How do I answer the (apartment building) door with a newborn?

August 1, 2016 6:56 AM

What's the safest way to deal with having a newborn baby and needing to manually open the door, on another floor, to my apartment building several times a day?

Okay this is a stupid question from a brand-new parent, but I am not sure what is safest, and in the haze of newborn-baby-fog, I feel my judgment in these things is off (thanks, sleep deprivation!)

I have a newborn baby (he's gorgeous!) and we live on the third floor of an apartment building. Small building, and the door buzzer doesn't work to let people into the building. I also receive much-needed packages at least a few times a week (praise Amazon Prime!), and will have some visitors this week.

Now I'm home alone with my newborn, i'm not sure what to do when the UPS guy or the FedEx guy or the Postal Service person comes with the package. Do I carry the baby downstairs with me (but then how do I carry the package back upstairs?)? Do I leave him in his crib with the apartment door shut but not locked, and take the baby monitor downstairs with me (is that totally irresponsible?)?

Do I not answer the door until he is 18 years old?

posted by aoleary to Grab Bag (26 answers total)

Have you considered using a baby carrier? It will leave your hands free to carry packages.
posted by amro at 6:58 AM on August 1, 2016 [2 favorites]

No way I'd wake a sleeping newborn (much less put said newly-awoken baby in a carrier) just to get a package. Leave apartment with baby monitor, lock door behind you, get package, go back up 3 flights to baby. YMMV for awake/older babies that are more mobile and capable of doing something dumb/dangerous given 5 seconds alone.
posted by deludingmyself at 7:05 AM on August 1, 2016 [16 favorites]

Is there a way for you to hide a key somewhere or do you have a neighbor who can hold a spare key for you? I would be most concerned about accidentally locking myself out of apartment. Baby will be fine in his crib or bassinet and that's safer than carrying him up and down stairs while juggling packages.
ETA: Congratulations!!!
posted by areaperson at 7:09 AM on August 1, 2016 [15 favorites]

I have three kids. I would put baby in crib, lock door behind me, and go get the package. If baby's super fussy and can't seem to be put down at that moment, I'd bring baby along and ask delivery person to please help carry package up stairs (people are pretty helpful when there's a tiny new person around).

For baby #1, the idea of the baby crying, by itself, for several minutes without any response was heartbreaking to me and I did a lot of things to avoid it (like hauling baby-chairs down to the basement so baby could be nearby while laundry was switched from washer to dryer). Then baby #2 comes, and half the time that baby #2 cries, your hands are covered in baby #1's poop or whatever, and they just have to cry for a minute. And you know what? They're totally fine. In fact, sometimes by the time you get there, they've figured out a way to comfort themselves ( a good skill to have), and don't even care to be picked up anymore.

Congratulations on your new addition!
posted by Ausamor at 7:10 AM on August 1, 2016 [29 favorites]

Can you add a keyless entry to your door to prevent lockouts? I know there are some designed for renters or those who can't otherwise alter their locks. Carrying a baby monitor and leaving baby safely is a fine thing to do. Using a baby carrier is a great idea for safely going up/down stairs. Tell all visitors (maybe even post a note) to have patience while you get baby in carrier.
posted by amanda at 7:12 AM on August 1, 2016 [1 favorite]

You can sign up for texts from Amazon to receive shipping notifications if that helps.
posted by NoraCharles at 7:13 AM on August 1, 2016

the door buzzer doesn't work to let people into the building
Can you ask the landlord or super to fix this? It is pretty inconvenient for you being on the 3rd floor.
posted by soelo at 7:15 AM on August 1, 2016 [31 favorites]

If the baby is asleep, I'd leave it in the crib, if it's awake, I'd take it with me in a wrap or carrier.
posted by meijusa at 7:15 AM on August 1, 2016 [3 favorites]

Best answer: Yeah I'd leave the baby and take the monitor. At one point I had a panic about locking myself out so I attached the spare key to a necklace.
posted by threetwentytwo at 7:35 AM on August 1, 2016 [3 favorites]

Best answer: A house key on one of those clips with a stretchy elastic thing so you can keep it on your person and "drop" the key as soon as you get in the door - instead id fumbling or dropping the key it shoots back to your pocket! This has been super handy with baby/packages/groceries/crying toddler etc.

(Congrats!)
posted by jrobin276 at 7:41 AM on August 1, 2016 [4 favorites]

Can you just keep your keys on your person at all times so that you can lock the apartment door when you have to step out for a moment and not worry about getting locked out? I keep my keyring on a carabiner clipped to a belt loop, and tuck them into a back pocket so they don't jangle. Can you find a similar solution?

And yeah, talk to the landlord/super about that buzzer. When parts of your apartment are broken, it's their responsibility to fix them. That's one of the things you're paying rent for.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 7:41 AM on August 1, 2016 [1 favorite]

Attach a spare key to the monitor and bring it down with you when the baby is sleeping. When the baby is awake, have a large bag with handles (and another spare key attached) by the door to grab, and bring it and the baby down with you. You can put the package in the bag and carry both baby and package up the stairs. If you are too exhausted to carry baby up and down 3 flights of stairs, then it is better to leave the baby in the crip than to risk tripping while holding the baby. You are going to goof up on this a few times. You will get downstairs and hear baby screaming and feel like the worst person in the world. Know that you aren't. These things happen. Accept that you are doing the best that you can and that, right there, is what makes you a good mom.
posted by myselfasme at 7:42 AM on August 1, 2016 [12 favorites]

I'd have no concern about leaving a sleeping newborn in a crib / PnP / safe place for a few minutes while I ran down the stairs to retrieve a package. Honestly I'd probably also feel fine doing that with an awake but not upset infant, so long as the baby was in an enclosed space that s/he couldn't fall out of (like a crib) and it would only take a few minutes. It feels different because you're used to living in an apartment, but if you lived in a 3-story house in the 'burbs, it would be totally unremarkable to leave a baby on another floor sleeping while you went downstairs. (In case that's a helpful way of thinking about it.)

I agree with others that my main fear would be accidentally locking myself out. If you have an extra key, attaching it to the baby monitor seems like a good way to make sure you don't accidentally forget it when you pop downstairs for a delivery.
posted by iminurmefi at 7:50 AM on August 1, 2016 [13 favorites]

I was literally just typing what iminurmefi said about thinking about what people do who live in a multi-story house, so I deleted it since that's covered (All hail the Preview button).

Seconding that leaning on the landlord to fix the buzzer should be a priority.
posted by Betelgeuse at 7:53 AM on August 1, 2016 [1 favorite]

For purposes of making sure you have your key on you as you leave, and leaving hands free even if you have no pockets, you might consider - if you don't already have one - a wrist coil keyring, maybe hanging on a hook by the door. I swear I don't know how I went through life until now without one.
posted by fingersandtoes at 7:55 AM on August 1, 2016

Best answer: I was in your exact situation 13 years ago! Third floor, no buzzer, newborn. I would plunk him down in a safe spot (like his pack 'n' play), dash down, get the thing, dash back upstairs. My UPS guy was nice about bringing things up that I couldn't do on my own.

If I could go back in time I would tell Past Me to go ahead and take my time, no need to dash up and down the stairs. The baby was always fine. The hypothetical Bad Thing never happened.
posted by The corpse in the library at 8:31 AM on August 1, 2016 [3 favorites]

Best answer: Oh, Jesus, yes, you can leave your baby in the crib while you take 3 minutes to run down three flights of stairs to grab a package. You do not need a baby monitor to be gone from earshot for such a short period of time, with a baby who is not capable of escaping the confines of the crib.
posted by drlith at 8:31 AM on August 1, 2016 [11 favorites]

Best answer: I feel like we're doing a lot of talking about how to manage keys and locked doors when the OP said they'd just leave the door unlocked. This is a small building. I'm having a hard time figuring out what the big unlocked door threat is here. (Velociraptors in the building??) Presumably anyone stealing a baby would have to 1) work extremely fast and 2) dart right past the OP to do it. Leave a spare key somewhere safe in case of accidental door lockage, but why on earth add an extra step to complicate this further?
posted by phunniemee at 8:45 AM on August 1, 2016 [10 favorites]

Leave a spare key somewhere safe in case of accidental door lockage, but why on earth add an extra step to complicate this further?

Because sometimes the door shuts...and is locked! It's really the only thing that I think is nerve-wracking about this situation. Leaving the baby in a safe place, with or without a monitor, is fine. But I can also imagine a situation where the front door at package retrieval, chatting with the mail carrier, whatever, gets closed and locked.

I had a ritual where every time I put my baby in my car, I put my keys on the roof. Every single time. If I didn't, I'd haphazzardly throw it...somewhere... could be a pocket, could be the diaper bag, could be the car seat, could be my purse...and in my sleep deprived and multi-tasking mom mind, it would drive me bananas. You don't need that kind of strife when you are juggling all the tasks of caring for a newborn and living your life. These kinds of hacks are lifesavers and sanity savers.
posted by amanda at 8:54 AM on August 1, 2016 [3 favorites]

Best answer: Well, with a quick trip down to the door with a non-mobile baby and a safe place to put him/her, the risk of accidentally locking yourself out of the apartment is really the worst that can happen. And people do lock themselves out all the time because usually people's default setting is "locked door", even if they usually remember to push the button to unlock the door or whatever. So people are suggesting ways to prevent that from happening.

Other than that, yeah, people leave babies on upper floors of their houses all the time while they go down to the basement, so as long as the baby can't get into mischief of some sort while you're gone, I'd say just pop him/her into the crib pack 'n' play and go downstairs and get your package. When I had my kids I lived in a 2nd floor walk-up and I actually think it was riskier to try to take them downstairs since our stairs were slippery and steep and juggling the kid and a package was always awkward.
posted by The Elusive Architeuthis at 8:59 AM on August 1, 2016 [1 favorite]

Others have covered ideas above for how to manage keys (lanyard or spring-retractor thingy). For hauling big packages upstairs you may find it helpful to use a really big carrying bag with handles, like these Ikea Frakta bags. I have a bunch of these around the house and they are really, really handy for tons of things (and cheap). They're really lightweight but huge, so they will fit most UPS boxes and you could sling it over your shoulder to make it easier to manage baby in one arm as you carry packages, and they fold up pretty small to stash by the front door.
posted by cuddles.mcsnuggy at 9:35 AM on August 1, 2016 [1 favorite]

Don't lock the door, don't bring the baby monitor. If your baby is pre-crawling phase and/or in the crib, just go down and come back up.

I can't even imagine a scenario where locking the door would be worth the risk of locking yourself out.
posted by thewumpusisdead at 9:38 AM on August 1, 2016 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Oh, sweetie.

Put the baby in the crib (yes, even if baby is crying), leave the door unlocked, go get your package, come back. It's okay. I promise. This method also works for the following scenarios: you need to pee, take a shower, eat a sandwich, check your email. Put the baby in a crib, go do what you need to do, come back and retrieve baby.
posted by soren_lorensen at 10:10 AM on August 1, 2016 [21 favorites]

I had an infuriatingly awkward arrangement to let people in too, and found it helped to have more than one place in my house that I could safely plunk the baby while I went to get the door. Didn't take the baby monitor - I mean, I was going to be as quick as I could anyway, so hearing the baby cry wouldn't have changed anything.

I was worried about locking myself out by slamming the door closed behind me (which I wouldn't usually do but... sleep deprivation), so I took a belt-and-braces approach: always leave the door unlocked, and always take keys anyway. I sometimes ended up forgetting one or the other, but never both.

(That said, for the first six months my baby pretty much lived in a sling anyway despite all my best intentions, so just came to get the door with me.)
posted by Catseye at 10:37 AM on August 1, 2016

Best answer: You can absolutely leave a baby in a safe place for a couple of minutes while you attend to things, I promise. Things can be anything from making a bottle, to pooping, to answering the door, to grabbing packages. It is much, much safer than trying to juggle objects and tasks while holding a baby, squirming or not.

If your door locks behind you if you're not careful, figure out how to prevent it AND leave a key with a neighbor. If it doesn't lock automatically, leave the door unlocked.

I really do understand the anxiety, these days it feels like the baby-police will come arrest you for neglect if you ever tear your eyes away from your children but that's not the case. You don't need the monitor. Strap baby into swing/put in crib/lay on mat on the floor and go do what you have to do. Even if they're crying, it's totally fine. If it weren't fine every younger sibling would be in trouble, as priorities shift from "comfort baby at all times" to "prevent toddler from braining herself jumping off the couch" pretty quickly once you have two.
posted by lydhre at 11:42 AM on August 1, 2016 [6 favorites]

I think you should work really hard at getting the front door buzzer fixed. You may find yourself with an uncooperative toddler or preschooler and still in this situation - and perhaps pregnant or carrying a newborn (depending on how your family came together, whether you are a mom/dad, etc).

If you are worried about locking yourself out, you can easily install a touchpad lock on your unit or, for less money, buy one of those locks that real estate agents have.
posted by Chaussette and the Pussy Cats at 10:12 PM on August 1, 2016 [1 favorite]