Next door neighbour having a baby

[eggsinonebasket]

I probably am being U. I think I just need to vent. I’m in a semi detached house and the party wall is so bloody thin can hear everything. My next door neighbour is a woman with one DC and she’s just told me in passing that she’s pregnant. I’m already dreading the noise this will entail at night and feel quite stressed about being woken up by a baby then having to get up and go to work, I have a teenager who will be needing sleep for exams soon. She is a noisy enough neighbour already and I feel shit that it’s going to get 100000x worse when this baby is born. I’ve just started a new relationship with someone who is in a highly professional job, I was hoping he’d be able to start staying over at mine but with a screaming child next door who would want to? I’m privately renting and could move but there aren’t many affordable houses to rent in this area and I need to be close for my child’s school. I’m just dreading this already, I’ve lived beneath a newborn before in a flat and it was horrific. I know I’m being ridiculously U

My neighbour was like you, she hated the noise of us just living there (would complain about the noise our bathroom light made when we turned it on....). When I told her I was pg she was so rude to me about the noise my “screaming baby” would make. Once I had the baby I made a point of hosting all the noisy baby meet ups I could.

Why don’t you move to a retirement complex? No babies there!!!

Tell her to move out because she didn’t ask your permission to get pregnant.

@shakeuourcaboose 😂 Ohhh that explains it completely. I was thinking he might be an orchestral conductor. Pretty sure they insure their hearing against newborns though.

I thought this was a live labour thread.

You could move before the baby comes or wait and see if it's bad and then raise it with the landlord or environmental health. Most decent parents do try and minimise the noise of a baby so it depends on what kind of person she is.

When I had my older one, the neighbour (whom i’d never met) came round to ask if we could “keep the baby quiet at night because it had been a week now.”

It added severely to my stress as a new mum!

YABU, sorry - babies are babies. Just buy some earplugs. It won’t last long.

You are being very unreasonable. What do you want them to do? Not have a baby because it doesn't suit you? It's none of your business.

If I knew a neighbour felt like that about me, I'd purposely put the crib then cot on the dividing wall, just to piss them off more

I'd rather live next door to a baby than a teen... in the noise dept.

What the jeff has your partner's job got to do with anything??

Wow. Just.... Wow. 🤔

Environmental health for a baby crying? Really?

www.soundservice.co.uk/wall_sound_proofing_Help.htm

The above gives practical suggestions.

Earplugs
Or go live in the middle of a moor
Hope my semi detached neighbour is nicer than you are. ( I have 3 dc)

You're renting? So move! If she's only just told you she's pregnant then you've presumably got several months to look for something else affordable.

Bypassing your ridiculous selfishness.....

Babies are actually pretty quiet. I found with mine that their cries sound piercing in the middle of the night but that's because I knew I had to get up, plus it's instinct. The volume of a young baby's cry is actually quite low, and providing they get what they need, feed etc... I can't see you being kept awake by your neighbours baby screaming at all hours. Millions of people have babies, and those millions of people sometimes have NDNs and I've rarely heard this complaint.

My NDN actually did give birth at home and I didn't hear a peep through the party wall - Victoria terraces for you!

OP if your incredibly successful new DP has such sensitive ears, you should probably move.

‘I'd rather live next door to a baby than a teen... in the noise dept.’

This ^

Your teen would probably rather listen to a baby crying than you and your partner shagging when you move him in.....😜
Would make me really uncomfortable if I thought my neighbours thought that about me!

OP are your walls really thin?

I ask because I lived in a semi until recently, am hypersensitive to noise (part of my autism diagnosis) and lived next door to a really lovely but really noisy family and I learned to tune it out. It took a while but it is doable.

Haha December bet the Mum next door won’t want to hear them both at it either. Op you forget thin walls mean noise for your neighbour too. It’s not one way.

I can't believe she didn't check it was okay with you before TTC, doesn't she know you have a professional boyfriend to consider?

Macks earplugs, 32 db, job done

I might pop next door and tell my NDN about my highly professional job and see if it’ll stop them having loud screaming matches.

I think people are ignoring the fact that OP knows she's being UR. Obviously babies cry and there's a limit to how much you can do to stop them. Some of them cry a lot and it's not because the parents are useless. It's not weird to feel stressed and be dreading the noise given that it sounds like soundproofing is non-existent and your neighbour has told you there's a good prospect of more noise to come.