I have the baby monitor purchased above, and I really like it. They advertised a 2000 foot range....yeah right.
I live in a town home community, so I share walls with the town homes on either side of me. Tons of our friends live in our complex, and we often get together for game nights or dessert parties. My husband and I ran into a dilemma recently. Our baby goes to bed between 6-7:00pm most nights, and the game nights don't usually start 'til 7 or 8! Do we skip? Keep him up past his bedtime? Pay a babysitter? Babysitter fees can add up really quick throughout a month.
We came up with an ingenious, home-made baby monitor.
**DISCLAIMER!!! This is probably illegal, so if the feds come after you don't you dare drop my name, haha :) Also, most of my friends literally live 30-45 seconds away from my front door, so I absolutely DO NOT recommend this unless you live in a community, neighborhood, or apartment complex like mine and only have to go a few doors down.
That being said, here's what we did:
- We don't have a home phone, so we used our cell phones.
- We put our baby to bed, then put my husband's cell phone on speaker phone and laid it in on our baby's crib (where he couldn't reach it if he woke up).
- We put my husband's phone on silent in case someone called while the phone was in my son's crib.
- We plugged in my husband's phone so the battery wouldn't die.
- We turned music on in my baby's room so we could always hear something through the phone, to know it was still working.
- We called my phone from his phone so they were connected.
- We put my phone on mute so we could hear what was going on in my baby's room, but he couldn't hear what was going on where I was.
- We plugged a headset into my phone, and went to the party! I kept the headset in my ear the entire party, so I could hear through all the background noise.
- I took my phone charger with me, and eventually had to sit by an outlet and charge it a little.
- We checked on my son every 45 minutes or so, to make sure he was ok.
And that's it! Worked like a charm! We were only gone for a short time, so I felt totally fine doing this. You may think this is horrible and dangerous, but I swear to you, we would do nothing to put our baby's life in danger. It was a convenient way to go to our neighbor's house and not have to pay a babysitter!
Give it a try if you like this idea...but please use common sense :)
Happy savings to you!
