When it comes to weekends away, parents often struggle with guilt, particularly if their children are still babies. They are faced with a choice of leaving their child behind and worrying about how they will be looked after, or taking the baby along and potentially struggling to enjoy the weekend.
Almost all parents have faced this dilemma at one point or another and this is one mum's story.
Writing an anonymous piece for The Telegraph, the mum explains how she, her husband, and her 11-month-old daughter were staying in a hotel room recently while visiting friends.
They decided to stay in a hotel as their friends also have children, and they didn't want to cause disruption.
Like many other new mums, the writer had missed her social life while pregnant and during the early months of her daughter's life.
So, she and her husband put the baby down and took their baby monitor with them while they went for dinner.
They soon realised the baby monitor would not work as far as their table and would have to check in on her themselves.
"We ended up going back to our room to check on our daughter - who is a very sound sleeper - every 20 minutes, while staff assured us that they would let us know if they heard a cry in passing," the writer explains.
The night passed uneventfully, and both parents were back in the room by 10pm, "brushing teeth and undressing with the stealth of ninjas".
"It was only the next day that I realised I may have made a serious error of judgement", the mum explained.
When she described the previous evening, she was met with concerned looks from her friends.
“‘Oh, hotels don’t work for us', one of them said. ’We would never leave the kids on their own. It’s just not worth the risk.'
"There was rapid and wholehearted agreement around the table: we were the only parents prepared to leave our baby sleeping in a hotel room on her own."
The mum couldn't help but feel shocked by how harsh some of her friends' criticisms were.
"It was my turn to be shocked," she said. She pointed out that some of these parents are considering putting their babies at great risk by cycling through London with them.
"What is worse is that I know some of them are considering cycling through London with their babies - are they mad?
"All I'm talking about here is letting my baby sleep peacefully in a room without me, as she does every night."
In retrospect, the writer said she would have probably used a babysitting service to minimise her worries.
The mum concedes that there is a small risk of someone entering her hotel room, unlike her house at home once it is locked.
However, she says this risk is too small for her to want to stay in with her baby all night long.
"What are the chances, really, that one of the few people with access to our hotel door key would want and be able to harm our baby?
"I don't know the exact odds but they are too small to make me waste an evening sitting in with her in silence, in the dark.
"And definitely too small to make me avoid hotels entirely. I don't think that makes me naive, or reckless."
Over to you mums - what do you think?
