Is a baby monitor strictly necessary?

[naturelover]

The reason I ask is that there are so many things to buy and my mother's generation didn't have half of them and managed just fine. Our house is small with paper-thin walls so I figure I'd hear if baby got upset.

i had one as a gift and have only used it twice and my dd is 13mo i found it made me paranoid dd snores so every noise she made i went up to check her.

No. Unless you have a very large house or poor hearing

naturelover
didnt have one..didnt need one
the flat was reasonable size and figured didnt really want crying amplified..

there is lots of stuff you might not need, should just wait and see if you think it is when baby is here

I have a hearing problem so we tested whether i would need one as DH works evenings a lot. I sent him up to her bedroom, shut the door and he shouted for a few minutes. I couldn't hear him so we got a monitor.
I turn it off when I am upstairs in the room next to her.

Give it a test (with the tv on) and if you can hear then you don't need one, simple!

had one for dd as she slept downstairs and we were upstairs, although probably didnt need it as i could hear her through the floorboards, with ds i didnt even bother bringing it with us when we moved from my mums as we're in a flat with plasterboard walls.......need i say more?