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A mother has defended her parenting travel hack after a video went viral in which she explains that her “baby sleeps in the shower” when her family stay in hotel rooms.
TikToker Chloe Molina, 25, sparked debate online after she told her followers that when her family go on away and stay in hotel rooms or rental properties, she puts her baby’s crib in the shower, calling it “the best travel hack”.
“When we travel, our baby sleeps in the shower,” Molina started off by saying in a video posted on 28 August.
The first-time mother then proceeds to explain she does not mean that in the literal sense but instead puts her five-month-old’s crib in the bathroom so the baby has “their own room without paying for another room”.
“Yes, our baby does sleep in the shower, but he sleeps in a crib in the shower, and the reason why we do this is because, for us, when our baby sleeps in our room, he smells us he sees us, he just knows we’re there, and he’s gonna wake up all the time,” Molina explains.
“Usually, the bathroom’s way too tight to fit a crib, and the shower’s big enough, so we put the crib in the shower, and then we crack the bathroom door open so it can feel like he has his own room, his own space. He doesn’t smell us, he doesn’t see us, he has his own room.
“It’s honestly just way better to put him in the shower because you can slightly close the curtain, and you can still pee without them seeing you there.”
However, not everyone was totally on board with the hack, voicing concerns about leaving a baby in a bathroom.
“I’d be too worried about water pipe would burst in the middle of the night,” one user said. “What if the tap runs by itself?”
“Personally with the strong cleaning agents that hotel room bathrooms are cleaned with that is the LAST place I would be putting my baby of a night breathing that air plus likely mould,” another commenter added.
“It’s cute but I would just be worried about the air quality for baby in there.. everything we know about fecal bacteria, is there another place close enough?” someone else questioned.
While some commenters were worried about the hygiene or safety of letting a child sleep in a bathroom, others said that they wished they thought of this sooner.
“This is genius momma,” one user wrote, while another said, “I’m more disappointed I didn’t think of this before!”
Others also added that they had used this travel hack before: “When our kids were babies we had them sleep in so many bathrooms, so handy!”
Some other TikTokers said that they also give their babies their separate roomsusing other parts of the accommodation.
“We do this with walk-in closets at Airbnbs!” someone else wrote.
After the controversial travel hack started a debate in her TikTok comments, Molina defended her reasoning, telling PEOPLE that they used the shower hack for the first time in Mexico after their baby was “up all night long” when he was sleeping in his crib beside her.
"They know if you’re two feet away from them, so they’re going to constantly wake up and see you sleeping right next to them and want milk," Molina explained. "Especially if you’re breastfeeding, they can smell your milk, they can smell you."
Yet, when they placed his crib in the bathroom, she said her baby "slept through the whole night".
For more travel news and advice, listen to Simon Calder’s podcast
