Having a baby is a huge joy for every family. However, when a small human being is born, the happy parents face a challenge of sleepless nights. Colic, teething, and many other things result in the endless quest named “calm the baby down.” This might turn into a challenge not only for the family, but for the neighbors. The same happened to our today’s protagonist, a man, who was fed up with his neighbors’ baby making noises at night, so he found the way to settle the things down. But, for some reason, he provoked tons of criticism from the side of other people.
A man named Mark wrote a letter to our editorial and he needed a piece of advice.
Mark, 33, started his letter, saying that he’s prepared for the fact that he’ll be severely judged and criticized by us and our readers. But the desperate man still wanted to share what happened to him and get some advice and opinions from people who were in the same situation.
The man opened his letter, saying, “I’ve recently moved to my own apartment, for which I’ve been saving probably all my life. This was a moment of a real happiness, to have a small, but my own place to live. I did like my neighbors who lived on the same floor with me. All I really wanted was peace and silence and right in the beginning, I did enjoy this, as no one from my neighbors appeared to be a noisy person.”
The man added, “The things, however, changed drastically when my next door neighbors, who’re a very nice young married couple, had their first baby. Since then, my life slowly turned into a nightmare.”
Mark’s relationship with his neighbors slowly became very tense.
The man continues his story, saying, “From the very first day of my neighbors’ parenthood, I’ve been suffering a lot. Their baby regularly cries at night and my life has turned into a mess. I did try to come to terms with this, I was as understanding and calm as I could. I even invested in a white noise machine, but it didn’t seem to help much.”
Mark tried to talk to the new parents, but to no avail. The man shared, “I even asked the parents to do something about it, but they were like that, ‘It’s a baby, and it’s natural that a baby is crying.’ Then, they just asked me to deal with it. In short, they were absolutely inconsiderate of my concerns and refused to be of any help. I was really angry. At that period of time, I had to work at night, and since the baby was constantly crying, I couldn’t work or sleep, I was supposed to just sit and listen while the poor kid was crying for many, many hours.”
The man shared, “I read somewhere on the internet 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 started playing that sound. This wasn’t terribly loud. For example, there’re the soothing sounds of dolphins during a spa day. That was the main vibe of it. Many people fall asleep to these sounds, too.”
The results of this bizarre lifehack showed up immediately. The man shared, “I don’t know if my experiment helped to quiet down the baby, but after about 30 minutes the baby did stop crying. My neighbors got really concerned about this and detected that the noise was coming from my direction. They questioned me. I told them the truth, and they were annoyed by what I was doing.”
The situation took an unexpected turn soon after the man played the wildlife sounds.
OK, I've never understood the point of having a newborn in a separate room from the parents. Why? Isn't it easier to have the cot in the bedroom so you can keep an eye on the baby and comfort it as soon as it starts to cry? It might have a stomach ache, feel abandoned, scared, hungry, etc. The parents should perhaps seek answers from the health care provider, there are remedies for gas in the stomach of babies.. These parents don't seem to know what to do and let the child scream for hours without picking them up and comforting them. Then you might wonder, don't they hear the baby crying? or do they not care? They may not be mature enough to be parents. Either way, something is wrong, very wrong.
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Mark wrote, “Later, it turned out that the baby crying noise stopped only because the parents took their baby to their room, which is not connected to my wall. The baby room was actually connected to my bedroom. The howling sounds were scaring the kid, leading to increased crying, and the parents were really worried about the impact of it. They asked me to stop it, and I told them I would only do so if they removed the baby from that room, as their current arrangement was making my life unbearable. If it goes against the noise ordinances, I promised I would play the sound during the day nap times.”
“Now, the whole neighborhood is mad at me, people even stopped saying hi upon meeting me. I feel like I’m severely judged, I’m like an enemy to everyone now, and the whole situation looks like a boycott. I feel like I’m being deprived of my rights and freedom, because I still don’t see any compromise from my neighbors. What should I do?”
And here’s yet another story about the relationship of neighbors. This time, a woman was attacked by her next-door neighbors, because they didn’t like the color of her house. The story took a very dramatic turn, and the woman shared how she coped with such unhealthy claims from these entitled people.
