AngelCare AC401 Movement and Sound Baby Monitor

When I was buying my baby equipment for my elder child I had my eyes on this monitor. Id seen it in family members houses and thought the sensor mat and little 'pip' noises were a great idea to let parents know how their baby was doing in their sleep. When I went to buy it they were out of stock and so we bought an alternative, but very similar Tommee Tippee monitor which was also a great baby monitor although we still like to keep it in our 2 year old's room at night as he is now in a bed and so we like to hear if he is getting up so that we can get up and make sure he is ok. (obviously at 2 we have removed the sensor mat, but its still nice to be able to hear him- for example 2 nights ago he was ill while he slept and it was great to hear that he needed us straight away as otherwise we would not have realised until one of us went to check on him which could have been a further half hour as he did not waken up when he was ill)

When number 2 was expected we did consider removing the monitor from our little boys room, but I'm a bit of a panicky person and I still think a two year old needs careful watching, especially at night when he is quite a little way away from our bedroom so we bought an AngelCare for our daughter. It is the newer version- I will include some pics at the end… please excuse the mess in my home!

My little girl is still in her Moses Basket but that doesn't stop me using the monitor when I am in a different room from her. It's not ideal but it will suffice until she gets into her cot. I love the reassurance of knowing she is moving around. My daughter was born by emergency section slightly before full term after growth scans showed she was not growing in the womb very well. She is well over 9lb now but although she is a healthy little fighter I was very worried while the docs made sure a neonatal bed was free for her as she was born. Thankfully she arrived in the world needing no extra help other than lamps for jaundice, but the very memory of her arrival is enough for me to want all the helpful baby gadgets I can have just to keep sane and not be checking her breathing every 2 minutes. The monitor provides that peace.

SPECIAL FEATURES
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Baby monitors have been around for a long time. It is not always convenient to have our infants in the same room as us and with the cot-death advice that we should have our children sleeping in the room with us for the first six months, having a good quality monitor is a must-have for a lot of new parents. We live in a bungalow where the kitchen is quite a walk away from the baby's bedroom and so I need to be able to hear her so I can make a quick trip to see she is ok if anything troubles me over the monitor.

The basic baby monitor picks up sound from around the baby at varying degrees of sensitivity, but the Angel care is different. It comes with a sensor mat which rests under the infant's mattress, picking up the movements of the child breathing and alerting the parents by a siren if no movement is detected. You can change the sensitivity of the mat on the unit by turning a knob although I personally tend to keep it at the highest sensitivity. Even at that I don't find myself being unnecessarily troubled by alarms; it tends to only go off when she has rolled off the mat; which has only happened one time, or when I lift her from the bed.

The Parent Unit has a nursery temperature sensor so parents can keep and eye that the heat of the room the baby is in, is at a suitable warmth. Overheating, and on the other hand, being too cold can be dangerous for a young child.

The parent unit also shows the level of noise coming from the baby's bedroom by means of an LED light show- more lights means more noise.

The child unit also has an LED to show movement has been sensed- this is reassuring if you are in the same room as the baby- you can tell in one glance if the child is still moving.

The child unit has a blue nightlight. Its halo shaped and actually gives off enough light to see the baby quite well. It provides more than enough light to feed your baby and is (I guess!) reassuring for the baby.

MY EXPERIENCES
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When my daughter is in her bed and we are in our living room, which is around 10 metres away we can hear every rustle, every cough, we can even hear her sucking on her dummy which is exactly what we wanted from a baby monitor. There is no interference; which happened occasionally with the Tommee Tippee one we had with our Son which was also another huge plus for us.

I find the parent unit blends fairly well into our normal living quarters. It is inoffensive and rests in its little stand on top of our hifi. I haven't noticed any hikes in our electricity bills either so I assume it doesn't use an awful lot!

The only issue I have with the monitor is that when I lift the little one I sometimes forget to flick off the sensor mat (you turn it off by flicking one of the angels 'wings' upwards or downwards. And within moments of lifting her from her bed to go and prepare her night time bottle I will hear the siren go off. This is annoying as I have a two year old in the next room and I have managed to wake him up with the monitor in the middle of the night, but at least I know it works!

I sometimes get a little confused with the menu button and its sometimes a war to get the setting I want (usually just to see the temperature when someone has been fiddling with the monitor- namely my toddler son) It is fiddly- I have long nails and the buttons are tiny. The simple solution would be to trim my nails but this is the first time my nails have grown so I want to keep them for as long as possible! I would also imagine having large fingers would make this hard too.

RECOMMEND?
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I would wholeheartedly recommend this monitor to anyone who is in the market for baby products at the moment. I know monitors are not for everyone, and perhaps we live in an overly monitored world at the minute but for me, I like to know exactly what is going on in my baby's bedroom.

Lulu2004 ©