I am on my 4th kid and have never used a baby monitor.
We were living in an apartment when Deacon was born, and it didn't really seem necessary to have one. Everything was on the same floor, and even though it was a fairly large apartment- we could still hear well enough.
Our house now has 4 levels and if I am in the bottom 2 levels I can't hear a baby upstairs. This doesn't really seem like a problem to me. Yes, it means periodically heading upstairs to listen and make sure all is quiet- but that doesn't seem like that big of a deal. I am moving around the house frequently in the evenings anyway- I don't usually just hang out in the basement.
And I don't really want to hear every squeek, every snuffle that emits from the baby. Sometimes there is a little fussing and the baby will go back to sleep with no intervention from me. I don't need to be watching a movie or working on the computer while hearing every sound that comes from the babies mouth.
When will I intervene? When the baby is really awake and not putting herself back to sleep. I don't need a baby monitor for that.
Apparently my tolerance is slightly higher than some.
I have never considered my babies fussy at all.
But I also don't consider a squawk here or there fussy. And I think that some people do.
And I want my kids to learn to work things out themselves without me listening to and possibly being compelled to intervene in everything that is going on. I don't need them to think that it all revolves around them.
So I do what we do in the hospital.
I round on my patients.
I round on my sleeping kids.
It is not a constant monitoring,
it is an intermittent checking.
And that is how I like it.
Baby Monitors- what do you think? Will you use one? Do you use one?
6 comments:
I am actually using the baby monitor less ever since you mentioned that you didn't use one on Twitter. However, I'm still too fussypants a person to go entirely without. I suspect I'll be less attached to it with each future child.
Question...do you think you'd have still not had a baby monitor if you'd lived in your current house when you had your firstborn?
I think I will go without one. It makes me more nervous...cause I can hear all those little noises. I would do checks often like I did when I would babysit.
hmmm, i never really thought about it. going without one seems easier and i like the idea of giving your kids some free reign (even in infanthood) so that you're not micromanaging. But I guess I won't know until I have a small, helpless little one depending on me to take care of him/her. So, for now--going without. In the future--I'll let you know.
We do use a baby monitor. Now we only use it when we are in the garage/basement working so that we don't have to take a break from our projects to do periodic checks. However when Alethea was little I was totally freaked out about SIDS, so I liked to have the baby monitor on at night. I'm sure it wasn't the most rational thing, but it made me feel better.
NtMS,
I don't think I would have with my first one, even in our house. We moved here when he was 6 months old and I never got one. He napped a lot in places other than his room- like he would just nap in his bouncy seat in the living room, so I was around. And our kids sleep in our room at night when they are babies, so I could always hear everything :)
i do use one, but only for the main floor because i can't hear the baby at all. i keep it really low. if the baby is crying and i know he's tired, i turn it all the way down and can check the light level to see if he's still crying... but i don't react to every little noise either. and i'm lazy - i don't want to go upstairs to check. especially since if i do, i wake him up and i definitely don't want that.
but i've never used one on the same floor because, like you, i can hear them if they really need me. i think monitors used in the "normal" sense is too stressful.
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