It is an essential part of the experience of having a little one and you often take longer to research and test drive potential pushchairs than you do your family car.

Having said that, anyone who has spent any time out on the streets with a pram knows that there are certain unavoidable irritations that you will always face. This is nothing to do with the manufacture or performance of the pram, but rather the environment and the people who share it with you. Read on to see if you agree with the Dadsnet assessment of the challenges parents with prams face every day.  

Inconsiderate Pedestrians

At least once on any trip out with the pram, you will find yourself following one of those lovely folk who stop suddenly and for no reason in the middle of the pavement without checking behind themselves first. 

This sort of behaviour requires you to attempt a last ditch manoeuvre akin to an emergency stop in order to avoid causing severe ankle damage to these blissfully unaware pedestrians. Of course, the sharp movement of the pram will always wake the baby that has just taken 25 minutes to fall asleep, you will despair and the culprit will look around, scratch their backside and wander off without even realising they were nearly run down by an oncoming vehicle.  

People Taking Up the Whole Pavement

It is not just pedestrians walking away from you that you need to worry about, there are other inconsiderate types coming the other way too. 

As a parent pushing a pram, you are not exactly a stealth object, coming at them from out of nowhere. There is the baby noise, the pushchair itself, the shopping bags, the change bag, potentially the dog as well as you attempt to kill two outdoors birds with one stone, yet you will always come across a group of three or more coming the other way who believe they have the divine right to the entire width of the pavement. 

You can see them come closer and closer, making no attempt to create a gap through which you can pass them. Instead, you are either forced to squeeze along the kerb, hanging on by one wheel in a Starsky and Hutch style, or to simply walk out into the road. And yet, if you were to pick up pace and attempt to scatter them across the path like bowling pins, YOU would be the one that would get in trouble. 

Unwanted Cooing

Talking of divine rights, there is a certain type of stranger who believes they have a free pass to dive into the pushchair and take a look at your, usually sleeping, baby. Once again, following 25 minutes of desperate pushing in order to send them off to the Land of Nod, the last thing you need is an old lady, and it is ALWAYS an old lady, coochie-cooing without permission and waking them up. But that is exactly what they will do. 

Everywhere Has Steps

Before you have a baby, you don’t realise how many steps there are. It turns out that there are steps flaming EVERYWHERE. These also tend to appear just after the baby has drifted off. Are you spotting a pattern here? 

Bouncing the pram up or down a flight of stairs is a one-way ticket to Wake-UpsVille and even if you plan your journey to avoid the steps you know about, some more will appear because that is just how it is and there is nothing you can do about it. 

Everywhere Else is Uphill

Oh yes, if you do avoid the steps, you will find that everywhere else is uphill. It shouldn’t be possible; you would expect that for every uphill there is a downhill, but it never works out like that. Still, you get to work on your guns, right? Tip: wear lycra.