Did I ruin my baby’s hearing?

Postpartum Life

Yesterday, I brought my 3 week old baby to a local Oktoberfest celebration at an outdoor beer garden in my town. We were there for about 4 hours, and there was a pretty loud band playing rock covers - my Apple Watch alerted me once or twice that it was a “loud environment” at times (which they interpret at 90 decibels or more, but my watch tends to be very sensitive about this). There were lots of families with kids there, so I didn’t think anything of it.

The band took about an hour and a half break at some point. We probably sat about 50/60 feet away, and my baby was asleep in her baby carrier on my chest for the majority of the time, undisturbed. She was awake toward the end for about an hour and a half, once again seemingly undisturbed by the environment.

When we got home, I went down a rabbit hole of Reddit searching and realized I should NOT have brought my baby to this and if I did, she should have been wearing headphones.

Did I permanently damage my child’s hearing? I’m feeling so guilty about this.

Posted Sep 28, 2025, 1:38 PM UTC

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