Monday 11 April 2011

I think my baby monitor may be haunted!

When Mads was a week old we had a terrifying episode where she wouldn't wake up and we had to rush her to A and E.  She was breathing but unresponsive while they were running her down the corridor but eventually they stimulated her enough to wake her up.  She stayed in hospital for two days and they ran lots of tests on her, and they all came back clear.  It was the most scary and awful experience of my life but since that day she seems to be fine.  I think it may have been that she hadn't had enough food as I was struggling a lot with breastfeeding at that time, but I am no doctor.  


Anyway I digress.  After we came out of the hospital I became so paranoid for a couple of weeks that I went straight out and bought one of the Angelcare Sound and Movement monitors.  


If you don't know what they are, they basically are your normal baby monitor except they have a mat that goes under the cot which records movement and will emit an alarm if the baby stops moving for twenty seconds.


Even though Mads is in our room, I made Mr E hook this contraption up to her moses basket.


All is fine and we have had no false alarms (except when I am sleepy at 5am and take her out her basket and forget to put the monitor on hold and we have the loudest alarm blaring out at us- I do actually find it quite satisfying as it wakes Mr E up!) and this monitor does reassure me.


However about a month ago we were lying in bed fast asleep and I suddenly heard a woman singing a lullaby.  I shot up out of bed, armed with the closest weapon which happened to be a Jo Malone candle, (not sure how much damage they can do) before I realised it was coming from the baby monitor.  We were treated to an entire rendition of Hickory Dickory Dock before we turned it off and turned it back on again.


Since then we have been treated to all manner of delights.  We have had singing, we have had crying (from the babies I presume!) and we have had talking.  We are not sure if it is coming from the same house or whether it is coming from a number of different houses but all we know is it is driving us crazy!  We have had a man and a woman chatting to each other and Mr E and I are worried that we one day are going to hear them having a bit of fun.


Last night it woke us up three times, as it always has a huge amount of interference on there which makes it very loud.  We have tried changing the settings so it is not so sensitive but this has made no difference whatsoever.


The problem is Mads is going to be going into her own room in the next few weeks and I don't want to have to panic that there is a slightly out of tune woman in her room every time it goes off in the night. 


Friends who have got this monitor look at me like I am deranged when I explain about it, so I am not sure why it is happening to us and no one else.  Can a baby monitor be possessed?! 


2 comments:

Elle and Belle said...

It must be your neighbours! I've heard babymonitors can act like walkie talkies! It doesn't have to be the same monitor, just the same wavelength... Haha it sounds like fun anyway, but I'm just nosey! xx

Elle and Belle said...
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