The vast majority of us have availed of public baby-changing facilities, and while they may not be up to the standard we enjoy at home, we generally assume they are a safe space to tend to our infant's needs.
With that in mind, it's no surprise one mother was devastated to realise the public facilities she was using to care for her little boy had been vandalised with drawing pins - a cruel act which exposed any child laid on the mat to considerable pain.
Taking to Facebook to raise awareness of her experience, Hayley Turner wrote: "I don't normally post things like this but I'm guessing if it happened to me it could happen to someone else, so I thought I'd spread a little word of warning to prevent it happening in the future."
"Today I changed Samuel's nappy on a public changing mat, somewhere I trust to be a safe place. When I led him down he screamed. I dismissed it as him being tired, cold and grumpy so I changed him as quickly as possible so I could give him a cuddle and calm him down," she continued.
Explaining that her attempts to comfort Samule failed, Hayley continued: "It turns out some lowlife scum thought it would be 'fun' to deliberately put drawing pins in the bottom of the changing mat. Our poor baby boy was led on pins!" (sic)
"And because he isn't old enough to tell me it hurt, he now looks like a pin cushion with 5 holes in total! Angry doesn't even cover it," she wrote in a post which has been shared almost 100,000 times since its upload in recent days.
Sharing an image of the vandalised mat and her little boy's injuries, Hayley finished her message with a warning to other paretns, writing: "It's quite sad to think this has to be done but my word of warning is to CHECK YOUR CHANGING MATS!!"
Hayley has not named the facilities in which the incident took place, but her post acts as a stark reminder to all of us parents.
