I grew up in the years before all the intricate baby gadgetry and a baby alarm to keep tabs on the baby would have seemed as strange to my parents as a nanny spy cam. When I was a baby, the only thing my parents used to keep track of me in my crib were their own ears. To keep track of what I was doing in my crib, they would stay inside hearing range of my room and if they heard me cry out, they would come in and check on me.
They did not have the luxury of a baby alarm sounding when I cried, like parents raising kids nowadays do.
The entire collection of baby monitoring devices began with a good idea. People were looking for a way to monitor their babies when they were far away, like downstairs in the kitchen while the baby was upstairs sleeping in its crib.
A simple device called the baby monitor was born, and this is the least difficult of all the monitoring devices. It’s a simple one-way speaker that allows you to hear what’s going on in the baby’s room from anyplace in the house. Next up in complexity for monitoring devices are the baby cams, which permit you to see as well as hear what’s going on in your baby’s room.
Last is the baby alarm which actually monitors the baby for sound and then sets off an audible alert for parents when the baby makes a noise.
I’ve heard of parents using a baby alarm for newborns that goes off if the baby stops breathing for any amount of time. This is commonly the answer for parents who dread that their baby may be at risk for sudden infant death syndrome. Although the baby alarm has still not been shown to be effectual in avoiding sudden infant death, and some babies still die from this unknown epidemic every year.
The baby alarm in this case, would provide the parents the peace of mind of knowing that they’re doing something, even if it’s not all that useful, to prevent tragedy.
The best opinion I received when my son was small was to turn off the monitor and not fear so much because the baby would definitely let us know if he needed us.
Babies can be very noisy, especially while they snooze, and it does no good to wake up for every little grunt or whimper through the night. A genuine crisis will result in ear piercing cries that could travel through sheetrock and once you recognize this, it makes buying a baby alarm or other sort of costly monitoring device seem silly.
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