Home Intruder Concern

[BlueFawn7]

I have never posted anywhere like this online before, I'm generally a lurker and read only user. But I just wanted to find out people's opinions/advice on a situation that has just happened (about an hour ago).

To paint the picture - my partner is working late and I'm home with my 2 year old daughter. I was exhausted after putting my daughter to bed, and admit that I fell asleep in bed straight after whilst nothing was locked, either the back door or front door and living room curtains open.

I woke up in a bit of a daze around 10pm to my daughter screaming and crying. She sometimes wakes up, but this wasn't a normal cry for her usual wake ups. I immediately assumed it was a pain cry due to teething. She was rolling around her cot, in an almost tantrum kind of way and resisted being picked up at first, which has never happened before. I managed to pick her up but she was still squirming and uncontrollably crying. She was pointing to the roof of her mouth so I just assumed teething, gave her some calpol, found her dummy and she went straight back to sleep. I was concerned she might be unwell, so I went back into the bedroom and sat on the bed to Google about what could have caused her to act that way and just then heard our front door click shut. I expected my partner to appear walking up the stairs at that moment (assumed he'd left work early) but he didn't. I felt a bit frozen with fear then as I realized somebody could have been in our house, I checked everywhere and locked up and can't see anything amiss. I just have a gut/unsettling feeling about it. We have no cameras, or ring doorbell or anything. I might just be hearing things!

Oh dear love, that’s a frightening thing to think. Hopefully its just all in your imagination and didn’t happen. When Im on my own with the kids in the houseI must say I do freak myself out too.

Very odd. Keep everything locked in future i always do, you never know who is hanging around

Are all your keys in place?

phone DH to get support

Invest in a burglar alarm. Mine beeps throughout the house if either the front or back door are open.

Has your neighbours opposite got a ring doorbell?

We have all our keys! I did call my partner and he came back, thankfully he was almost finished anyway

We do think our neighbours opposite may have one! We're going to talk to them tomorrow and see if they'll have a look for us, we've not spoken before, but hopefully they'll agree

This is a great idea, thank you!

I am so hoping it is just my imagination! It's such a distinctive sound when our door closes, it just freaked me out. Really hoping I imagined it

Definitely a wake up call with locking up! We've always been quite bad with it, but I suppose we've been a bit naive and always felt pretty safe

She might have bitten her tongue or cleched her teeth painfully in a nightmare.
Nightmares often start around that age as their imaginations are hugely increasing developmentally.
The noise could have been many things and your anxiety at her crying like that made your brain think of the scary option. Also her crying likely made it harder to clearly hear the sound and the brain will then fill the gaps and try to make sense of it (like when people mis-see things out of the corner of their eye).

Check the ring doorbell with the neighbours tomorrow if possible, but if there had been an intruder I very much doubt she would have calmed that quickly, and you also likely would've heard footsteps before the door sound.

I hadn't thought of anything like that! That would absolutely explain her reaction. I had wondered if it was a nightmare/terror. Thank you for your take on it, I was extremely on edge trying to calm her down as this hadn't happened before. And that's a very good point about footsteps! I hadn't thought of that. And she did calm down super quickly!

Highly unlikely someone just randomly decided to try your front door on the very occasion you left it unlocked.

People who do burgle etc don't generally do it at 10pm in the evening as plenty of people are still wide awake and up and about, streets busy etc.

I'm not trying to belittle your concern, just pointing out that it's far, far more likely you either imagined the door going or the door itself wasn't properly secured and closed after a gust of wind or something, than it is that a total stranger would just miraculously find your door open at 10pm at night and let themselves in.

The other thing is, if someone was inside your home, you disturbed them, and they were wanting to leave quietly without you noticing, they wouldn't pull a door likely to make a noise closed behind them, they'd just let themselves out and leave the door slightly ajar.