WHY do strangers feel it is ok to put their hands in a new mother's pram to touch their baby?

It is never okay to touch a stranger's baby without their permission, yet every day people are doing this.

You don't know if that baby has a weakened immune system, is premature, or just a new baby.

After having three premature babies, it is quite obvious people like small babies as they are cute and tiny, but they are also at higher risk of ending up back in hospital for a basic cold.

For a new mum who has had to spend a long time in hospital with their baby in the neonatal intensive care unit, it can become very distressing when people start touching their baby without washing their hands when they are out with their baby, that same poor mother then spends sleepless nights worrying their baby may have picked up germs from a stranger who had no right touching their baby.

You wouldn't walk up to an adult and start touching their face as that would be assault.

It is the same for a baby. Just because they are small and cute doesn't mean you can touch them.

In the eight weeks we have been home with our baby, who was born 11 weeks early and had to stay in hospital for six weeks, we have had to repeatedly tell people not to touch him when we are out in town or out for a meal and some people are too quick for us to politely tell them not to do so.

Yet, if we are blunt in telling people, we are considered rude when in actual fact we are trying to protect are vulnerable baby.

More awareness needs to be raised that it is not ok to touch a strangers baby.

CHARLOTTE EDMUND

Taunton