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@farawayviolet: Interesting question!
@Sapphiresun: I wouldn't have a problem with this. We live in very close quarters and use our monitor to go to our neighbors and keep an eye on our sleeping kiddo. We live in a safe neighborhood and lock her in and bring keys. I don't know that I would feel comfortable with this arrangement again in a new place, but knowing our current situation, I would do it.

We do this with our neighbors. It is great once you have a child who sleeps reliably at night.

I definitely would do this. In our old apartment, my upstairs neighbor would sometimes leave to run an errand and just let me know her LO was sleeping, no monitor even (very short errands), just so I could grab him in case of some kind of crazy emergency.

As long as the monitor worked I feel like this would be fine!

I might consider it but I'd have hesitation too. We used to live in a townhouse style condo and our next door neighbors had us baby sit their monitor a couple times. Like you, the distance from our house to the baby's room was not far and probably less than some people's houses!

Only if I could TOOOOTALLY trust the neighbor. I doubt I could, but a relative across the hall would be ok for me I think.

During the summers, I totally take my monitor outside my house, set it on the porch, turn the volume up, and do sprints and such in front of my house and work out in my driveway. As long as the babies are being monitored, no big deal. Plus at 18 months, they're probably not going to randomly wake up very often! Sounds like a fine situation to me.

This sounds great. I would totally do that, especially with my neighbor who is very sweet.

Also I wish I had a neighbor I could do this with now, just for nighttime dog walks while lo is sleeping.

@Smurfette: in nyc apartments you can easily hear your neighbor's Fire alarm.

Yeah I'd do this. But then again, I'm one of hose neligent parents that leaves baby alone to go get the mail and take the trash out.

In theory, it sounds plausible if your neighbor is in super close quarters. However, I'd never do it. The farthest I'd ever go is on one of our outdoor porches, where I am still in control of the monitor. However, I do get that you may be just as close to your neighbor's living space as the distance from my LO's room to my porch. But I don't think close quarters or SF is the main issue, and here's why....

If I were your neighbor with your monitor and something happened- a fire suddenly broke out for example- my instinct would be to tend to my own child/children immediately, get them together and out the door, and THEN get to your baby. Would she be my immediate next priority? Yes. For sure, but she wouldn't be my first, so I would just suck it up and stay home and do a DVD or something, where I can get to her first if something crazy happened.

@Sapphiresun: I would do it, as long as you totally trust your neighbor to go immediately if she notices movement on the monitor.

In our old building, we were friends with two other couples, one of which had a 14 month old (who always STTN perfectly reliably). We often had little get-togethers/dinners in one of our apartments and they would come after their baby was asleep and just bring the video monitor.

We could all see the baby sleeping peacefully--we all lived near each other on the same floor, and the mom would go back and forth checking on her son a few times throughout the night.

It was fine!

@Smurfette: it takes way less than 3 minutes for me to walk to 4 feet between my door and my neighbor's door across the hall. Maybe 2 seconds and two steps?

@yellowbird: I understand your fear, but it's like saying you wouldn't go downstairs if your baby was sleeping upstairs, in case a fire started in their room and you couldn't get back to them.

Everyone I know that has a two story house goes on different floors from their baby with a monitor in hand--actually I have lots of friends that don't even use a monitor anymore.

@Anagram: I pretty much don't do that! Lol.im super paranoid though.

@Sapphiresun: haven't read all the responses but I do this often! Sometimes our neighbors have our monitor and we will go out to eat nearby even, or to the gym, which is right next to our apartment. Our two apartments combined are a smaller space than many people's houses so I don't see any issue whatsoever!

We live in a quiet neighborhood, and our neighbor has done this for us 10-20 minutes at a time on a few occasions. She is always outside in her driveway next to our house and I leave our front door unlocked for her, and our monitor has sound I turn all the way up. I find it no different than me working in my back yard while baby is asleep.