More parent's room reviews

This one is from Myer in Bankstown. Overall it's quite a good room and I tend to visit here rather than the one that is part of Bankstown Centro.
It features pretty much all mod cons. If you look to your right you will see a sink.

The wall pictures are quite good even if Dora's foot appears to be coming out of her stomach.
If we are out for more than a couple of hours I will bring Trogdor here to crawl around on the carpet and play with the blue thingy on the wall. Honestly, I don't know how clean the carpet is but I trust each time he plays here his immune system gets that little bit stronger.

I'm not sure I see the point of having so many bins to so few change mats. It seems like they are prepared to not have the bins cleaned out all that often. On the other hand it's only rarely that the room smells like too many nappies.

A microwave. I assume it works.

The 'private' feeding room. This room seats two people and does not lock. It has another blue play station thing attached to the wall for older children while baby is having a feed. Honestly, the chairs are not the best for feeding. They are not particularly comfortable and once you have a bigger baby (or a humongous baby in the case of Troggers) you spend the feed trying to support their head off the hard, uncomfortable arm rests while your hand gets squished against the hard, uncomfortable arm rest. The Thomas picture has been both a blessing and a curse for me. Little one was fascinated with it from the first time he saw it but it also distracted him from booba. So after we went in we had to spend five minutes standing in front of Thomas while Troggers patted and cooed to him and then we could settle down to our feed but ONLY if Thomas was either a) totally out of Trogger's line of sight or b) directly in front of him. If he was there but obscured Trogdor would keep pulling off to get a better view. There are chairs available in the change/play room as well.

The toilets. The room is quite large and you could easily bring both a pram and a shopping trolley in with you if you needed to.

High chairs in the changing/play room with another Thomas.
















And there you have it. My second review.

Parent's Room Adventures

For an able bodied person with out a pram the world is your oyster - provided it's an oyster that's easy to get around and doesn't require lifts or travellators. For a person with a pram the world is shrunk to those places with 'disability access'.
A mother with a new baby doesn't go from home to city to shop to cafe. Instead it's more like - home to parent's room to shop near parent's room to cafe with room for pram and also near parents room.*
When Troggers was born I had a shocking time with my supply (for the uninitiated that means I wasn't producing enough breast milk). I was using one of these which involved sticky taping tubes to my breast whilst simultaneously getting a new born to latch properly while not letting all the milk run out over my shirt. Sigh. Fun times. So I was reluctant to feed in public and parenting rooms which were pleasant to sit in and clean became very important. (Since then I have fed in planes, train and automobiles but that's an entirely different post)
Some issues immediately presented themselves:
1) Not all parenting rooms are created equal.
2) Some are just glorified toilets. Infact, some make toilets look like havens of hygiene.
3) Some parenting rooms are obviously designed by people who have never had children. Or have met any children. Or ever were children.
4) No one wants to tell you where the good ones are.
So, in an effort to make this blog a little bit useful to mums I am going to start doing parent's room reviews.

This parent's room is found near JB HiFi in the Galeries Victoria in the City. It's my favourite City parent's room at the moment.

The pros:
1) It is a bit of a secret so it's very rarely used.

2) Every time I have been there it has been clean and it smells fresh. No over full nappy bin smell!

3) It has a button to open the door as you go in. I hate struggling with doors and a pram.

4) The toilet is large enough to wheel the pram in with you. Crazily enough some parent's rooms seem to expect you to leave the pram outside while you go to the loo.















5) It has one of these thingys. I've never used it and I assume it's only useful if you have a bottle of food rather than something stored in tupperware.














6) It has a sink and change tray/table/fold away thingy.















Cons:
1) It only has one chair to breastfeed in and it's out in the open. As very few people go there it wasn't a huge issue for me. The chair itself is comfortable and roomy.
If you're very lucky Trogdor's feet might appear next to you.


















So, there you go. My first review.



* Having one of these is a life saver at times but as Trogdor was 13kg by 7 months a big day out meant I needed to have a pram with me.