18 mth old crying in night neighbours complaining??

Jinx

After 2 months the neighbours would have to be saints not to react in my opinion. And not only will they be (I imagine) stressed by the crying they will actively be listening for it - both the OP and the neighbours must be equally exhausted and dread the first cry.... I think its worse listening to someone elses child cry, it just seems that much more cutting....

Bennifred

Mojisola wrote: »

I'm surprised that there is so little sympathy for the neighbours! Having a baby crying for hours night after night would have driven me demented! They don't know your circumstances - they don't know that you're loving parents trying something that the HV suggested. They might be thinking what awful, uncaring people you must be to leave a baby crying for all that time! They might be worried about approaching you because they don't know how you will react.

Don't get too fixed on the stereotype of students - my son has health problems and is struggling to do a science degree. If he was your neighbour, the constant disruption to his sleep would have caused him to fail in his studies.

I'm with you on this one! If you are constantly woken at night by something you have no influence over not only would you be exhausted but stressed and frustrated. Students (the clue is in the name) have to study and learn - not easy when you are a bit tired, let alone exhausted. They must dread every night. And as for when it gets to exam time...:(

I do feel for you, OP, but I think if you go and see the neighbours and apologise (so what if you blub - they may even sympathise!) it may well mitigate their frustration somewhat, and that would help your anxiety about them. They are young, but if you explain things to them they may be able to see things from your point of view.

I'll probably get shot down in flames for suggesting this, but have you considered medication in the short term to regulate your child's sleeping pattern? It may be worth speaking to your GP.

dulcey

l have been very upset by a neighbours baby screaming like somethings seriously wrong. l was worried the baby was ill or had been left home alone. until one night when the baby screamed non stop for 30 minutes l heard someone bang on the wall ( not me ).The crying ceased almost immediately.
My conclusion is that the parents just let the baby scream and went to another room and ignored it whilst myself an maybe other neighbours were upset and worried,After that l was very annoyed that the parents were so heartless to leave the baby crying like that. If people dont care about their own babies you cant expect them to care about neighbours

andrealm

:rotfl:

asquiths wrote: »

She will occasionally have an hrs nap during the day at 12 ish but if she doesn't sleep at that time she falls asleep on the school run at 3-4 which is a nightmare but i've tried everything to keep her awake and nothing works!! even my horrific singing!!

Sounds like that's part of the problem, her nap is quite late and she's not tired enough to settle for bed in the evening. Could you take her for a walk or drive around lunchtimes to get her to have an earlier nap?

skintchick

Sounds to me like it may have been the introduction of CC that has set some of this off, as well as your hospital visit. My DD is 18 months on Saturday so a very similar age, and my friends are all saying thier children are having sleep problems suddenly, and our sleep issues have also got worse recently, so maybe it is partly an age thing? You'd have more experience of that being a mum of 5!

It's a shame you listened to the HV if the bedtime wasn;t a problem for you but maybe you can reassure your little one by going back to the bedtime they want? Have you considered co-sleeping for a while? Our DD comes in with us at first waking (unless this is 11pm when OH settles her) and that way we get a reasonable night's sleep. This is helped as I'm breastfeeding so can feed her back to sleep in our bed then both of us just drop back off again. But even without feeding, cosleeping is very reassuring for them, we did it for a year before moving her to her own room when we moved house, which in hindsight was a mistake as it made her sleep issues much worse but hey ho.

I suppose what I'm trying to say is tune back int your child's messages, ignore what everyone else says and do what works for you as a family until things are better, but remember the mummy mantra THIS TOO SHALL PASS.

As for your neighbours, I'm glad ours also have a toddler who cries at night so we share each otehr's pain, but do have a word and apologise and say you are trying to sort it out but them baning on the wall isn;t helping.

Also, my DD is now trying to drop her daytime nap, which is young to do it but not unheard of - could yours be doing this too? If so, on days when they won;t nap go for a super-early bedtime (we do 6.30 latest). We are doing this and so far it's working. Other days she does nap but sometimes too much so then bedtime is a problem and unlike you we DO want our evenings! I tend to experiment until we find what works for us, and haven;t spoken to a HV for months. Since being told to formula-feed and do controlled crying, I now no longer speak to them about ANYTHING. Safer that way

bethl79

Hope you're having a good night tonight? I really feel for you, we did controlled crying with our eldest dd a few years ago and it was really awful listening to her cry. It did work eventually but took a few weeks, we had a book by Richard Ferber called 'Solve your child's sleep problems', and going by that we built up the time in between settling more gradually. We would wait 1 minute, then 2 minutes and so on to a maximum of 5 minutes. It meant that we would spend about 1 - 2 hours every night going back in to settle her every 5 minutes but I spoke to my neighbours beforehand to let them know I would be doing this and that it would hopefully not be for too long and they were fine about it.

It sounds like your neighbours are being incredibly insensitive and I'm not quite sure what they hope to achieve by banging on the walls as surely they must realise that this won't help a baby to sleep?

I would pop round and apologise that there has been some noise recently, and say that you are aware that they are unhappy but that you are trying to resolve the situation, and you are hoping that your little one will soon be settling herself to sleep. My guess is that they will be much more understanding once having had some reassurance from you that you are acting on it.


Good luck xx

JoJoB

Go round with a gift of earplugs. Not much you can do to silence a noisy baby but you can offer a solution to your neighbour's problem!

Katie-Kat-Kins

Nicki wrote: »

Really? We live in a large 4 storey house with thick walls, and I can hear my 16 month old whenever he gets going wherever I am in the house. I think a baby's cry is designed to be piercing and to make itself heard for evolutionary reasons, and so if my baby were crying in the early hours of the morning when everything else is quiet, I would assume that it could be heard next door unless someone reassured me otherwise.

If you read the very many noise nuisance threads on here, you'll find that all sorts of noises carry - alarm clocks, televisions, music, toilets flushing, etc - not just industrial power tools, and that it causes very real distress to those affected by it.

Sorry I think you've mis-interpreted what I was saying. I wasn't saying that a baby crying isn't unpleasent for the neighbour, just that it isn't the sort of noise that would instantly make you think "must speak to the neighbours it must be disturbing them" like you would with a party or building work, or a faulty alarm.

And you don't necessarily know what sort of noises will carry in your property or which will affect your neighbours.

We are link detatched so we share one wall. Our neighbours would have to be pretty noisey to disturb us because the adjoining wall is our study, but it adjoins their bedroom so we would think twice about having the radio on after 10pm. I haven't a clue what they can actually hear, but when we did have some minor building work done in that room we warned them in advance.

asquiths_2

Hi again all,

A quick update.......

Went back to old routine last night. Got her to bed at 10, she woke up at 3.30 and i just put her in bed with us. She went straight back off to sleep.

Am going to keep doing this for week or so to reenergise myself b4 trying to reduce the time 15mins a week.

As for the neighbour well.....
I went around this morning due to hubby being back from work late yesterday.
I decided to knock with a bottle of wine and an explaination.
A girl answered the door and I started to explain. She was mortified!
She told me the lad who has the room next to ours is in the middle of being evicted due to not paying his rent. She said he had quit uni before xmas and was addicted to his xbox and online poker which he plays all night then sleeps all day!!!! She couldn't appologise enough she told me not to worry and said she would tell him.

Thanks for all your support now i feel like the pressure is off abit it might help us all settle down. xx

Asquiths

Katie-Kat-Kins

Oh well that is good! And now you have made good positive contact with your neighbours.