A new dad has spoken of his humiliation when he was called “disgusting” for taking his baby into the parents’ room at Caneland Central shopping centre.
Damien Leeson was out shopping when his 7-week-old daughter Harpah was due a nappy change and feed.
“I got into the (parents’) room, gave her a change and started feeding her when a mother walked in with her son. She looked at me and said ‘that’s disgusting to see a full grown man in a parents’ room with a little girl’ and (the woman said) that I’m ‘a dirty old (expletive)’,” he told The Daily Mercury.
“She took her son to the toilet and then, as she walked out, she said to her friend who was waiting outside, ‘there’s a dirty old man in the parents room’, and the friend replied with ‘yeah that’s (expletive) up’.”
Mr Leeson was quite rightly horrified he’s been publicly shamed in this way.
“I’m quite a hands-on dad, dirty nappies, feeding, anything I can do,” he said. “My wife was there too and we just looked at each other in shock. I was doing the right thing.”
Mr Leeson said after posting about the incident on Facebook, he was flooded with comments from other men who said they’d been in similar situations while female friends applauded him for being a hands-on dad.
