How long did you keep a baby monitor in your kids' rooms?

Never had a monitor.

Oh my God…I’m so sorry for your friend. How horrible.

I’ve been in a few homes with intercoms wired into each room. My friends were delighted that well past the baby stage, they could still eavesdrop on their kids conversations, and they said it was a real help. I can also see how it could be abused. But that’s another issue.

It very much depends on the layout of the house, I’d say.

We didn’t use a baby monitor for my daughter. In our old apartment, her room was right next to ours. We could hear her if anything happened. We lived there till recently. Moved out in April. She’s almost 4 now.

Also, she is a very good sleeper. After the infant stage, she always slept right through the night. She’ll always scream for one of us if she does happen to wake up.

I had one for a couple of months, but didn’t use it, so I got rid of it. I never used one with the other two.

Never used one. Kept the crib near our bed.

You have a girl, right?

17 sounds reasonable.

:)

Depends on your sleeping arrangements, the size and layout of your house and your personal sense of hearing.

We had a baby monitor for our first kid. Carried it with me religiously and kept double checking to make sure it was working. I even brought the baby into the bathroom with me because I didn’t trust myself to hear the monitor over the shower. We used it until she was one.

To be fair, I probably have more anxiety about SIDS than the average person though. Our next door neighbors’ kid passed away* from SIDS when I was little. I think ever since, I’ve always carried that fear of the unknown with me.

With the second kid we were way more lax about all of that.

* I usually dislike that euphemism. Yet with SIDS, it seems appropriate.

I’m really sorry about your friend’s child. :(

Baby monitors are a relatively modern parenting device that parents for millennia raised kids without. I feel baby monitors are negligible in terms of mitigating accidents or deaths and quite possibly present a false sense of security that parents can then abdicate their prime responsibility to safely raise their kids to some Radio Shack device.

I never even considered using a baby monitor but having lost my grandson to a SIDS death I can fully understand why some people choose to.

@ibstubro you nasty

lol

Still got one in my 7 year old’s room. The receiver is downstairs in the back sitting room. We can’t hear her if she calls and we are in that room. She doesn’t come downstairs after bedtime, so if she ‘needs’ something, we can hear her call.

Still there.

Smokin babysitter you know.

Kidding. Wife can’t have kids. We have travel and sweet things instead.

Next trip planned? Nürburgring bitches!

My baby monitor was the fact that my bedroom was below the kid’s room. Well, OK, that was after they were over 12, when we moved here. But when they were moving into their teen years I seriously monitored the sounds above my head.

@Dutchess_III, we have put bells on all of the doors in and out of the house as a sort of “teen monitor” as my children approach their rebellious years! My ears are tuned to hear those bells even in the deepest sleep.

This is interesting. We took the monitors out because they kept me awake with the noise of minor things. I got paranoid about making the wrong choice after our friends lost their daughter. Part of me wondered if maybe they’d here her banging on the inside of the box or something. My friend’s daughter’s death haunts me to this day, wondering if anything like that could happen to my daughter.

But my daughter sleeps like a rock at night and when she wakes up, the first thing she does is climb into our bed, so I don’t worry so much. Her bedroom is just down the hall and I can hear her singing and talking all night without a monitor.

I bet it haunts you. What kind of air tight container was it?

It was a little treasure chest that held her dolls clothes, It was just barely big enough for her to sit in. I guess that night she sat in in it, and pulled the lid down. It had one of those old fashioned latches that likely snapped down as soon as the lid went down and trapped her inside.They found her in the morning. It took a long time to find her because mom didn’t think there was any way she could fit herself in the box and left it alone until she kicked it and realized it was much heavier than it should be.

Oh god. I think this image will haunt me too.

Me too, @fluthernutter.