SIDS, or sudden infant death syndrome, is the sudden and often unexplained death of a baby under the age of one year old. This is a scary thing to consider if you are pregnant or have a new born and as result new parents often fork out lots of money for baby breathing monitors. These monitors can help to track the heart and breathing rate of your baby and should your baby experience sleep apnoea then an alarm will sound to alert you to the fact that your baby has stopped breathing, however briefly.
This may sound like a no brainer, but with a high cost and the possibility of disturbing much-needed sleep for no reason at all, not all baby’s in fact need a breathing monitor.
Not a Fool Proof Way To Prevent SIDS
While sleep apnoea and SIDS may seem linked unfortunately there is no concrete proof that shows a link between the two. Many new born babies in fact do have sleep apnoea and this could mean that your baby breathing monitor could cause multiple false alarms during the night, increasing your stress levels as a parent and disrupting the few peaceful hours you may be able to get to rest and recuperate as a new parent.
Other Methods To Protect Your Baby
Many people who have breathing monitors tend to forget that there are many things that you should also be doing to ensure that your baby is safe when sleeping . These include always placing your baby on its back when sleeping and using a firm mattresses while avoiding the use of blankets and toys in the crib which could shift and end up suffocating your child.
Re-breathing can be much more dangerous than apnoea and this occurs when a baby’s face is pressed into the folds of blankets or a toy. This causes the baby to re-breath its expelled carbon dioxide and not get in enough oxygen.
When Do You Need A Breathing Monitor?
In some cases your doctor may recommend that you invest in a breathing monitor. This could happen in the case that your baby has been born premature or suffers from cardiac or breathing ailments such as asthma . When looking for best baby breathing monitor you will find a number of different devices on the market, many of which include cameras and can be monitored from your smart phone. Some even clip directly to your child’s diaper or include highly sensitive sleep mats which can be placed in the crib to also monitor your baby’s movement as well as their sleep patterns.
Ultimately when it comes down to it, unless your baby was born prematurely or suffers from a disease that requires constant monitoring, you have the best odds online of not really needing a baby monitor.
A simple walkie-talkie style monitor will help you keep track of your child when it begins to stir or starts crying while old phones can be repurposed as baby cameras if you want to keep an extra eye on your kid when you can’t be in the room.