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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

To leave baby asleep with a working monitor whilst I go next door for Christmas drinks?

252 replies

PatButchersLostEaring · 12/12/2014 20:36

Really unsure if this is a bad idea so opinions please.

Baby 18 months sound asleep with monitor on and working. DH next door quaffing mulled wine and I plan to join him...... Maybe.

Is this ok?

OP posts:
jbledyeah · 13/12/2014 02:18

give your local child referral and assessment team a ring and tell them you think its ok to leave an 18 month old in a house on its own. see how that goes down. im pretty sure I know what the response would be. but no really, give it a go.

ShowMeTheWonder · 13/12/2014 02:33

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

Tinks42 · 13/12/2014 02:53

If its in a small block of flats and they're next door, I don't really see the harm. But I just couldnt do it personally. I wouldnt enjoy myself and would just be constantly on edge trying to hear the monitor. Children are very portable and I'd take them with me. My son came to lots of things and slept through them very soundly...

needaholidaynow · 13/12/2014 02:55

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

KoalaDownUnder · 13/12/2014 03:22

I've lived in flats. I can hear what's going on inside my own flat far better when I'm inside the flat, than when I'm in my neighbour's flat.

I can also react more quickly if something happens inside my flat, if I am also inside the flat.

This seems so obvious to me that I can't be bothered arguing about it.

I would never leave a baby sleeping with two locked front doors, plus an area that can be accessed by the public, between us.

It is not the same as being inside a private home with only interior suits between you, and an exterior door locking out the rest of the world.

Hmm
Pastperfect · 13/12/2014 03:42

I'm with bogey - it is totally irrational to consider that you are endangering your child by virtue of being on property that belongs to someone else even though you are physically closer than if you were in your own home.

deliverdaniel · 13/12/2014 03:51

sorry -haven't read whole thread, but I wouldn't. would be worried about him wandering off more than anything else. I might might consider it with a pre-mobile baby if I was absolutely right next door, but not with one who can walk/climb

chrome100 · 13/12/2014 06:57

I'd do it. It's only next door. To be honest our house is so small that next door is probably the equivalent of other peoples living rooms. If you have a monitor I don't see the problem.

flowery · 13/12/2014 07:17

You see these threads on here every so often- should I leave my sleeping child to pop over the road to the chemist to get some essential medicine. I need to pick my child up from school and my other child is ill at home. Those sorts of scenarios. Answers always vary, but most people can understand the dilemma.

I'm struggling to see how a need to consume mulled wine fits into that category tbh.

Heleng1982 · 13/12/2014 07:20

No I can't believe people actually think that would be ok Hmm

rootypigsinblankets · 13/12/2014 07:30

It's not just about where you are, or proximity, it's about what you're doing. At a drinks party, presumably drinking, noisy and sociable, you're more likely to pay less attention, miss noises on the monitor, lose track of time.

And it's sod's law that the one time you're out, s/he will wake up or something worse will happen. I live in an apartment complex with a laundry across a courtyard. This week in broad daylight when 2yo DD was napping I walked the 50 yards, not across a road, in full view of my flat, grabbed the washing and came back (in my view equivalent to being in the garden, though I avoid doing it, this was the first time). Her door closed, she can't open it, so no way for her to leave the flat in those five minutes. She never wakes up in the first hour of her nap. Except of course that one day, when I got back to find her crying hysterically behind her door because she was calling for me and I didn't come.

Enjoyingmycoffee1981 · 13/12/2014 07:34

The house we are in the process of being has four floors. A few houses down the street has been converted into four flats. It is the same size as our house. So if I put the children to sleep on the top floor of my new house (one will sleep there), and go downstairs to the ground floor, then I will be further away from my children than the scenario of one flat dweller going next door to another flat.

Common sense goes out the window in discussions like this.

If it really is a flat right next door, then I would do it. Not for long, just for A drink or two, an hour maximum and, in that time I would pop back a couple of times to check.

Enjoyingmycoffee1981 · 13/12/2014 07:34

Being should read buying

ocelot41 · 13/12/2014 07:35

I wouldn't but I know some parents who have and I don't think they are bad parents

Enjoyingmycoffee1981 · 13/12/2014 07:36

Flowery, how old is the child you are leaving alone, completely alone I.e. No video monitor, when you go and pick the other child up from school?

Enjoyingmycoffee1981 · 13/12/2014 07:38

Rooty, in that scenario, if you had been holding a monitor such as ours, that not only let's out an alarm when the crying reaches a certain volume, but also vibrates, then you would have been able to hot foot it back to your flat!

listed · 13/12/2014 07:40

I would probably happily nip to the next door flat and leave DS in bed in these circumstances.

If it was the flat above or below me though, maybe not.

For some reason my "safe feeling" extends across the hallway but not up or down the stairs.

Either way I probably wouldn't really relax and wouldn't stay long.

Everyone has to make their own decisions based on their own comfort zone.

Hysterical posts judging other people's boundaries are spectacularly unhelpful.

rootypigsinblankets · 13/12/2014 07:46

Enjoying but the point of my post was, that at a loud drinks party, the chances of a lapse in concentration are high. That's why OP wants to go to the party - to relax. If she were paying proper attention to the monitor, she wouldn't have a good time, as many pp have said.

I also think it's daft to extrapolate from the situation I describe, that all situations would be caught by a monitor. Yes, DD was screaming her head off. My point was not that she was being loud, but that it was out of the ordinary.

XmasEveDallas · 13/12/2014 07:50

I would have done it, if I'd had a baby that slept well. Bloody kid Smile. Being next door in a flat is being a lot closer than some houses. Especially if your house is a 1900s 3 storey pile with foot thick walls like my MILs.

Once when DD was 2 we were at MILs for NYE. DD had been put to bed at about 8 and there were about 15 people in MILs, but it wasn't that noisy. I went upstairs to check on DD and she was gone Shock. It took an hour to find her, right at the point that we were going to call the police one of SILs friends found her behind the door of the storage room in the attic! She was filthy dirty but asleep after playing with her cousins old toys.

A friend once did have to call the police when his DS went missing. They live in a large rambling farmhouse. Friend had been in the study and his DS playing in his bedroom. He was 'gone' a couple of hours. The lovely policeman found him curled up in a laundry basket covered in washing. Apparently it's not unusual and is why the police concentrate on searching inside the home before searching outside - even when the householder is adamant they've already searched everywhere.

In both cases mum and dad were in the same house, relaxed, not alert to any danger. In OPs case she'd probably be on higher alert, watching/listening to the monitor closely and a lot closer to her child. The kid was probably 'safer' Smile

Enjoyingmycoffee1981 · 13/12/2014 07:51

Let's assume the OP does keep hold of the monitor and observant of the monitor, then I can't see an issue.

If she's going to throw it in the corner of the room and start downing mulled wine, then no, it wouldn't be wise.

Eastpoint · 13/12/2014 07:52

Our friends used to do this with us BUT we lived in a house converted into flats & we were the only people living there AND we kept the individual flats' front doors open so it was as if the house hadn't been turned into flats (one main front door).

rootypigsinblankets · 13/12/2014 07:59

Let's assume the OP does keep hold of the monitor and observant of the monitor

But the assessment of the risk is about examining that assumption?

SilentAllTheseYears · 13/12/2014 08:03

I wouldn't do it, it's one thing if you have a big house that the child is familiar with and can find their way around. However, if the big house is converted into flats then can the child find their way out of your flat and in to the neighbours flat if they are scared and you haven't heard the monitor?

GuybrushThreepwoodMP · 13/12/2014 08:07

I've thought about this a lot because I live next door to a pub which is closer to the house than the end if my garden. Would I sit at the end if the garden with the monitor on? Yes. Would I sit in the the pub with the monitor on? Absolutely not. If something did happen- fire, my drink got spiked, I got mugged in the 2 metres between my front door and the pub then I wouldn't be able to get to dd. If the baby is in the house, you stay on the property. Otherwise what you're doing is leaving a baby at home alone.

DoesntLeftoverTurkeySoupDragOn · 13/12/2014 08:07

Big house or flats mKes no difference. A toddler is equally unlikely to find their way out of either.

I would do it but pop back ever half hour or so (alternating with DH) to physically check.