'If you interrupt my baby's nap, you will ruin my life'

It had been an hour, and still my baby was crying.

I did the same thing I'd been doing every day: whispered "it will be okay" over and over, to help calm both of us. Eventually she gave in and her sobs faded as her eyes closed and her little body relaxed into slumber.

That was when a dog started barking.

It turned out the neighbour's dog had come into my backyard and was barking at my dog. Very loudly. So loudly and incessantly that just five minutes after her crying had finally stopped, my baby woke and began to wail again.

Furious, I grabbed my baby and stormed over to the neighbour's house. I gave her a verbal serving, venting my exhaustion and frustration as she watched on with confusion. "Sure, I'll just come and get the dog," she said when I stopped. But that wasn't the point: that dog had just wrecked my entire day.

While babies nap to meet their own developmental needs, it's also necessary for a parent's sanity. Nap time can be a parent's only time to themselves all day, and cutting that short can turn the calmest of parents into a monster.

The world hasn't seen fury like the parent of a woken baby.

Parenting blogger and creator of Honest Toddler, Bunmi Laditan, displayed this sentiment when she shared a picture on Facebook of the note she'd left on her front door when expecting a parcel delivery.

The note read, "My 3 year old son is finally napping. If you ring the doorbell you will ruin my life. Please just knock lightly. I'm serious."

In an extra touch, Laditan had written the note on her child's drawing which, as we all know, is the only piece of paper you're likely to find in a home with kids.

Laditan added in the comments, "I would honestly cry if they rang the bell. Real tears."

Parents rushed in to comment on the post, sharing their own tales of nap interrupters. One said, "You're nice. Once I put a note up and it said 'I will literally punch you in the face if you wake up my kids.'"

Another commenter wrote, "I had two kids in a year. I had a permanent sign to this effect for several years. It included, 'If you knock and the dog barks and the precious babies wake, I will chase you down the street and force you to rock them back to sleep.'"

Others shared their own images of the efforts they'd undertaken to stop little ones being woken. One note said, "You wake 'em, you take 'em!" while another showed a picture of wires hanging loose where her doorbell used to be – frustration must have been at its peak that day.

My friends related, too, when I shared Laditan's post on my own Facebook page. One said barking dogs were her worst enemy while her kids were babies: "The barking was insane, sometimes three dogs would be barking furiously at our gate, which was right next to baby's room. My kids were shocking sleepers during the night so ruining daytime naps was beyond what I could cope with."

Another friend said she died a little inside when the phone rang during nap time, especially during one particularly frustrating incident. "I remember unleashing a tirade of hell on a scammer posing as an IT person, who was advising of a 'virus' on my computer – they'd rung during nap time AND they woke the baby. I went psycho at them! Not only were they being dishonest and deliberately trying to dupe me ... THEY WOKE MY BABY WHO DID NOT SLEEP! It was a whole new level of fury!"

It's proof that when it comes to a child's sleep, all logic is lost … and anyone who wakes a sleeping baby or toddler is in Big Trouble.