Woman Bails on Agreement to Babysit Overnight After Her Friend FaceTimes to See the Baby ‘Every 30 Minutes’

A woman turned to Reddit for advice after a disagreement with her close friend when she decided to end her night of babysitting earlier than expected.

The situation unfolded on Halloween. The 26-year-old said she doesn’t have any children, which she felt might be relevant to how she handled things. Her friend — identified as “A” — recently had her second baby, “R,” who is about 4 months old. Meanwhile, the older child, “T,” around 7, has been having trouble adjusting to the new sibling.

Hoping to support her friend, she offered to babysit the infant so the mom could spend one-on-one time with her older child. She explained that she has experience caring for kids as an aunt to 12, so her friend felt comfortable leaving the baby with her.

On Halloween, “A” asked if “R” could stay overnight while she took “T” trick-or-treating and participated in a holiday tradition. The babysitter happily agreed.

Everything started out fine when “A” dropped the baby off around 4 p.m. But soon, the video calls began. After an initial check-in, the FaceTime calls continued every 30 minutes to an hour — even while they were out trick-or-treating. When the connection dropped, the calls would resume repeatedly.

As the night went on, the babysitter struggled to keep the baby asleep, with each call waking him up again. By 10 p.m., she was getting ready for bed and gently asked if her friend wanted her to bring the baby home. “A” insisted that wasn’t necessary.

She tried to hint that the interruptions were making it harder to care for the newborn, but the calls persisted. Everyone involved was overtired. The babysitter noted that the mom appeared exhausted too, yet couldn’t stop calling to check in.

Eventually, after another dropped call, she reached her limit. She packed up the baby and returned him home in the middle of the night. Her friend was upset, but she believed she had done the right thing for everyone’s well-being — especially since “T” was already asleep and she didn’t feel she was interrupting their night.

Unsure whether she had crossed a line, she asked Reddit’s “Am I the A——” community for perspective. She wondered if not having children made it harder to understand her friend’s emotional state.

Many commenters supported her and reassured her she handled the situation responsibly. One wrote that her friend was clearly not ready to spend a night away from the baby, and the non-stop calls were keeping both the babysitter and infant awake — defeating the whole purpose of the arrangement.

Another commenter added that although the friend’s anxiety was understandable, ignoring repeated communication about the issue left the babysitter with no workable choice.