Spit-up On My Shoulder

Professor Trevor Cox, an acoustical engineer doing research at Salford University and the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester, England, is on the way to answering the question above.

In a yearlong Internet study of 1.1 million people, he had participants listen to 34 sounds and rate them from bad, really bad, awful, really awful, to horrible.

Here’s the Top 10 list:

1) Vomiting
2) Microphone feedback
3) Multiple babies crying
4) Scraping of train wheels
5) Seesaw squeaking
6) Bad violin playing
7) Flatulence
One baby crying
9) Soap opera argument
10) Electricity hum

I cracked up at numbers 7 and 9!

Fingernails dragged down a blackboard came in 16th, and a dentist’s drill was 20th. Personally I’d take listening to a soap opera argument any day over the sound of a dentist’s drill. Gives me the willies even thinking about the drill.

Interesting that some form of babies crying made spots 3 and 8 on the list. So don’t feel bad when your baby (or babies) cry a lot and you feel like jumping out of your skin. Since you’re the mom, that cry hits you right in the heart. Like I’ve said before: take a breath, relax as much as you can, and then try to figure out what’s wrong. It will get easier as baby grows and doesn’t cry so often, I swear!