A woman wondered if she was in the wrong after filing a noise complaint against her neighbor because of her newborn baby. Posting on Reddit, the woman, 26, said she works over 100 hours a week as a resident in a medical profession. She hardly gets any sleep as it is, and can’t wear earplugs at night because she needs to hear her phone ring in case she gets called into work.
The woman’s downstairs neighbor recently had a baby, and since the neighbor has come home from the hospital with the newborn, she hasn’t been able to sleep through the night. “I’m woken up every 1-2 hrs by the baby and this baby screams. I know the mom is trying her best — I’m sure she doesn’t want to be woken up either. But, I’m losing it,” the woman wrote in her post.
According to the woman, the noise from her neighbor’s baby is impacting her well-being. She said she was even reprimanded for falling asleep while at work. Her boyfriend encouraged her to file a noise complaint, since it’s unfair that she hasn’t been able to sleep.
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“I have tried to talk directly to my neighbor to ask if she could stop walking around her whole apartment (I’ve tried sleeping on my couch which is better but mom walks the baby around the apartment) or maybe if there could be some soundproofing done,” the woman wrote.
Every time the woman tries to go to her apartment, there is always a note on her neighbor’s door saying not to knock so that the baby doesn’t wake up. The woman doesn’t have her neighbor’s number or any other way to contact her, either.
Eventually, the woman went to speak with the landlord. She made it very clear that she wasn’t trying to blame the woman, but just wanted to know whether any soundproofing could be done. The landlord told the woman that he would look into some options.
About a day after she went to her landlord, the woman was at home sleeping when she woke up to someone pounding on her front door and screaming.
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“[She] kept screaming about how I’m selfish and trying to kick out a single mom, etc. Neighbors were watching and I kept trying to explain but she (and the baby) just kept screaming,” the woman wrote. After trying to reason with the mother, the woman started screaming back, telling her that her baby is “so loud” and might end up causing her to lose her job.
The woman continued, saying that she “couldn’t function anymore” because of the baby crying, and that soundproofing the walls wasn’t going to be the end of the world.
After the argument with the mother, the woman shared that she felt awful about it. “I know I shouldn’t have yelled. I know that makes me [a jerk]. But am I [a jerk] for filing a complaint?” the woman concluded.
People who commented on the woman’s Reddit post agreed that she was not in the wrong, especially since she wanted to find a way for everyone to get along. “People make noise, but it is also okay to ask those people to do things to mitigate that noise,” one user wrote. Another user added: “Just because the neighbor has a baby doesn’t mean the whole neighborhood should have to accommodate her. You’re a hard-working person, and you need to be able to sleep.”
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Landlord-tenant law varies widely by state, so there’s no hard-and-fast rule about what a landlord is obligated to do regarding apartment insulation and soundproofing. That being said, it’s good policy to make apartments as soundproof as possible because it increases the property values and makes tenants want to stay put.
Soundproofing experts Acoustical Surfaces noted, “Regardless of an area’s specific noise ordinance, however, soundproofing rentals is the ethical thing to do as quieter environments are healthier for their occupants. Not to mention, things can easily get loud in multi-family buildings and, if sound issues aren’t remedied, some jurisdictions will let tenants break their leases without penalty.”
Nobody is really “wrong” in this scenario. The woman who is losing sleep did the right thing by bringing the issue up with the landlord. The mom, even though she went a little bit over the top by confronting her neighbor, also wasn’t wrong for being upset. She’s probably just as sleep-deprived as the woman who complained!
The landlord in this scenario has the ability to make everything right by simply making some structural changes to his apartments. Hopefully, that’s exactly what happens, and maybe the woman and the new mom can even realize that the whole incident was a misunderstanding and not done with any malicious intent.
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Nia Tipton is a staff writer with a bachelor’s degree in creative writing and journalism who covers news and lifestyle topics that focus on psychology, relationships, and the human experience.
