Among the many things no one prepares you for when your baby comes home is the “Phantom Cry” you’ll start to hear when your baby isn’t crying…at all. Mostly new parents experience this phenomenon and it’s typically prompted by restricted hearing, for example, when you’re in the shower or you’re vacuuming. 

You’re not losing your mind — but it’s going to feel like you are when you rush out of the shower, dripping wet, because you swear you hear your baby crying and they’re peacefully sleeping! Turns out it’s a completely normal experience and can actually last for years! And there’s not a lot you can do about it, but here are our two cents worth of tips on how to at least minimize the frequency with which you hear it:

1) Bring your baby monitor into the bathroom with you when your shower.

And turn up the volume! That way there will be no question whether you can hear your baby crying over the sound of the water running.  At least then you might have a shot at actually enjoying a peaceful shower!

Read our Baby Monitor post:

2) Keep your sound machine on 24/7 in the nursery so you can always hear it through the baby monitor — the key here is that if you can hear the sounds of the sound machine, you know you would hear your baby if he’s crying.

There’s nothing worse than not trusting your monitor’s volume. You’ll start to question whether you’re really able to hear your baby cry and that doubt will result in horrible, restless sleep. But when you hear the sound of waves coming through the monitor, you can rest assured your baby isn’t actually crying.

Our Sound Machine post gives you more detail:

Related Posts: Sound of Magic, Crib Essentials, Nursery Organization Must-Haves, Crib Soothers, Magical Bedtime Routine, Our Fave Monitors, Baby Monitors, Soother-Sound Machine Pairs

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