Photo: PiercarloAbate | Shutterstock
The noise was causing her to lose sleep.
By Nia Tipton — Written on Jun 01, 2022
A woman wonders if she is in the wrong after filing a noise complaint against her neighbor because of her newborn baby.
Posting to the subreddit 'AITA' (Am I The A-hole), the woman, 26, works over a hundred 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 1-2hrs 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 Reddit post.
The noise from her neighbor's baby is impacting her well-being.
The woman was even reprimanded for falling asleep while at work. Her boyfriend has encouraged her to file a noise complaint since it's not fair that she hasn't been able to sleep.
"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 explains.
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 if there could be any soundproofing 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.
The mother was furious that she had went and complained to the landlord about the noise her baby had been making.
"[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 feels awful about it.
"I know I shouldn’t have yelled. I know that makes me [the a-hole]. But am I [the a-hole] for filing a complaint?" the woman concluded.
People who commented on the woman's Reddit post agreed that she was NTA (Not The A-hole) for complaining about the noise.
"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."
Nia Tipton is a writer living in Brooklyn. She covers pop culture, social justice issues, and trending topics. Follow her on Instagram.