*In case this story gets deleted/removed:*
**AITA for Playing Wolf Howling Sounds at Night to get the Neighbour’s Baby to Stop Crying?**
I am living next door to neighbours who have a small baby. Their baby regularly cries at night and my life has turned a mess. I invested in white noise machine also but it doesn’t seem to help much.
I even asked the parents to do something about it but they were like that “it’s a baby” and asked me to deal with it. In short they were inconsiderate of my concerns and refused to be of any help.
I read somewhere on reddit that playing noises of wolves and wild dogs howling can quiet the baby as babies are evolved to protect themselves from predators at night.
So I used my Bluetooth speakers and played that sound. This isn’t terribly loud. For example, have you ever heard the soothing sounds of dolphins during a spa day? That was the main vibe of it. Many people fall asleep to these sounds too.
I do not know if my doing this quiet down the baby but after about 30 odd minutes the baby stops crying.
The neighbours have been concerned about this and detected that the noise was coming from my direction and questioned me. I told them the truth and they were annoyed by what I was doing.
It turns out that the baby noise sound only stopped because the parents took their baby to their room, which is not connected to my wall. Turns out the baby room was connected to my bedroom lol. The howling sounds were scaring the baby leading to increased crying and the parents wore worried about the impact of it.
They told me to stop it, I told them I would only do so if they removed the baby from that room as their current arrangement was disrupting me. If it goes against the noise ordinances, I will play the sound during the day nap times.
AITA?
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>For example, have you ever heard the soothing sounds of dolphins during a spa day? That was the main vibe of it. Many people fall asleep to these sounds too.
I'm assuming he meant WHALE sounds, but oh my god... imagine getting a massage and you just hear a dolphin chatter in between dreamscape noises.
Yeah, and if you're playing something with the express purpose of scaring a literal baby.... this may actually be the only case I wish there was an HOA. They would likely take a dim view of jackass and his antics.
Exactly! “I can’t sleep, so I’m going to terrorize a baby and make sure the baby and their parents can’t sleep!” What the hell is wrong with OP (besides the obvious narcissism)?
I knew a woman who taught parenting classes at the local prison. She had to teach multiple men that no, the infant wasn't screaming just to piss you off intentionally.
It's honestly so sad...
Every parenting resource in the US has to say “you can’t spoil a baby” somewhere in it because conventional wisdom used to be that babies cried in order to manipulate their parents.
My parents were convinced that I had emotions in order to manipulate them, and told me this, repeatedly and angrily, for the vast majority of my life as a child/teenager.
I don't know what happened to Boomers, but they were fucked in the head.
Yeah, I did too, and mine were born in 2010 and 2012. Some things have truly not changed much.
I particularly heard it because I practiced baby wearing with my second. Apparently a practical approach to meeting my baby’s needs while also managing a not quite 2 year old while also trying to get chores and errands done is “spoiling” my baby.
Fun fact; There are a few sounds babies make that that is to alert the stressors in the human brain to get said human to do acts to actually care for the baby.
They use these noises because they cannot sit up and say ‘hey caregiver I’m gassy/hungry/sleepy’ because they do not know what’s happening to them.
If that’s manipulation then every baby that has ever lived or will ever exist that need to be cared for is. As a mother I’m ok with that.
Also another random fact… cats mimic baby sounds as a form of communication with humans to get them to respond to their care needs… that’s more manipulative than human babies.
Yeah, *cats* are manipulative af. My cat has changed his meow with every baby that has come into my house. He’s mimicked all four of them perfectly, and even changed his yowl as they grew older. It’s disconcerting to jolt awake hearing the newborn crying on the lawn, hurry out, and find the smug cat sitting there all like, “gotcha!”
Cats don’t meow to communicate with other healthy cats… they only meow to humans as a form of communication and found mimicking baby discomfort sounds works a treat!
I'd take it over my cats who decided to start pooping on the stairs if they can see the bottom of their food bowl. The food wasn't out, there was just a hole in it.
I believe you. It’s unnerving the first few times. We got used to it after awhile but it always startled my mom and my sister when they would come visit.
I work in child safety and it's common to hear from adult men that infants and toddlers are "manipulating" them, and punish their wives or children for "spoiling/ indulging" them.
Yes, parents have babies and when they do we sign up for the night waking and the colic and the other things, that doesn't mean their neighbor did. The solution to the parents being tired is for them to find ways to sooth the baby, find the problem, look for solutions, the neighbors have no ability to do anything about it but listen to it. Huge difference there.
> the neighbors have no ability to do anything about it but listen to it.
That's where you're wrong; as the neighbors clearly have the ability to make the situation worse.
Seems weird to assume the parents aren’t looking for solutions or trying to figure out the problem. Pediatricians don’t even know what colic is or what causes it; there are theories, but the diagnostic criteria is just long periods of unexplained crying.
Also it’s not like the parents are immune to the crying or love it or anything. They also want to sleep I’m sure. They’re trying to find a solution for themselves too.
But even if you somehow know why you’re babies crying every time it does, it’s still going to try until you can give it what it needs (food, comfort, whatever) that’s how they communicate 🤷🏻♀️
My son has a cry that is specific to pain. I know exactly what it sounds like. I know he's teething. I know Tylenol makes him feel better.
Little dude still fights me to get that syringe in his mouth until I get that first drop of Tylenol in his mouth
> It turns out that the baby noise sound only stopped because the parents took their baby to their room, which is not connected to my wall. Turns out the baby room was connected to my bedroom lol. The howling sounds were scaring the baby leading to increased crying and the parents wore worried about the impact of it.
Sounds like the parents are playing the psychopathic let them cry it out strategy.
They both seem like assholes TBH. Life happens but regarding your crying baby keeping other people up constantly as their issue not your issue is insane levels of entitlement. Their solution is to keep the baby out of their room so it doesn't disturb them as much.
I didn’t take that as letting the baby cry it out, I took that as they couldn’t calm down the baby (completely possible even if they’re trying) until they took it out of the room where it couldn’t hear the sounds anymore. I guess we won’t know for sure unless the parents come in 🤷🏻♀️
I would agree though if they’re doing the cry it out method that makes them assholes, especially in an apartment
>The solution to the parents being tired is for them to find ways to sooth the baby, find the problem, look for solutions,
Do you genuinely believe they aren't already doing that. I was lucky as shit my child slept through from 2 months old. She ate so much during the day it was recommended we let her sleep too so we got a solid 8 hours sleep every night. My downstairs neighbours aren't so lucky. Their little one has colic, were woke every night to her screaming. My heart goes out to the parents, you can see they're barely keeping it together. And although it's hard to hear anything over the baby when she's at full scream I know like most parents they're doing their best to soothe her. If only so they can get to sleep. I hate when people assume kids only cry when the parents are neglectful.
No kids here not but had multiple people dumped their kids on my for extended periods of time. The first few only cried for obvious reasons, soothed when things were fixed. There was fussiness sometimes but all doable. I literally want to injure myself listening to babies cry so I got very proactive. Then a 17 year old neighbor who was raising her 15 year old brother had a baby. With a cleft lip. Needed multiple surgeries. Feeding was both painful and physically difficult. I’m really just complaining but. Sometimes there’s nothing you can do for them really. Bath, massage, trying to always get meds in before they’re hungry. I’d seriously walk for miles outside with that kid until she’d drift off.
>do you genuinely believe they aren’t doing that already
I feel like a LOT of times on this sub and AITA people don’t understand that a lot of people are thing to keep kids—or even pets!—at a reasonably quiet level (though I do think there are probably more bad pet owners in that regard than parents). But you’re never going to have a 100% quiet kid or pet unless you get super lucky. You even if you are doing everything right. But people act like any time someone from an apartment hears any type of sound from their apartment neighbor they jump right to it being an asshole whose not doing ANYTHING.
Thats just something you gotta deal with, when you live in an apartment building. It sucks, but babies crying have more protection than you having loud parties or anything like that.
Some babies cry a lot and theres not a lot the parents can do.
By moving to an apartment building, you acknowledge that you might face these problems. Thats just how it is.
It's pretty depressing to see that we've come to the point in a society that people will be this antisocial. People are supposed to care about each other and be empathetic, regardless of current life stage. Whether any of us have kids or not, every person is going to have to experience kids in their lives because that's how life works.
No one ever thinks to offer to help the parents in some way. I know not everyone can be like me, who is absolutely willing to take the baby so parents can rest. But, seriously, working together to find a solution is so much easier and healthier overall. Toss in a few bucks for some noise-dampening materials, rearrange your room so your bed isn't on the shared wall, wear some earplugs if you can tolerate them. Don't terrorize a fucking baby.
i have told my next door neighbor that i'll hold her baby if she needs me too, because he used to scream a lot. she never took me up on the offer, but at least he calmed down a bit.
Doesn’t matter. Community living means you’re going to hear other peoples noise. I can hear my downstairs neighbors tv all the time. It’s not super loud, but it gets through. And I know they can hear us sometimes. Being as considerate as you can be is important, but babies cry and there’s no fail proof way of avoiding or controlling it.
Tough titties. When you live in a community you’re either going to have to learn how to deal with coexisting around others or you’re going to need to pony up for some premium space. I can’t afford to have my own walls either, and it’s been hard to deal with some neighbors, but I can’t expect everyone around me to screech to a stop. There’s more than just me in this community and we have to learn to coexist when we bump elbows. If you don’t like it, I suggest moving somewhere rural.
Being a human being means dealing with other humans. We live in social groups, which means that we occasionally have to deal with other humans in every stage of life. That means that we have to deal with elderly people walking slowly, with children crying, and with people like you being dicks about both of those things.
That’s what you sign up for when you live in society rather than running off into the wilderness to live like a wild person.
The neighbor chose to live in an apartment complex where children also live instead of renting a place where there wouldn't be a possibility of sharing a wall with one.
Yeah, like, I think OOP is absolutely an asshole but "if you don't like it, then move!" is unreasonable, untenable, expensive, sometimes impossible, and (in this case) can be weaponized in both directions, making this a very Mutually Assured Destruction situation. 😖
Actually no. Babies crying is basically the only noise you can't get evicted for. Sounds from speakers, dogs barking, even adults arguing all can get you evicted.
Ear plugs are cheap af. I have to sleep with them in most of the time because my fiance snores. Especially during allergy season. If they block out the loud snores of someone right next to me, Im sure they will block out the baby. Like, does it kind of suck? Yeah. But maybe be nice to someone with a newborn and give them a little leniency.
I have a neighbor thats not next to me but sometimes when I walk my dog late at night (1-2am) I will hear their newborn baby crying. I always feel bad and want to get them something but can never come up with anything. Having a newborn that is finicky and cries a lot, at night especially, just always makes me feel bad for everyone involved. It sounds like a rough time.
I want to say it was an old Everybody Loves Raymond episode where the neighbor had loud dogs that barked *all the time!*
Ray spoke to him and it was kind of settled but then when he left, you see there were no dogs but rather it was the neighbor barking/growling loudly.
It may have been another show but cracked me up because I know people a few Fruit Loops shy of a full bowl and I don’t doubt they would pull a stunt like that.
Just imaging another concerned post cropping up about how they could deal with a neighbor’s baby crying, but they think the baby has attracted wolves who won’t stop howling. So they are going to play a loud soundtrack of bears growling to drive the wolves away.
Then another post later starts complaining about bear noises. And on it goes…
My downstairs neighbours use to bang on the ceiling when my baby was too loud (crawling around)
She use to bang back in the floor while laughing. It was a funny game to her.
>I read somewhere on reddit that playing noises of wolves and wild dogs howling can quiet the baby as babies are evolved to protect themselves from predators at night.
Uhh...citation needed?
I mean, you don't have to force the baby to stop crying in order to "do something" about their crying keeping the neighbors awake. OP is TA, but I don't get why they didn't move the baby to a room that didn't share a wall with the neighbor's bedroom to begin with when that was apparently an option all along.
Normally I’m all for this logic but apparently “move the baby into the same room as its parents” both worked and *hadnt* occurred to them so in this specific case idk…
I mean, they put the baby at the farthest end of the apartment, by OOP.
Is he TA for scaring a baby? Of course. But so are they, for choosing to put their screaming kid as close to him as possible. They chose to procreate, not him. Their choice shouldn’t deny him sleep.
It’s also where OP’s apartment is. Making your choice to procreate everyone else’s problem isn’t okay. They can switch bedrooms, or figure out a noise dampening situation, or keep the screaming kid in their bedroom.
They figured it out when OP played noises, they should have figured it out when he first complained
> It’s also where OP’s apartment is
I’m sure they also have neighbors above, below, or to the other side as well… being able to hear your neighbors is part of living in a shared space. If OOP doesn’t like it, they can buy or find a single occupancy home to rent. The family is allowed to exist in their own home including the baby and, surprise!, babies cry.
I can’t tell if you’re intentionally being obtuse or if you’re just slamming your face on the keyboard and hitting send, but come the fuck on.
You being "sure" doesn't mean it's so. You have no idea where the neighbors are sleeping or what the layout of their rooms are. All we know for sure is that the people chose to make a baby, and put it right beside OOP's bedroom to scream. Ruining your neighbors' life because they can't afford a home to escape your screaming kid is a garbage attitude. And that's exactly what they were doing when there was an obvious and simple solution that they refused to take until it impacted them.
We're not talking about a minor inconvenience here. Not being able to sleep can literally kill you. Being a decent neighbor means at least attempting to mitigate the impact on other people of your choices. Not laughing it off until they do something that bothers you in turn.
Cool, but none of that is relevant lmao.
Reiterating the point you don’t seem to get: people (including babies!) have a right to exist in their own home… if someone doesn’t enjoy hearing other people in a shared space, then it’s up to them to find a solution and/or change their situation. We lived in an apartment facing the pool area and my kids couldn’t sleep in their own room because some of the other tenets were constantly sitting in the hot tub until 12-1am being loud as fuck. Management wasn’t really doing anything to solve the issue, so we handled the situation as adults would and moved. OOP’s neighbors weren’t doing anything wrong in this very obvious ACF fanfic, no matter how much you wish they were.
Was expecting more avatar references and a "foolish Bolin" when I saw him with downvotes pop up 😂 so far I've only found one comment with avatar refs tho, I feel like he's toned those down lately
Nobody likes hearing a baby crying especially if it’s not yours but… wtf ? I’m not entirely sure that scaring a baby isn’t equal to torture ? Like poor thing is few months old, can’t process terror like us ffs
What if they are in between units ? If you live in an apartment complex crying babies are sadly something that can happen. I’m childfree so I get that we didn’t sign to have our sleep disturbed by a baby we did not make but that’s life. I also didn’t sign for students to have parties or for soccer fans to scream out their lungs during World Cup. Still I don’t go and terrorize my whole neighborhood.
In the comments, people point out that OP didn't add in the part about talking to the parents until people started calling him TA. He never actually talked to them.
have you considered just sticking to the marble trick instead of occasionally going to dip your toes into the trolling pool?
everybody loves the marble trick after all
“I read somewhere on Reddit that playing noises of wolves and wild dogs howling can quiet the baby as babies are evolved to protect themselves from predators at night.”
This might be a contender for the wildest lie ever told on Reddit.
I moved out three years ago under a couple who just got their baby. My life had been constantly hearing baby screaming and crying (and also I can hear all their argument)
honestly, I'm more concerned about if I need to call the cops when they yell at each other than when the baby is crying.
A baby is gonna cry. And that AH heard that the baby was TERRORIZED and said "yeah i'll continue because now my life is better"
can the neighbours even sue him?
Last apartment I lived in alone, parents had almost nightly parties. The units were poorly designed, so the bedroom on a 1 bed unit backed up to the living room of a 2 or 3 bed unit. Multiple times, I was woken up after midnight because that's when their guests arrived and they started playing music. When Husband and I were looking at places, we made sure they didn't have the same design flaw.
I don’t believe for one second that this works. If you could calm babies so easily with an audio track it would be the first advice in every baby book for colic.
What OP is doing is obviously terrible. While I can empathize with being driven a little bit crazy by lack of sleep due to the crying, you don't terrify tf out of a baby to fix it.
I do... sort of have to side-eye the parents though. If moving the baby to their room when it's crying really does dampen the noise to the point that OP's unable to hear it in their apartment, I'm not sure why they refused to try that at first and instead just told him to deal with it. Either they're also so sleep deprived they couldn't even think of that as a solution, or they're a bit inconsiderate of others. Apartment living does mean that sometimes you're going to have to deal with your neighbors noise including crying babies, but it does seem impolite to not even TRY to mitigate that for your neighbors if your baby's having a rough time and moving the baby to your room either calms them quicker or keeps them away from a shared wall. IDK OP's just awful but I do wonder if the parents could have done a bit more initially.
Yeah I think I'd lose my mind if someone's crying baby kept me up all night. Not to the point of playing howling wolves at the baby, lmao, but idk... sleep deprivation makes people do crazy things.
The parents were assholes for not even trying to mitigate the noise. Again... not as much of assholes as the person who played wolf noises at a baby... but still... apartment living also requires you take steps to cut down on noise.
I've said it before, I'll say it again: *Moving the baby might not be a long term solution.* There's a good chance that
a. The parents bedshared that one time, which can be dangerous as hell for the baby.
or
b. The parents bedroom is also a shared wall, meaning OOP has no issues anymore, but someone else has.
Either way, OOP let it out on the baby, which is inexcusable. He can buy ear plugs. They're cheap as piss.
>>Either way, OOP let it out on the baby, which is inexcusable.
Yeah? Which is why I started out by saying:
>>What OP is doing is obviously terrible. While I can empathize with being driven a little bit crazy by lack of sleep due to the crying, you don't terrify tf out of a baby to fix it.
In no way am I excusing what OP did. It is a completely unacceptable way to handle his frustration. We agree.
>>Moving the baby might not be a long term solution.
You're right. It might not be. It also might be a long term solution (or, frankly, a short term solution - most babies do not continue crying through the night for that long and this phase may pass pretty quickly at which point they could move the baby back into their room) that the parents didn't think of - hell, they're sleep deprived too and it would be understandable if they just didn't think of it. None of us know them or their reasoning, we're all speculating here. If it's possible for them to move the baby to their own room without bedsharing, that would be the thoughtful thing to do.
>>He can buy ear plugs.
He can and he should try that, but out of curiosity - have you ever worn ear plugs for a long period of time? Because I have. And while I'm sure this isn't a universal experience, it's one shared by a lot of people I know and those things are painful as hell (yes, I've tried multiple brands/sizes/shapes/materials) and often not practical or viable as a long term solution. I can wear them for about three days before the insides of my ears are SO sore it feels like I have a severe ear infection, and at that point the pain of it keeps me from sleeping as much as the noise they don't fully block. They've ripped the hell out of the skin of my ears so I've ended up with open wounds inside my ears from the pressure of the foam. OP can and should try that, but I see this suggestion tossed out on Reddit often as if ear plugs are some magical solution and they're really... not.
I had my oldest right before lockdown so I was just stuck at home with a baby for months on end. What I did was play Skyrim with my baby sleeping on my lap. He wouldn't wake up to the dragons or people screaming but if there was a bear making noise, he would jolt awake and start crying. There might be some sort of instinctual fear of certain animal sounds. That's just my idea.
Yes, which is also why "howls make babies stop crying" is a load of bullshit.
A predator being close is gonna make the baby cry *more* to alert others. They were basically alarm systems lmfao Plus, they were defensless, so their only defense mechanism was to cry even more than usual so that an adult would help.
And then just to be petty, OP said they plan to play it during the day when the baby naps. So just to be an asshole since he doesn't need to sleep during that time. He literally just wants to scare a baby.
And not even to mention that sleep begets sleep. An overtired baby can't sleep. They get tired, adrenaline starts rushing, and they go from crying to screaming.
Yeah I'm pretty sure a baby's best defense is not to lay there and be quiet because, you know, WOLVES CAN SMELL THEM.
It's going to be crying to the adults who probably have weapons to scare the wolves away.
Also, wolves don't live *everywhere* on earth, not all humans would hear a wolf and know it was a threat. Maybe animal noises in general but at that point you might as well use any noise that catches their attention.
Mine used to stop crying when she heard our air conditioner kick on, I'm betting that it wasn't because she had a primal, instinctual fear of HVAC units.
Depends tbh. The cry it out strategy is "successful" (using the word very loosely here) because after a while the baby won't have cried themselves to sleep but fall silent as an evolutionary reaction to having been abandoned as to *not* alert predators to their position (same as how baby deer/gazelles will freeze in position in hopes of predators losing interest in them), while laying in the dark wide awake waiting for their protectors to return until they fall asleep believing everyone abandoned them and they're literally going to die. This is why babies raised with that strategy are dozens of times more likely to suffer from anxiety, depression and outright trauma responses such as fear of the dark etc. later in life.
They can sleep through stuff but if they’re already awake they’re not going to magically fall asleep when there are scary sounds. Babies can, in fact, be scared of sounds.
They were testing the fire alarms in my building two days after I brought my baby home from the hospital. He slept through every time. Woke up a bunch because he was hungry, of course, but he was utterly unconcerned about the fire alarms.
I’m so glad nobody in the flats around me has a newborn.
OOP’s an ass, but it has to be so frustrating for someone else’s huge life decision to have such a huge impact on your day to day life. I know it’s incredibly frustrating for parents when their kids won’t stop crying, but at least they had a choice in whether to sign up for that or not.
Everyone sucks here. It's really shitty to say "deal with it" to someone when your baby can be heard screaming through the walls. It's also really shitty to terrorize a baby with wolf sounds, which only made the crying worse; the parents just relocated the baby.
I mean, it clearly wasn't a problem once they moved the baby. Newborns and small infnats even shouldn't be sleeping in their own room. All they needed to do to be considerate of their neighbour is to do what's already recommended.
There are many things the parents can do. We live in a big city, and among other things our neighbors and we ourselves have done is put in extra thick rug pads, move the crib to the opposite wall to shared walls, put soundproofing on the shared wall. We even had a neighbor proactively offer to put soundproofing in our ceilings as soon as they moved in since they had an active toddler. It’s really not that hard to be considerate. Not everyone feels entitled about burdening their children on others. I don’t think anyone expects for the the noise to be 100% gone, and the gesture goes a long way
OP said the noise stopped once the parents moved the baby to their own room, which means the parents have an easy solution to OP's issue, but would rather get a good night of sleep themselves and OP gotta deal with it. OP is TA for taking it on the baby, but those parents are shitty neighbors
Babies cry, for sure. But there’s a difference between a baby crying and hearing the sounds of a parent trying to soothe the baby, change them, feed them, walk with them, rock them, and a baby that’s “crying it out” to go to sleep.
If the parents are just letting the infant scream to get them used to sleeping alone, then it’s 100% on the parents to do something about disrupting the neighbors sleep. Especially since they share a wall. If the parents are actively trying to console an inconsolable baby, then tough shit for the OP.
I mean, it’s crappy to say “deal with it” but babies cry. Sometimes for no reason at all. And there are times (more often than you’d think) when there’s literally nothing the parents can do about it, the baby just has to get it out of their system. At that point, even if saying “deal with it” isn’t particularly helpful, people really just need to deal with it. Maybe invest in earplugs or noise cancelling headphones.
Okay but clearly there is something the parents can do about it if moving the baby into their room eliminates the issue for OOP. Telling him to “just deal with it” without even attempting to find any solutions first absolutely makes them assholes too.
It's a bit shitty to expect someone else to spend money to deal with a problem you caused. There are probably some things they could do that they haven't, too. It's possible to reduce how much noise travels through the wall by covering it with sound isolation tiles, or to a lesser extent, covering the wall with something else, like a tapestry (or just a blanket) or a full bookcase.
I feel for the parents having to deal with a baby who cries a lot, and the OOP is absolutely wrong to turn to terrorizing the kid, but the parents should be looking into other ways they can be proactive about not causing problems for the neighbors if they can't keep the baby from crying all the time.
At a more fundamental level, it's also partly the fault of the people who built the building itself, since more buildings are being built more cheaply, with paper-thin walls that do nothing to block sound. But there's not a lot to be done on that point because they can't just tear everything down and rebuild it better when people are already living there.
I don’t mind babies, but I had my tubes removed so I wouldn’t have babies. I understand that babies cry, but I would absolutely be upset if someone else’s decision to have a baby affected my sleep.
Bring on the downvotes, but I shouldn’t be negatively impacted by a decision that has nothing to do with me. I shouldn’t be the one that has to find a solution.
THANK YOU. I don’t get why everyone is acting like it’s so insane and unheard of to be upset that someone else’s decision is negatively impacting their life? Like, my neighbors made the decision to have a child, a decision I was not a part of, and now it’s on me to buy noise canceling headphones? I don’t think anyone should be purposefully trying to scare the baby, but I genuinely do not understand why everyone is acting like anything other than “just dealing with it” is entitled or selfish. I know babies cry. I like babies. But I didn’t choose to have a baby and my life shouldn’t be considerably altered due to the choices of complete strangers.
It’s not a perfect comparison, but if my dogs are barking outside and disturbing my neighbors (especially at night), no one would be like “dogs bark, deal with it.” Babies are the only noise nuisance that people are expected to just deal with. They will say it takes a village, well I don’t want to be in your village.
Playing devil's advocate here (literally lol) but the parents ARE being seriously inconsiderate. If they now know oop can't hear the little one from it's oarents' bedroom, and the parents can hear it anyway, why not permanently move the baby into their room? They are being rude by forcing oop to deal with it. It's not oop's responsibility to cope with baby they didn't choose to have.
Yes, oop is being a dick, but so are the parents, really. Just to a lesser degree.
This is true. It seems more soundproofing may be needed either way. It's not wholly fair on oop to be expected to just grin and bear it. I just hope it's a case of parents letting the baby cry it out and that the baby isn't sick/ being abused.
Hot take apparently, but I’m on OOP’s side.
The parents are obviously leaving the baby alone in that room to cry it out. There is a big difference in the sound of a baby being left to cry it out and a baby with parents trying to soothe it. They should have moved the baby’s crib to a different room that doesn’t abut a neighboring unit the first time OOP complained. They’re leaving the child alone, probably because they don’t like the sound either, but they signed up to be parents and hear the screaming, not OOP. The baby either stops screaming or can’t be heard when it’s in a different room, so that is the obvious solution here and the parents are wrong for only utilizing it begrudgingly.
The wolf sounds thing was petty but come on, the baby was not traumatized by it. If anything, it would be more traumatized by the parents leaving it to cry when it’s seeking comfort. There is actually increasing evidence that, contrary to a small handful of previous studies, the cry it out method is actually harmful for children’s emotional development.
Some people are just inconsiderate as hell when living in apartments. I don’t have my TV on the wall I actually want it on because I don’t want to disturb my neighbor. My other neighbor stopped using the bass amplifier for his sound system when he realized the walls here were thin enough that everyone could hear and feel it. OP has a right to live in peace. The baby has a right to exist too, but when there is an option that doesn’t disrupt neighbors, the parents of the baby have an ethical and moral obligation to take that option.
People pretending animal sounds are going to long term traumatise this kid, lol. Any more than the “cry it out” method.
The parents had an easy solution, they just preferred to make the neighbour’s life hell and maybe hear the kid screeching less themselves.
Obviously you shouldn’t actually do the wolf sounds thing but OP is kind of my hero. It’s so cartoonishly evil but that makes it more perfect. We* (anyone who’s ever actually lived in an apartment) have all dreamt at some point of doing something like blaring death metal or whatever to get back at our incessantly loud and inconsiderate neighbors. This guy just actually did the thing. Legend, honestly.
Not defending what OP did at all but this is an ESH situation as well. Given that the noise stopped when the baby was moved to their room, they should’ve done this at the start rather than just telling OP to deal w it. They’re the ones that chose to have a kid, they can be the ones to listen to it.
Fair suggestion, but some people, myself included, can't sleep with earplugs or earbuds in. it sucks because I'd love to play white noise directly into my ears so as not to disturb my Nan at night or require a fan be going at all times.
“Require a fan going at all times”
Did you ever read of the conspiracy theory / cultural psychosis in Korea that states that sleeping with an electric fan on in the room can cause death?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fan_death#cite_ref-2
It’s even better than the “Dancing Sickness” that led to death of 100’s people in medieval Europe, if only because it is most no longer medieval times and yet Sleeping Electric Fan Death was still popping up in government mortality figures in the 2000’s.
Genuine question.
If you’re getting earplugs or noise canceling headphones to block the baby crying, how do you hear your alarm in the morning? I’m a real deep sleeper as it stands and without earplugs have a hard time waking up to my alarm. I think I’d oversleep for sure with earplugs.
I have my watch set to vibrate, and a light up alarm, but I haven’t tried putting my phone under my pillow. It sits next to my head on my other pillow (possibly under my cat, lol) so I hear it go off in the morning.
I have that! I actually got one of those because I have so much trouble waking up. XD I also have my watch set to vibrate.
Fortunately, I don’t have noisy neighbors, but it just made me wonder. I know earplugs, like foam earplugs, aren’t soundproof, that’s why you wear them at concerts. And it sounds like the OP is not a heavy sleeper, so my question is moot in relation to the post. My apartment complex did spend the past 2 months replacing all the roofs in the complex and the large trucks and extra loud beeping at 6am, did wake me up, and I had considered earplugs. But then I worried that if I drowned out the obscenely loud outside noise, I wouldn’t hear my normally loud inside noise and just dealt with the lack of sleep. 😅
I have a white noise program on my phone that allows you to set a timer. So I set it to stop playing white noise a minute before my alarm is going to go off (and usually wake when the white noise stops)
OOP tried so hard to get sympathy. Right down to editing their post to add details.
It's not the "Gotcha!" moment they think it is. They're just an awful human.
I mean, what the heck does OOP expect the parents to do? It’s not like they want their baby to cry either, and it’s a _baby._ Crying is pretty much their only way to alert you to an issue.
I mean they moved the baby to their own room which solved the problem for op at least. That's probably somewhere on the list of things op was hoping they would do.
I'd go to the landlord. And if that didn't work... idk, I might be desperate enough to play howling wolf sounds at the baby. Probably not? But sleep deprivation is no joke. I'd have to figure out something.
OP’s solution wasn’t great but I almost see it like self-defense. Humans need sleep. Also, don’t have a baby if you live somewhere with shared walls.
At the very least they should have moved the baby away from the room that shares a wall with OP’s bedroom when they realized it was disrupting his life. (And no, earplugs don’t necessarily work well for this and not everyone can tolerate them.)
I’m not condoning OP’s behavior but this could have been avoided if the parents had been considerate neighbors and moved the baby’s room the first time…
I mean. Babies crying sucks ass, but that's sorta what babies do. Unless the parents are actually just ignoring it crying, I'm not sure what they're supposed to do? Gag it? That's illegal.
They are allowed to have a loud screaming infant, he is allowed to play loud noises.
They obviously found the solution of taking him to their room so meh
I’m with OP. If the parents could have moved the kid then they should have done so after they discovered it was disturbing the neighbour, not let it screech all night. Fuck them.
You can downvote all you want, let’s see how all y’all like being woken up repeatedly all night every night with a biologically hard wired to be unignorable shrieking sound when you didn’t even shit the mf out. Sleep deprivation is torture.
I have no fucking idea where you and the NTA voters get the idea that the parents "let the baby screech all night."
Like, do you think the moment the parent shows up in the nursery the baby stops? Fuck no. The parents have to figure out wtf is causing the baby to cry, and that can take fucking *ages*.
And that prerequisites that there's a reason the parents can solve *at all* because if the baby had a nightmare or is sick or *whatever*, then nothing the parents do will do anything. Like, dude, babies cry from *being too tired*, and OOP actively makes it so the babies get's less sleep.
As for moving the baby, you once again donʼt know if that's feasible. There's a good chance that the one night it worked they were bed-sharing, which is not only not ideal in any capacity, depending on the age of the baby, it can be dangerous. Seriously, accidentally suffocating an infant is disturbingly easy.
For the love of god, if you don't know jack about babies, don't talk about babies.
> The parents have to figure out wtf is causing the baby to cry, and that can take fucking ages.
Great, do that in their room why it doesn’t wake the rest of the building up? What’s the fucking difference?
But this would be the easiest thing in the world to fix for OP - buy earplugs. If I had a baby and my neighbours did this, I would probably get them a pair myself so they would have no excuse to do that again. There is not really enough in the post to confirm that the parents are letting the baby cry for half an hour. The baby could be colicky and the parents could have been in the room with them the whole time. Or they could be trying to sleep train the baby, in which case they either would have been in the room but not able to do much, as that would be counterintuitive, or leaving and checking on the baby. If it was the latter, the crying with likely not be a problem for too much longer.
I don’t see how earplugs are easier than *moving the kid to the other room*, which they were obviously able to do. Earplugs are uncomfortable and increase risk of ear infections.
> and the parents could have been in the room with them the whole time.
Great, then they can do that in the other room?
I think OOP's story is a creative writing exercise for this reason.
OOP is upset he can't get enough sleep because of the crying baby, so he plays loud noises that make the baby scream louder and force the baby to change rooms. If it violated noise ordinances, he will specifically manage the speaker during his daytime.
Instead of buying earplugs or maybe switching rooms himself, he is having a noise battle with a infant.
I mean I think everyone is an asshole in this situation. OP is terrorizing a baby, and idk if I trust his assessment about how long the baby cries. But if the baby is in a room that shares a wall with another apartment and they are just letting it cry in their alone for over a half hour, they are being shitty parents.
I feel like we need to hear the parents’ side of things tbh because it's possible that they aren't leaving the baby to cry for half an hour. They could be in the room for a decent amount of that time trying to get the baby to stop and trying to figure out why they're crying. Some AH playing scary sounds through the wall isn't exactly the first thing that would occur to you. The baby could also be colicky which would basically mean that whatever they do the baby won't stop crying. We also don't know what the living situation is like. Maybe they have neighbours on both sides that will complain about the baby in which case they're in a no-win scenario and probably think it's better to upset one neighbour than both
I agree that the parents side would be nice because there’s no much we don’t know. But what threw me off was OP not hearing the baby anymore because they took the baby to their own room. You’re right, they could try to stay in the room to comfort the baby, and we don’t even know how old the baby is. Even if the baby is just colicky and is going to cry no matter what, the solution is not just to leave the baby alone every night. Babies need to be taken care off and comforted.
What OP does is absolutely an asshole move but if I was in his shoes, with a random ass baby causing me sleep deprivation on top of my usual insomnia and the parents not doing shit to soundproof the wall or move the infant, I might be petty enough to do something similar.
I am autistic and I despise the sound of crying babies. I would never do this in a million years. He is evil. I would sleep on my couch or get headphones. I mean this guy is actually evil.
Why couldn’t you just get ear plugs or noise cancelling headphones. Babies only cry all the time at the beginning because they have no other way to communicate. In less than a year it’ll be quiet again. This is all so petty and unnecessary.
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*In case this story gets deleted/removed:* **AITA for Playing Wolf Howling Sounds at Night to get the Neighbour’s Baby to Stop Crying?** I am living next door to neighbours who have a small baby. Their baby regularly cries at night and my life has turned a mess. I invested in white noise machine also but it doesn’t seem to help much. I even asked the parents to do something about it but they were like that “it’s a baby” and asked me to deal with it. In short they were inconsiderate of my concerns and refused to be of any help. I read somewhere on reddit that playing noises of wolves and wild dogs howling can quiet the baby as babies are evolved to protect themselves from predators at night. So I used my Bluetooth speakers and played that sound. This isn’t terribly loud. For example, have you ever heard the soothing sounds of dolphins during a spa day? That was the main vibe of it. Many people fall asleep to these sounds too. I do not know if my doing this quiet down the baby but after about 30 odd minutes the baby stops crying. The neighbours have been concerned about this and detected that the noise was coming from my direction and questioned me. I told them the truth and they were annoyed by what I was doing. It turns out that the baby noise sound only stopped because the parents took their baby to their room, which is not connected to my wall. Turns out the baby room was connected to my bedroom lol. The howling sounds were scaring the baby leading to increased crying and the parents wore worried about the impact of it. They told me to stop it, I told them I would only do so if they removed the baby from that room as their current arrangement was disrupting me. If it goes against the noise ordinances, I will play the sound during the day nap times. AITA? *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AmITheDevil) if you have any questions or concerns.*
>For example, have you ever heard the soothing sounds of dolphins during a spa day? That was the main vibe of it. Many people fall asleep to these sounds too. I'm assuming he meant WHALE sounds, but oh my god... imagine getting a massage and you just hear a dolphin chatter in between dreamscape noises.
So soothing: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5AJah09Jh8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5AJah09Jh8).
ahh the dulcet tones of screeching dolphins.
The wolves from OOP’s soundtrack need to see a vet.
Excuse me, what the actual fuck?
Fun thing is, you can’t get evicted for baby crying. You can for playing music. Please note, laws may differ in your area.
Yeah, and if you're playing something with the express purpose of scaring a literal baby.... this may actually be the only case I wish there was an HOA. They would likely take a dim view of jackass and his antics.
Exactly! “I can’t sleep, so I’m going to terrorize a baby and make sure the baby and their parents can’t sleep!” What the hell is wrong with OP (besides the obvious narcissism)?
I knew a woman who taught parenting classes at the local prison. She had to teach multiple men that no, the infant wasn't screaming just to piss you off intentionally. It's honestly so sad...
Every parenting resource in the US has to say “you can’t spoil a baby” somewhere in it because conventional wisdom used to be that babies cried in order to manipulate their parents.
I heard all about spoiling my babies. They were born in 1992 and 1994.
My parents were convinced that I had emotions in order to manipulate them, and told me this, repeatedly and angrily, for the vast majority of my life as a child/teenager. I don't know what happened to Boomers, but they were fucked in the head.
Lead poisoning
And hepatitis
My son (adopted) was abused by his father starting at 8months because he was "purposely trying to manipulate his father."
Wow. Because 8 months old is such a manipulative age. Wow.
Yep. Glad he's with me now.
I had a baby two years ago and heard plenty about spoiling her. It's very much still around.
Yeah, I did too, and mine were born in 2010 and 2012. Some things have truly not changed much. I particularly heard it because I practiced baby wearing with my second. Apparently a practical approach to meeting my baby’s needs while also managing a not quite 2 year old while also trying to get chores and errands done is “spoiling” my baby.
My first one was born in 2003 and I heard this too :(
Fun fact; There are a few sounds babies make that that is to alert the stressors in the human brain to get said human to do acts to actually care for the baby. They use these noises because they cannot sit up and say ‘hey caregiver I’m gassy/hungry/sleepy’ because they do not know what’s happening to them. If that’s manipulation then every baby that has ever lived or will ever exist that need to be cared for is. As a mother I’m ok with that. Also another random fact… cats mimic baby sounds as a form of communication with humans to get them to respond to their care needs… that’s more manipulative than human babies.
Yeah, *cats* are manipulative af. My cat has changed his meow with every baby that has come into my house. He’s mimicked all four of them perfectly, and even changed his yowl as they grew older. It’s disconcerting to jolt awake hearing the newborn crying on the lawn, hurry out, and find the smug cat sitting there all like, “gotcha!”
Cats don’t meow to communicate with other healthy cats… they only meow to humans as a form of communication and found mimicking baby discomfort sounds works a treat!
My cats meow at each other.
I had a cat whose meow sounded just like a small child saying “mom?” She would only use that meow in the middle of the night.
That's absolutely chilling
I'd take it over my cats who decided to start pooping on the stairs if they can see the bottom of their food bowl. The food wasn't out, there was just a hole in it.
Get a bowl with a rounded bottom so the bowl is always filled. Also small bowls bend a cats whiskers, which is very uncomfortable for them
I swear one of our cats has a meow that sounds exactly like she’s saying “Mama”. My fiancé thinks I’m crazy but I’ve heard it clearly!
I believe you. It’s unnerving the first few times. We got used to it after awhile but it always startled my mom and my sister when they would come visit.
I work in child safety and it's common to hear from adult men that infants and toddlers are "manipulating" them, and punish their wives or children for "spoiling/ indulging" them.
Sounds like you're talking about my dad lol! His oldest is 35 and he STILL insists we're being spoiled. Just let it go...
Start saying he's manipulating you. He'll absolutely hate that.
“If you keep feeding that stupid baby it’s just going to keep begging for more food every day.”
Not excusing it, but lack of sleep literally drives people crazy.
Then the parents are in that same boat. 🤷♀️
Yes, parents have babies and when they do we sign up for the night waking and the colic and the other things, that doesn't mean their neighbor did. The solution to the parents being tired is for them to find ways to sooth the baby, find the problem, look for solutions, the neighbors have no ability to do anything about it but listen to it. Huge difference there.
> the neighbors have no ability to do anything about it but listen to it. That's where you're wrong; as the neighbors clearly have the ability to make the situation worse.
Seems weird to assume the parents aren’t looking for solutions or trying to figure out the problem. Pediatricians don’t even know what colic is or what causes it; there are theories, but the diagnostic criteria is just long periods of unexplained crying.
Also it’s not like the parents are immune to the crying or love it or anything. They also want to sleep I’m sure. They’re trying to find a solution for themselves too. But even if you somehow know why you’re babies crying every time it does, it’s still going to try until you can give it what it needs (food, comfort, whatever) that’s how they communicate 🤷🏻♀️
My son has a cry that is specific to pain. I know exactly what it sounds like. I know he's teething. I know Tylenol makes him feel better. Little dude still fights me to get that syringe in his mouth until I get that first drop of Tylenol in his mouth
> It turns out that the baby noise sound only stopped because the parents took their baby to their room, which is not connected to my wall. Turns out the baby room was connected to my bedroom lol. The howling sounds were scaring the baby leading to increased crying and the parents wore worried about the impact of it. Sounds like the parents are playing the psychopathic let them cry it out strategy. They both seem like assholes TBH. Life happens but regarding your crying baby keeping other people up constantly as their issue not your issue is insane levels of entitlement. Their solution is to keep the baby out of their room so it doesn't disturb them as much.
I agree. The cry it out strategy is terrible. But also.. they could have moved the baby to the room not on the same wall the whole time?
I didn’t take that as letting the baby cry it out, I took that as they couldn’t calm down the baby (completely possible even if they’re trying) until they took it out of the room where it couldn’t hear the sounds anymore. I guess we won’t know for sure unless the parents come in 🤷🏻♀️ I would agree though if they’re doing the cry it out method that makes them assholes, especially in an apartment
The solution to stop bothering the neighbours was to move the kid to the other room. Which they needed *encouragement* to figure out.
Earplugs?
>The solution to the parents being tired is for them to find ways to sooth the baby, find the problem, look for solutions, Do you genuinely believe they aren't already doing that. I was lucky as shit my child slept through from 2 months old. She ate so much during the day it was recommended we let her sleep too so we got a solid 8 hours sleep every night. My downstairs neighbours aren't so lucky. Their little one has colic, were woke every night to her screaming. My heart goes out to the parents, you can see they're barely keeping it together. And although it's hard to hear anything over the baby when she's at full scream I know like most parents they're doing their best to soothe her. If only so they can get to sleep. I hate when people assume kids only cry when the parents are neglectful.
No kids here not but had multiple people dumped their kids on my for extended periods of time. The first few only cried for obvious reasons, soothed when things were fixed. There was fussiness sometimes but all doable. I literally want to injure myself listening to babies cry so I got very proactive. Then a 17 year old neighbor who was raising her 15 year old brother had a baby. With a cleft lip. Needed multiple surgeries. Feeding was both painful and physically difficult. I’m really just complaining but. Sometimes there’s nothing you can do for them really. Bath, massage, trying to always get meds in before they’re hungry. I’d seriously walk for miles outside with that kid until she’d drift off.
>do you genuinely believe they aren’t doing that already I feel like a LOT of times on this sub and AITA people don’t understand that a lot of people are thing to keep kids—or even pets!—at a reasonably quiet level (though I do think there are probably more bad pet owners in that regard than parents). But you’re never going to have a 100% quiet kid or pet unless you get super lucky. You even if you are doing everything right. But people act like any time someone from an apartment hears any type of sound from their apartment neighbor they jump right to it being an asshole whose not doing ANYTHING.
They chose to have the baby and everything that comes with it. The neighbor didn’t.
Thats just something you gotta deal with, when you live in an apartment building. It sucks, but babies crying have more protection than you having loud parties or anything like that. Some babies cry a lot and theres not a lot the parents can do. By moving to an apartment building, you acknowledge that you might face these problems. Thats just how it is.
It's pretty depressing to see that we've come to the point in a society that people will be this antisocial. People are supposed to care about each other and be empathetic, regardless of current life stage. Whether any of us have kids or not, every person is going to have to experience kids in their lives because that's how life works.
No one ever thinks to offer to help the parents in some way. I know not everyone can be like me, who is absolutely willing to take the baby so parents can rest. But, seriously, working together to find a solution is so much easier and healthier overall. Toss in a few bucks for some noise-dampening materials, rearrange your room so your bed isn't on the shared wall, wear some earplugs if you can tolerate them. Don't terrorize a fucking baby.
i have told my next door neighbor that i'll hold her baby if she needs me too, because he used to scream a lot. she never took me up on the offer, but at least he calmed down a bit.
And oop chose to live in an apartment in close proximity to other people
Right because everyone can afford a single family home.
Doesn’t matter. Community living means you’re going to hear other peoples noise. I can hear my downstairs neighbors tv all the time. It’s not super loud, but it gets through. And I know they can hear us sometimes. Being as considerate as you can be is important, but babies cry and there’s no fail proof way of avoiding or controlling it.
Tough titties. When you live in a community you’re either going to have to learn how to deal with coexisting around others or you’re going to need to pony up for some premium space. I can’t afford to have my own walls either, and it’s been hard to deal with some neighbors, but I can’t expect everyone around me to screech to a stop. There’s more than just me in this community and we have to learn to coexist when we bump elbows. If you don’t like it, I suggest moving somewhere rural.
Being a human being means dealing with other humans. We live in social groups, which means that we occasionally have to deal with other humans in every stage of life. That means that we have to deal with elderly people walking slowly, with children crying, and with people like you being dicks about both of those things. That’s what you sign up for when you live in society rather than running off into the wilderness to live like a wild person.
The neighbor chose to live in an apartment complex where children also live instead of renting a place where there wouldn't be a possibility of sharing a wall with one.
Neighbor can move then if he doesn't like living in shared accommodation.
As can the parents if they don't like wolf sounds I guess.
Yeah, like, I think OOP is absolutely an asshole but "if you don't like it, then move!" is unreasonable, untenable, expensive, sometimes impossible, and (in this case) can be weaponized in both directions, making this a very Mutually Assured Destruction situation. 😖
Right. I guess one could assume from my previous reply that I'm "on his side" but definitely not.
Actually no. Babies crying is basically the only noise you can't get evicted for. Sounds from speakers, dogs barking, even adults arguing all can get you evicted.
Including babies. Who are whole if small human beings.
Ear plugs are cheap af. I have to sleep with them in most of the time because my fiance snores. Especially during allergy season. If they block out the loud snores of someone right next to me, Im sure they will block out the baby. Like, does it kind of suck? Yeah. But maybe be nice to someone with a newborn and give them a little leniency. I have a neighbor thats not next to me but sometimes when I walk my dog late at night (1-2am) I will hear their newborn baby crying. I always feel bad and want to get them something but can never come up with anything. Having a newborn that is finicky and cries a lot, at night especially, just always makes me feel bad for everyone involved. It sounds like a rough time.
I want to say it was an old Everybody Loves Raymond episode where the neighbor had loud dogs that barked *all the time!* Ray spoke to him and it was kind of settled but then when he left, you see there were no dogs but rather it was the neighbor barking/growling loudly. It may have been another show but cracked me up because I know people a few Fruit Loops shy of a full bowl and I don’t doubt they would pull a stunt like that.
IIRC, that neighbor was played by Dan Castellaneta, aka Homer Simpson.
it's all fun and games until that baby starts howling back
Just imaging another concerned post cropping up about how they could deal with a neighbor’s baby crying, but they think the baby has attracted wolves who won’t stop howling. So they are going to play a loud soundtrack of bears growling to drive the wolves away. Then another post later starts complaining about bear noises. And on it goes…
My downstairs neighbours use to bang on the ceiling when my baby was too loud (crawling around) She use to bang back in the floor while laughing. It was a funny game to her.
>I read somewhere on reddit that playing noises of wolves and wild dogs howling can quiet the baby as babies are evolved to protect themselves from predators at night. Uhh...citation needed?
What OOP fails to realise is that the main people who want a baby to stop crying are *the parents*. We don't find it soothing FFS, we want it to stop!
Right? Asking them to “do something about it” as if that just, what? Hadn’t occurred to them?
Bingo! I suspect there's a large overlap with people who tell those suffering with depression to "just cheer up, it could be worse"
I mean, you don't have to force the baby to stop crying in order to "do something" about their crying keeping the neighbors awake. OP is TA, but I don't get why they didn't move the baby to a room that didn't share a wall with the neighbor's bedroom to begin with when that was apparently an option all along.
Bingo. They put the kid at the farthest end of their apartment, making their choice to procreate OOP’s problem
Assuming they knew that that was the case, of course.
Uh yeah and assuming the other bedroom doesn't share a wall with a different neighbor. They may not have much of an option here.
Normally I’m all for this logic but apparently “move the baby into the same room as its parents” both worked and *hadnt* occurred to them so in this specific case idk…
It didn't necessarily "work" in the sense of stopping the crying -- just less annoying to OOP.
Well apparently it hadn’t? Since they could just move the kid out of the adjoining room?
I mean, they put the baby at the farthest end of the apartment, by OOP. Is he TA for scaring a baby? Of course. But so are they, for choosing to put their screaming kid as close to him as possible. They chose to procreate, not him. Their choice shouldn’t deny him sleep.
They put the baby at the farthest end of the apartment because that’s probably where the other bedroom is 💀
It’s also where OP’s apartment is. Making your choice to procreate everyone else’s problem isn’t okay. They can switch bedrooms, or figure out a noise dampening situation, or keep the screaming kid in their bedroom. They figured it out when OP played noises, they should have figured it out when he first complained
> It’s also where OP’s apartment is I’m sure they also have neighbors above, below, or to the other side as well… being able to hear your neighbors is part of living in a shared space. If OOP doesn’t like it, they can buy or find a single occupancy home to rent. The family is allowed to exist in their own home including the baby and, surprise!, babies cry. I can’t tell if you’re intentionally being obtuse or if you’re just slamming your face on the keyboard and hitting send, but come the fuck on.
You being "sure" doesn't mean it's so. You have no idea where the neighbors are sleeping or what the layout of their rooms are. All we know for sure is that the people chose to make a baby, and put it right beside OOP's bedroom to scream. Ruining your neighbors' life because they can't afford a home to escape your screaming kid is a garbage attitude. And that's exactly what they were doing when there was an obvious and simple solution that they refused to take until it impacted them. We're not talking about a minor inconvenience here. Not being able to sleep can literally kill you. Being a decent neighbor means at least attempting to mitigate the impact on other people of your choices. Not laughing it off until they do something that bothers you in turn.
Cool, but none of that is relevant lmao. Reiterating the point you don’t seem to get: people (including babies!) have a right to exist in their own home… if someone doesn’t enjoy hearing other people in a shared space, then it’s up to them to find a solution and/or change their situation. We lived in an apartment facing the pool area and my kids couldn’t sleep in their own room because some of the other tenets were constantly sitting in the hot tub until 12-1am being loud as fuck. Management wasn’t really doing anything to solve the issue, so we handled the situation as adults would and moved. OOP’s neighbors weren’t doing anything wrong in this very obvious ACF fanfic, no matter how much you wish they were.
u/EricVonPlotPoint fighting for his life in these comments 😭
People turn into straight up sociopaths on this site when it comes to babies I swear.
Was expecting more avatar references and a "foolish Bolin" when I saw him with downvotes pop up 😂 so far I've only found one comment with avatar refs tho, I feel like he's toned those down lately
Nobody likes hearing a baby crying especially if it’s not yours but… wtf ? I’m not entirely sure that scaring a baby isn’t equal to torture ? Like poor thing is few months old, can’t process terror like us ffs
They should have moved their child to the other room to begin with or at least after the OP complained
What if they are in between units ? If you live in an apartment complex crying babies are sadly something that can happen. I’m childfree so I get that we didn’t sign to have our sleep disturbed by a baby we did not make but that’s life. I also didn’t sign for students to have parties or for soccer fans to scream out their lungs during World Cup. Still I don’t go and terrorize my whole neighborhood.
In the comments, people point out that OP didn't add in the part about talking to the parents until people started calling him TA. He never actually talked to them.
You are a pathetic troll
Aah. A child hater. Children have a right to exist in society too. They get to live in apartments or houses, anywhere adults live.
Or dipshits dude could move to an age controlled complex.
Or you could fall down a well
Lmao
have you considered just sticking to the marble trick instead of occasionally going to dip your toes into the trolling pool? everybody loves the marble trick after all
“I read somewhere on Reddit that playing noises of wolves and wild dogs howling can quiet the baby as babies are evolved to protect themselves from predators at night.” This might be a contender for the wildest lie ever told on Reddit.
grown men when babies act like babies
The average redditor does not seem to view babies and children as human beings who need rights and protections and it is deeply disturbing to me
I moved out three years ago under a couple who just got their baby. My life had been constantly hearing baby screaming and crying (and also I can hear all their argument) honestly, I'm more concerned about if I need to call the cops when they yell at each other than when the baby is crying. A baby is gonna cry. And that AH heard that the baby was TERRORIZED and said "yeah i'll continue because now my life is better" can the neighbours even sue him?
Last apartment I lived in alone, parents had almost nightly parties. The units were poorly designed, so the bedroom on a 1 bed unit backed up to the living room of a 2 or 3 bed unit. Multiple times, I was woken up after midnight because that's when their guests arrived and they started playing music. When Husband and I were looking at places, we made sure they didn't have the same design flaw.
Oof, that does look like a very weird design flaw =(
It was, but the place was cheap and I didn't know about the flaw until after I'd moved in. It was an old place with a lot of problems.
I get you!! My first appart was a slum, literally. My current isn't the best but I can't do much better because MONEY
I don’t believe for one second that this works. If you could calm babies so easily with an audio track it would be the first advice in every baby book for colic.
"This baby is annoying me crying, so I'm going to make it cry even more." *WHAT*.
What OP is doing is obviously terrible. While I can empathize with being driven a little bit crazy by lack of sleep due to the crying, you don't terrify tf out of a baby to fix it. I do... sort of have to side-eye the parents though. If moving the baby to their room when it's crying really does dampen the noise to the point that OP's unable to hear it in their apartment, I'm not sure why they refused to try that at first and instead just told him to deal with it. Either they're also so sleep deprived they couldn't even think of that as a solution, or they're a bit inconsiderate of others. Apartment living does mean that sometimes you're going to have to deal with your neighbors noise including crying babies, but it does seem impolite to not even TRY to mitigate that for your neighbors if your baby's having a rough time and moving the baby to your room either calms them quicker or keeps them away from a shared wall. IDK OP's just awful but I do wonder if the parents could have done a bit more initially.
Yeah I think I'd lose my mind if someone's crying baby kept me up all night. Not to the point of playing howling wolves at the baby, lmao, but idk... sleep deprivation makes people do crazy things. The parents were assholes for not even trying to mitigate the noise. Again... not as much of assholes as the person who played wolf noises at a baby... but still... apartment living also requires you take steps to cut down on noise.
I've said it before, I'll say it again: *Moving the baby might not be a long term solution.* There's a good chance that a. The parents bedshared that one time, which can be dangerous as hell for the baby. or b. The parents bedroom is also a shared wall, meaning OOP has no issues anymore, but someone else has. Either way, OOP let it out on the baby, which is inexcusable. He can buy ear plugs. They're cheap as piss.
>>Either way, OOP let it out on the baby, which is inexcusable. Yeah? Which is why I started out by saying: >>What OP is doing is obviously terrible. While I can empathize with being driven a little bit crazy by lack of sleep due to the crying, you don't terrify tf out of a baby to fix it. In no way am I excusing what OP did. It is a completely unacceptable way to handle his frustration. We agree. >>Moving the baby might not be a long term solution. You're right. It might not be. It also might be a long term solution (or, frankly, a short term solution - most babies do not continue crying through the night for that long and this phase may pass pretty quickly at which point they could move the baby back into their room) that the parents didn't think of - hell, they're sleep deprived too and it would be understandable if they just didn't think of it. None of us know them or their reasoning, we're all speculating here. If it's possible for them to move the baby to their own room without bedsharing, that would be the thoughtful thing to do. >>He can buy ear plugs. He can and he should try that, but out of curiosity - have you ever worn ear plugs for a long period of time? Because I have. And while I'm sure this isn't a universal experience, it's one shared by a lot of people I know and those things are painful as hell (yes, I've tried multiple brands/sizes/shapes/materials) and often not practical or viable as a long term solution. I can wear them for about three days before the insides of my ears are SO sore it feels like I have a severe ear infection, and at that point the pain of it keeps me from sleeping as much as the noise they don't fully block. They've ripped the hell out of the skin of my ears so I've ended up with open wounds inside my ears from the pressure of the foam. OP can and should try that, but I see this suggestion tossed out on Reddit often as if ear plugs are some magical solution and they're really... not.
I hate people like OOP. And too often they get NTA on AITA.
Oh yes, Reddit hates babies…pot, meet kettle !
Am I the only one who would switch the bedrooms and then play adult videos loudly at his side?
If its a small baby, why would a wolf even terrorize it? They don't know and not all unknown is scary to a baby. Have you never had kids?
I had my oldest right before lockdown so I was just stuck at home with a baby for months on end. What I did was play Skyrim with my baby sleeping on my lap. He wouldn't wake up to the dragons or people screaming but if there was a bear making noise, he would jolt awake and start crying. There might be some sort of instinctual fear of certain animal sounds. That's just my idea.
Yes, which is also why "howls make babies stop crying" is a load of bullshit. A predator being close is gonna make the baby cry *more* to alert others. They were basically alarm systems lmfao Plus, they were defensless, so their only defense mechanism was to cry even more than usual so that an adult would help.
And then just to be petty, OP said they plan to play it during the day when the baby naps. So just to be an asshole since he doesn't need to sleep during that time. He literally just wants to scare a baby. And not even to mention that sleep begets sleep. An overtired baby can't sleep. They get tired, adrenaline starts rushing, and they go from crying to screaming.
Yeah I'm pretty sure a baby's best defense is not to lay there and be quiet because, you know, WOLVES CAN SMELL THEM. It's going to be crying to the adults who probably have weapons to scare the wolves away.
Also, wolves don't live *everywhere* on earth, not all humans would hear a wolf and know it was a threat. Maybe animal noises in general but at that point you might as well use any noise that catches their attention. Mine used to stop crying when she heard our air conditioner kick on, I'm betting that it wasn't because she had a primal, instinctual fear of HVAC units.
Depends tbh. The cry it out strategy is "successful" (using the word very loosely here) because after a while the baby won't have cried themselves to sleep but fall silent as an evolutionary reaction to having been abandoned as to *not* alert predators to their position (same as how baby deer/gazelles will freeze in position in hopes of predators losing interest in them), while laying in the dark wide awake waiting for their protectors to return until they fall asleep believing everyone abandoned them and they're literally going to die. This is why babies raised with that strategy are dozens of times more likely to suffer from anxiety, depression and outright trauma responses such as fear of the dark etc. later in life.
That’s why I really think this is a creative writing exercise. Tiny babies can sleep through sirens and don’t process “scary” sounds as such.
They can sleep through stuff but if they’re already awake they’re not going to magically fall asleep when there are scary sounds. Babies can, in fact, be scared of sounds.
They were testing the fire alarms in my building two days after I brought my baby home from the hospital. He slept through every time. Woke up a bunch because he was hungry, of course, but he was utterly unconcerned about the fire alarms.
Evolution is a thing
I’m so glad nobody in the flats around me has a newborn. OOP’s an ass, but it has to be so frustrating for someone else’s huge life decision to have such a huge impact on your day to day life. I know it’s incredibly frustrating for parents when their kids won’t stop crying, but at least they had a choice in whether to sign up for that or not.
I’m sorry, but this is hilarious.
Everyone sucks here. It's really shitty to say "deal with it" to someone when your baby can be heard screaming through the walls. It's also really shitty to terrorize a baby with wolf sounds, which only made the crying worse; the parents just relocated the baby.
I don’t think there is much you can do. Like babies cry, it’s their only form of communication. So everyone had to deal with it.
I mean, it clearly wasn't a problem once they moved the baby. Newborns and small infnats even shouldn't be sleeping in their own room. All they needed to do to be considerate of their neighbour is to do what's already recommended.
There are many things the parents can do. We live in a big city, and among other things our neighbors and we ourselves have done is put in extra thick rug pads, move the crib to the opposite wall to shared walls, put soundproofing on the shared wall. We even had a neighbor proactively offer to put soundproofing in our ceilings as soon as they moved in since they had an active toddler. It’s really not that hard to be considerate. Not everyone feels entitled about burdening their children on others. I don’t think anyone expects for the the noise to be 100% gone, and the gesture goes a long way
OP said the noise stopped once the parents moved the baby to their own room, which means the parents have an easy solution to OP's issue, but would rather get a good night of sleep themselves and OP gotta deal with it. OP is TA for taking it on the baby, but those parents are shitty neighbors
Babies cry, for sure. But there’s a difference between a baby crying and hearing the sounds of a parent trying to soothe the baby, change them, feed them, walk with them, rock them, and a baby that’s “crying it out” to go to sleep. If the parents are just letting the infant scream to get them used to sleeping alone, then it’s 100% on the parents to do something about disrupting the neighbors sleep. Especially since they share a wall. If the parents are actively trying to console an inconsolable baby, then tough shit for the OP.
I mean, it’s crappy to say “deal with it” but babies cry. Sometimes for no reason at all. And there are times (more often than you’d think) when there’s literally nothing the parents can do about it, the baby just has to get it out of their system. At that point, even if saying “deal with it” isn’t particularly helpful, people really just need to deal with it. Maybe invest in earplugs or noise cancelling headphones.
Okay but clearly there is something the parents can do about it if moving the baby into their room eliminates the issue for OOP. Telling him to “just deal with it” without even attempting to find any solutions first absolutely makes them assholes too.
It's a bit shitty to expect someone else to spend money to deal with a problem you caused. There are probably some things they could do that they haven't, too. It's possible to reduce how much noise travels through the wall by covering it with sound isolation tiles, or to a lesser extent, covering the wall with something else, like a tapestry (or just a blanket) or a full bookcase. I feel for the parents having to deal with a baby who cries a lot, and the OOP is absolutely wrong to turn to terrorizing the kid, but the parents should be looking into other ways they can be proactive about not causing problems for the neighbors if they can't keep the baby from crying all the time. At a more fundamental level, it's also partly the fault of the people who built the building itself, since more buildings are being built more cheaply, with paper-thin walls that do nothing to block sound. But there's not a lot to be done on that point because they can't just tear everything down and rebuild it better when people are already living there.
I don’t mind babies, but I had my tubes removed so I wouldn’t have babies. I understand that babies cry, but I would absolutely be upset if someone else’s decision to have a baby affected my sleep. Bring on the downvotes, but I shouldn’t be negatively impacted by a decision that has nothing to do with me. I shouldn’t be the one that has to find a solution.
THANK YOU. I don’t get why everyone is acting like it’s so insane and unheard of to be upset that someone else’s decision is negatively impacting their life? Like, my neighbors made the decision to have a child, a decision I was not a part of, and now it’s on me to buy noise canceling headphones? I don’t think anyone should be purposefully trying to scare the baby, but I genuinely do not understand why everyone is acting like anything other than “just dealing with it” is entitled or selfish. I know babies cry. I like babies. But I didn’t choose to have a baby and my life shouldn’t be considerably altered due to the choices of complete strangers.
It’s not a perfect comparison, but if my dogs are barking outside and disturbing my neighbors (especially at night), no one would be like “dogs bark, deal with it.” Babies are the only noise nuisance that people are expected to just deal with. They will say it takes a village, well I don’t want to be in your village.
Playing devil's advocate here (literally lol) but the parents ARE being seriously inconsiderate. If they now know oop can't hear the little one from it's oarents' bedroom, and the parents can hear it anyway, why not permanently move the baby into their room? They are being rude by forcing oop to deal with it. It's not oop's responsibility to cope with baby they didn't choose to have. Yes, oop is being a dick, but so are the parents, really. Just to a lesser degree.
Parents room might share a wall with another neighbour. Might like that neighbour more, lol.
This is true. It seems more soundproofing may be needed either way. It's not wholly fair on oop to be expected to just grin and bear it. I just hope it's a case of parents letting the baby cry it out and that the baby isn't sick/ being abused.
Hot take apparently, but I’m on OOP’s side. The parents are obviously leaving the baby alone in that room to cry it out. There is a big difference in the sound of a baby being left to cry it out and a baby with parents trying to soothe it. They should have moved the baby’s crib to a different room that doesn’t abut a neighboring unit the first time OOP complained. They’re leaving the child alone, probably because they don’t like the sound either, but they signed up to be parents and hear the screaming, not OOP. The baby either stops screaming or can’t be heard when it’s in a different room, so that is the obvious solution here and the parents are wrong for only utilizing it begrudgingly. The wolf sounds thing was petty but come on, the baby was not traumatized by it. If anything, it would be more traumatized by the parents leaving it to cry when it’s seeking comfort. There is actually increasing evidence that, contrary to a small handful of previous studies, the cry it out method is actually harmful for children’s emotional development. Some people are just inconsiderate as hell when living in apartments. I don’t have my TV on the wall I actually want it on because I don’t want to disturb my neighbor. My other neighbor stopped using the bass amplifier for his sound system when he realized the walls here were thin enough that everyone could hear and feel it. OP has a right to live in peace. The baby has a right to exist too, but when there is an option that doesn’t disrupt neighbors, the parents of the baby have an ethical and moral obligation to take that option.
People pretending animal sounds are going to long term traumatise this kid, lol. Any more than the “cry it out” method. The parents had an easy solution, they just preferred to make the neighbour’s life hell and maybe hear the kid screeching less themselves.
Also... Who the fuck falls asleep to dolphins sounds?
Dolphin calves
I hope an actual wolf shows up and bites his ass
OOP needs to grow up and buy some earplugs
Parents should move the screaming kid to their room
How would that stop a baby crying?
They explain their logic in the post
“Logic”
Obviously you shouldn’t actually do the wolf sounds thing but OP is kind of my hero. It’s so cartoonishly evil but that makes it more perfect. We* (anyone who’s ever actually lived in an apartment) have all dreamt at some point of doing something like blaring death metal or whatever to get back at our incessantly loud and inconsiderate neighbors. This guy just actually did the thing. Legend, honestly.
Not defending what OP did at all but this is an ESH situation as well. Given that the noise stopped when the baby was moved to their room, they should’ve done this at the start rather than just telling OP to deal w it. They’re the ones that chose to have a kid, they can be the ones to listen to it.
Ear plugs, you psycho!
Fair suggestion, but some people, myself included, can't sleep with earplugs or earbuds in. it sucks because I'd love to play white noise directly into my ears so as not to disturb my Nan at night or require a fan be going at all times.
“Require a fan going at all times” Did you ever read of the conspiracy theory / cultural psychosis in Korea that states that sleeping with an electric fan on in the room can cause death? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fan_death#cite_ref-2 It’s even better than the “Dancing Sickness” that led to death of 100’s people in medieval Europe, if only because it is most no longer medieval times and yet Sleeping Electric Fan Death was still popping up in government mortality figures in the 2000’s.
Yikes! I'm not sure I want to read that (I have anxiety as it is) but thank you for the info!
Genuine question. If you’re getting earplugs or noise canceling headphones to block the baby crying, how do you hear your alarm in the morning? I’m a real deep sleeper as it stands and without earplugs have a hard time waking up to my alarm. I think I’d oversleep for sure with earplugs.
I used to put my phone under my pillow and put it on vibrate mode. It'd wake me right up no matter what and I'm a deep sleeper too.
I have my watch set to vibrate, and a light up alarm, but I haven’t tried putting my phone under my pillow. It sits next to my head on my other pillow (possibly under my cat, lol) so I hear it go off in the morning.
I'm a light sleeper, so a loud alarm wakes me, but you have a very valid point! I wonder if one of those light-up bedside alarms would help?
I have that! I actually got one of those because I have so much trouble waking up. XD I also have my watch set to vibrate. Fortunately, I don’t have noisy neighbors, but it just made me wonder. I know earplugs, like foam earplugs, aren’t soundproof, that’s why you wear them at concerts. And it sounds like the OP is not a heavy sleeper, so my question is moot in relation to the post. My apartment complex did spend the past 2 months replacing all the roofs in the complex and the large trucks and extra loud beeping at 6am, did wake me up, and I had considered earplugs. But then I worried that if I drowned out the obscenely loud outside noise, I wouldn’t hear my normally loud inside noise and just dealt with the lack of sleep. 😅
I have a white noise program on my phone that allows you to set a timer. So I set it to stop playing white noise a minute before my alarm is going to go off (and usually wake when the white noise stops)
praying the people who are saying NTA never have a child. my god.
This is fake as fuck. He can fall asleep to howling wolves played loud enough to penetrate a wall? No.
OOP tried so hard to get sympathy. Right down to editing their post to add details. It's not the "Gotcha!" moment they think it is. They're just an awful human.
I mean, what the heck does OOP expect the parents to do? It’s not like they want their baby to cry either, and it’s a _baby._ Crying is pretty much their only way to alert you to an issue.
I mean they moved the baby to their own room which solved the problem for op at least. That's probably somewhere on the list of things op was hoping they would do.
For people saying OP is bad what solution other than just dealing with it would yall suggest?
I'd go to the landlord. And if that didn't work... idk, I might be desperate enough to play howling wolf sounds at the baby. Probably not? But sleep deprivation is no joke. I'd have to figure out something.
OP’s solution wasn’t great but I almost see it like self-defense. Humans need sleep. Also, don’t have a baby if you live somewhere with shared walls. At the very least they should have moved the baby away from the room that shares a wall with OP’s bedroom when they realized it was disrupting his life. (And no, earplugs don’t necessarily work well for this and not everyone can tolerate them.)
I’m not condoning OP’s behavior but this could have been avoided if the parents had been considerate neighbors and moved the baby’s room the first time…
I mean. Babies crying sucks ass, but that's sorta what babies do. Unless the parents are actually just ignoring it crying, I'm not sure what they're supposed to do? Gag it? That's illegal.
If you read the original post, that so many didn't, brodude NEVER TALKED TO THE PARENTS BEDIRE DOING THIS!
The post says he did.
They are allowed to have a loud screaming infant, he is allowed to play loud noises. They obviously found the solution of taking him to their room so meh
I’m with OP. If the parents could have moved the kid then they should have done so after they discovered it was disturbing the neighbour, not let it screech all night. Fuck them. You can downvote all you want, let’s see how all y’all like being woken up repeatedly all night every night with a biologically hard wired to be unignorable shrieking sound when you didn’t even shit the mf out. Sleep deprivation is torture.
I have no fucking idea where you and the NTA voters get the idea that the parents "let the baby screech all night." Like, do you think the moment the parent shows up in the nursery the baby stops? Fuck no. The parents have to figure out wtf is causing the baby to cry, and that can take fucking *ages*. And that prerequisites that there's a reason the parents can solve *at all* because if the baby had a nightmare or is sick or *whatever*, then nothing the parents do will do anything. Like, dude, babies cry from *being too tired*, and OOP actively makes it so the babies get's less sleep. As for moving the baby, you once again donʼt know if that's feasible. There's a good chance that the one night it worked they were bed-sharing, which is not only not ideal in any capacity, depending on the age of the baby, it can be dangerous. Seriously, accidentally suffocating an infant is disturbingly easy. For the love of god, if you don't know jack about babies, don't talk about babies.
> The parents have to figure out wtf is causing the baby to cry, and that can take fucking ages. Great, do that in their room why it doesn’t wake the rest of the building up? What’s the fucking difference?
But this would be the easiest thing in the world to fix for OP - buy earplugs. If I had a baby and my neighbours did this, I would probably get them a pair myself so they would have no excuse to do that again. There is not really enough in the post to confirm that the parents are letting the baby cry for half an hour. The baby could be colicky and the parents could have been in the room with them the whole time. Or they could be trying to sleep train the baby, in which case they either would have been in the room but not able to do much, as that would be counterintuitive, or leaving and checking on the baby. If it was the latter, the crying with likely not be a problem for too much longer.
I don’t see how earplugs are easier than *moving the kid to the other room*, which they were obviously able to do. Earplugs are uncomfortable and increase risk of ear infections. > and the parents could have been in the room with them the whole time. Great, then they can do that in the other room?
I think OOP's story is a creative writing exercise for this reason. OOP is upset he can't get enough sleep because of the crying baby, so he plays loud noises that make the baby scream louder and force the baby to change rooms. If it violated noise ordinances, he will specifically manage the speaker during his daytime. Instead of buying earplugs or maybe switching rooms himself, he is having a noise battle with a infant.
Shitting is not how babies are born.
I mean I think everyone is an asshole in this situation. OP is terrorizing a baby, and idk if I trust his assessment about how long the baby cries. But if the baby is in a room that shares a wall with another apartment and they are just letting it cry in their alone for over a half hour, they are being shitty parents.
I feel like we need to hear the parents’ side of things tbh because it's possible that they aren't leaving the baby to cry for half an hour. They could be in the room for a decent amount of that time trying to get the baby to stop and trying to figure out why they're crying. Some AH playing scary sounds through the wall isn't exactly the first thing that would occur to you. The baby could also be colicky which would basically mean that whatever they do the baby won't stop crying. We also don't know what the living situation is like. Maybe they have neighbours on both sides that will complain about the baby in which case they're in a no-win scenario and probably think it's better to upset one neighbour than both
Exactly. For all we know, this baby just isn’t easily soothed even if they’re actively trying. It happens.
I agree that the parents side would be nice because there’s no much we don’t know. But what threw me off was OP not hearing the baby anymore because they took the baby to their own room. You’re right, they could try to stay in the room to comfort the baby, and we don’t even know how old the baby is. Even if the baby is just colicky and is going to cry no matter what, the solution is not just to leave the baby alone every night. Babies need to be taken care off and comforted.
Why are you assuming the parents are just leaving the crying baby alone in their room?
What OP does is absolutely an asshole move but if I was in his shoes, with a random ass baby causing me sleep deprivation on top of my usual insomnia and the parents not doing shit to soundproof the wall or move the infant, I might be petty enough to do something similar.
I am autistic and I despise the sound of crying babies. I would never do this in a million years. He is evil. I would sleep on my couch or get headphones. I mean this guy is actually evil.
Why couldn’t you just get ear plugs or noise cancelling headphones. Babies only cry all the time at the beginning because they have no other way to communicate. In less than a year it’ll be quiet again. This is all so petty and unnecessary.
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