Mum blasts TikTok trolls who accused her of 'neglect' for leaving five-week-old baby with gran overnight

A MUM has hit back at trolls who accused her of neglect for leaving
her five-week-old daughter with her gran.

Zoe Wallace has thousands of followers on TikTok, where she posts
relatable videos about her life as a busy mum raising two children.

But one of her recent videos blew up on the social media platform,
receiving more than seven million views and resulting in Zoe being the victim of a torrent of abuse.

In it, the mum, from Leigh, Wigan, talks about her daughter Parker
falling ill with RSV – or respiratory syncytial virus.

RSV is a viral illness that causes symptoms such as breathing problems and can lead to more severe bronchiolitis and pneumonia in young babies.

Zoe, 25, describes how Parker, who is now four months old, had to be moved from A&E to a high dependency unit where she was put on a machine to do the breathing for her.

In the video Zoe explains: "I hadn't held my baby for a week but doctors finally let me hold her.

"After a week in hospital, they said I could finally bring my baby home. I feel very lucky that she is still here."

The youngster was diagnosed with a severe chest infection but
thankfully began to recover with the help of antibiotics.

But cruel TikTok users accused the mum of neglect for letting Parker spend the night away from her at five-weeks-old, with one even telling the mum-of-two her daughter deserved to die.

Online trolls blasted Zoe for letting Parker have her first sleepover at her grandmother's, who lives just a 10-minute car journey away, the night before she fell ill.

"Jesus, five weeks and you are done with it already?" said one. "Poor
child isn't gonna grow up the best."

"This is neglect," said another. "How could you do that to your newborn?"

Zoe has since hit back at the "hurtful comments".

She said: "I posted the video originally to share my daughter’s story with RSV.

"It made her very poorly and I was unaware how serious it could be in
newborns.

"I hadn’t even heard about it until she was poorly and I wanted to make other mums aware of the signs.

"I had mentioned that she stayed with my mum the night before falling
ill to show how quickly she declined but it wasn’t taken that way.

"People in the comments have branded me a bad mum because of my
decision to allow my mum to have my child over night."

She explained it was "pretty normal for new mums to get support in
any way from family members," in her opinion.

She explained: "I didn’t know it would be so controversial online," adding she regrets sharing information about the sleepover online.

TORRENT OF TROLL ABUSE

But she added: "I don’t regret sharing my daughter's story, because it could help save another child’s life."

The 25-year-old, who also has a three-year-old son Dominic with
partner David Hunt, 38, described some of the worst abuse she
received.

She said: "The most hurtful are that I’m neglecting my children, I’m a bad
parent, that my daughter deserved to die, because she wouldn’t have
bad parents.

"The main hate I received was along the lines of 'how could you leave
your baby'? It just shocked me how it’s encouraged as a new mum to
accept help from people you trust, because it can be overwhelming, but
as soon as you do it’s seen as neglectful.

"I think the video going viral has proven the double standards for
mums, there’s a lot of mum shaming and I don’t think it’s fair."

Zoe, who is on maternity leave from her job at McDonald's, said she's
been more willing to accept help from her mum with Parker as she was
reluctant with Dominic despite suffering from postnatal depression.

"Dave works in a warehouse and does 12-hour shifts so I'm on my own a
lot of the time," she said.

"My mum has always been very hands-on and involved. With Dominic I
struggled lots and even though I had postnatal depression, I couldn't
see it, and I wouldn't accept the offers of help.

"This time I just thought if people are willing to help, then I'll accept it."
Zoe first started posting videos to TikTok when lockdown began last
year, and has now amassed 36k plus followers and 1.4m likes under her
TikTok name ZoeWallaceYT.

She says she won't let what's happened stop her from doing what she enjoys.

She said: "Anything you put online is going to get criticised, but people don't
have to be nasty about it when they give their opinion."

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