbed them and managed to gum one into pieces while I was distracted.

Thank goodness it was just my receipt card and not the actual ticket he’d eaten – I wouldn’t put it past the train operator to charge me again. By this point it was an hour after his normal nap time, and still Olly wouldn’t sleep.

[Mum Diary: I can't wait to embarrass my children too!]
[Mum Diary: That awkward moment when you forget you can’t sing]

Funny faces, peekaboo, stories, whispered songs… After two hours and forty minutes of non-stop Mummy Entertainment, Olly finally dozed off in my arms – only to wake up 20 minutes later when the train reached Edinburgh. Somehow we’d got through the journey with no tears and no excessive noise – but I was ready to collapse and my mouth hurt from all the enthusiastic smiling.
 
I’ve always been sympathetic to parents of small children on trains. No one wants to be sat next to a crying baby or whinging toddler, but you can’t feasibly ask parents not to travel until their children are old enough to be rational.

Olly and I were travelling up to see a friend of mine who’s 96. We go several times a year and it’s not a journey I ever want to put off. So while I managed to keep things quiet on this journey, I may not next time. Please don’t resent the mother desperately trying to comfort the crying baby – she is as desperate for the wailing to stop as you are.

Do you travel with your kids? Any tips? Should children be allowed in the quiet carriage? Have your say using the comments below.