Sometime in the last couple weeks, we finally stopped using the “baby” monitors to listen to the girls in their room as they sleep – or don’t sleep. We didn’t decide that one night was the last night of using them. Rather, we just stopped trying to tune them into the base station in the girls’ room. As the monitors (our third and longest-lasting pair, I think) aged, they started getting very, very touchy. We literally had to slap them exactly right to get them to pick up the signal from the girls’ room.
And that signal: ugh. The staticky hum of the white noise machine over the monitor has been the soundtrack to every evening at home since Julia was born. Of course we didn’t just hear susurrus of the white noise machine; we often enough (though less and less frequently) heard crying, calling, snoring, whispering, and whatever other sounds the girls happened to be making – once in a while entertaining, but almost always aggravating.
I could see the point of the baby monitors when the girls were actually babies. However, after Vivi turned three or so, and fell into the long horrible phase of screaming herself to sleep every night, I came to loathe the monitors and the sounds that came through them – not just the bad sounds, but that white-noise hum, too. It was a nothing sound that still meant something and that always made my heart beat a little, unpleasantly faster.
I thought we should have retired the monitors years ago, but we didn’t. Now that we have, I’m not in the least sorry to see them go. The girls know they can come and get us if or when they need us – you know, the way children did for quite a while, with few apparently ramifications for their own health or that of humankind. It’s nice to be a little bit disconnected from them in the evenings and at night. My only regret is that I didn’t note the last night we used the monitors, so I could celebrate that anniversary.