Calling the police to check on a crying baby

They aren't "arm chair experts" They are people who have had babies that cried incessantly and found it stressful. The baby was crying for half an hour and OP was too far away to hear of the parents were trying to comfort them.

So wait. Prolonged crying by young baby.

Raised voices / slamming doors. Baby not being calmed down. Two grown adults both feeling like the situation isn’t ok.

and because babies have died in silence it’s better not to do a welfare check ?

shame on you. I would have no qualms about anyone doing a welfare check on my family. I’d feel like there’s people looking out for me and understand that they don’t want to get involved.

Our first born had undiagnosed CMPA for the first 6 months of her life. She would scream in my arms for hours and there were times where eventually I would have to set her down while I cried myself into some kind of state of sleep as being held seemed to upset her more at times. My husband took 4 weeks off work on stress leave after coming close to a mental breakdown. By the time she was 6 months old I ended up taking myself to A&E because I had thoughts of ending my life and was diagnosed with severe postpartum depression and postpartum anxiety. We had plenty of slamming doors and shouting because we were both at breaking point. If the police had turned up at my door it would have broken me further…but that doesn’t necessarily mean my neighbours would have been wrong to call them. It’s a tough one - this situation could be desperate parents at breaking point unable to settle their baby or it could be something sinister that needs to be reported so I don’t think you're being unreasonable for calling the police.

I think what’s unreasonable are some of the assumptions you’re making. “I assumed they’d settle or some attempt to comfort them would be made” - you have no idea of what the effort might be being made to settle the baby. “Ive also had colicky babies myself who took hours to settle but I was there settling them and there’s a difference between the cries.” - you can’t judge the difference between a random baby’s cries.

I can appreciate for some people comments like this can be triggering as it takes them back to a hopeless time in their life where they tried their best with their baby and nothing worked and they feared what others would think. But despite how horrible it would feel as a desperate parent to have the police show up I still don’t think it is wrong to call them- if you’re genuinely concerned about the baby in question it’s the right thing to do.

Nobody can predict what was going on. If in doubt and something doesn't sit right, better safe than sorry. With all the recent horrible stuff in the news about abuse and harm of very young children I would not hesitate to do the same as the OP just to be on the safe side. I could not live with myself if I told myself never to do anything for fear of being "nosy" and it later transpired something awful had happened. This is exactly how so many child abuse cases go undetected for so long, people are so entrenched in their own lives and scared of being accused of not minding their own business.

I hope the baby was OK.

Really? Given there were adults shouting and slamming car doors etc it sounds very much like someone needed help in that house.

My baby would cry with intensity for hours at at a time when he was a newborn. I developed severe PND as a result, and yes there probably was some shouting in our home because it was incredibly stressful but baby was never just left to cry. If someone had called the police on us it may well have pushed me over the edge. Baby was later diagnosed with silent reflux.

If you were worried undid the right thing. Only you can decide as we weren’t there to hear it. I’d say you having children of your own you will have known if it was normal or not. It’s probably going to be quite distressing for the parents though if they weren’t doing anything wrong but that can’t be helped

From 100 metres away you aren’t going to hear a parent trying to calm down a baby.

We should all be more proactive and neighbourly.
A new neighbour-100m down the road you should have made to feel welcome.
By building a relationship you can then offer assistance.

None the less-safeguarding is everyone's resp, so calling police is fine

OP a significant part of my job is safeguarding. You absolutely did the right thing, well done. Yes it could just have been a hot grouchy night with a baby that wouldn’t settle, but the fact you could hear it from so far, there was more than just a crying baby and your gut felt something was off, shows that it was an immediate concern and not something that could wait for a children’s services report the following day (which also wouldn’t be dealt with quickly as of course, it was a Friday night). You were also not the only caller, so that helps to validate the situation.

I hope that you’re okay and that things settled. Domestic concerns often come to light through 3rd party reports (very often neighbours) and can help to add pieces to a puzzle. I’ll say it again - you absolutely did the right thing for that baby and please don’t hesitate to do it again if you had concerns. Please ignore people on here who are “armchair experts”.

Who on earth thinks in Olympic swimming pools?
100m is 100m, where I am, it would be impossible to know which house/which baby that was but maybe OP lives in a different configuration.

The number of people who think the OP is wrong and would do nothing does explain why abuse can happen in built up areas with neighbours who do nothing.
The crying alone is not the issue (been there, done that) but if the shouting and slamming was definitely the same house, it's certainly worth reporting.

Babies have also died at the hands of monsters without making any sound. Perhaps everyone should call the police to check on neighbour's if the baby can't be heard much.

I completely agree. I cannot believe the reaction by the OP, who heard a baby crying, was to CALL THE POLICE?!? If you were worried, why didn't you just go round and ask if they were ok? The reply to the previous poster who asked this was a slightly precious, 'I have three children and couldn't possibly leave them alone while I run about intervening in domestic disputes' - as though that's what anyone suggested. The OP said her husband was home too, so couldn't he have gone, or she could have gone over in an hour or two? Unless you heard what you thought was literally a murder happening in real time, it didn't need immediate intervention and it didn't need the police as a first step!

I'm 40 - am I totally out of touch, too old, too young, or what is going on here? Why are people calling the police for normal non-criminal things? Or is it just people on Mumsnet...?

Thank goodness a man has come along to tell us women not to be such silly billys.

We've all been puzzled by how far 100m is and now will stop any concerned thoughts about the well being of a baby, phew

And in the US this is exactly what happened. A newborn was found next to their mother a week after she had died.

OP. I’d rather police checked a baby and it’s all ok than wake up to a different story the next day. It may just be a bad night. But may I remind people questioning this of the news in the last few weeks. Babies have died at the hands of monsters that everyone thought were ok to look after children.

you did the right thing and you most certainly did the right thing not putting yourself in danger.

When my eldest was a baby, until about 6 weeks old, he'd cry unconsolably from 6-10 every night. We'd pas him back and forward feeding and settling, child was never set down or got worse. It may well.not be sinister.

As if op will apologise...

Nasty. You think OP was being malicious?

What ‘when you were tiny you cried so much a neighbour called the police to check we weren’t abusing you’

Yes quite the anecdote.

It's better to be wrong and apologise for this kind of thing rather than be right but regretful.

I would hope my neighbour would call the police on me, what if I had a had slipped and was unconscious with a baby to look after! If it's innocent the police will go on their way and it will be a story for the parents to tell the child when they are older

Oh, I really, really hope they do.

your suggestion is batshit. You either aren't very bright, or you're not very street-smart or good with people.

And you write like that and think you are good with people?

The stuff about men not being expected to step up in the community is nonsense imo. We are beginning to blur roles increasingly, which is a good thing, but the vast majority of members of the public who help in physical emergencies - drownings etc - are still male. You are just thinking about childcare - which for lots of reasons has stayed female-dominated. Even on here recently there have been threads saying males shouldn't be allowed in early childcare settings, every baby needs a mother etc. Not saying I agree, but I am just making the point that as women we are not some put-upon community resource any more than men. We are just expected to step up for different things.

ETA and feminism isn't an excuse not to offer to help.

I personally would not have rocked up on their door if things sounded tense, but there is nothing wrong with a suggestion of offering help generally.

Old Mumsnet was an entirely different place, which I miss hugely. No way would we have been 'ripping the piss' out of the OP.

it all went arse up with Penis Beaker.

This.