cot death

Before Baby B came into our lives Mrs B had a very trying pregnancy with threatened miscarriages and plenty of hospital stays. This lead to her being quite paranoid and she began to believe that she'd never be lucky enough to have the baby born in one piece... Baby B was born in one piece but she was then paranoid about cot death which I think is pretty understandable especially seeing as how much the health visitors and midwives speak about it.

When we were still waiting for Baby B's appearance our local health visitor came round and spent a good twenty minutes scaring us both senselss about cot death and how it can be reduced.

Although she had told us the ways to ensure your baby is as safe as possible- no co-sleeping, checking the correct temperature of the room- we were still slightly paranoid so we decided to purchase this angel care monitor.

what is it?

The monitor, is basically a sensor mat. This mat is extremely sensitive. It detects the smallest of movements and wil alarm if these movements stop. It is also a night light and a baby monitor.

How do you use it?

Considering how very complicated this mechanism must be to be able to detect such tiny movements I thought it would be complicated to use but it's so very simple which is lucky as when you have a newborn you don't have time to read instruction manuals!

The sensor mat- which is the size of a face cloth- is placed underneath the mattress of your baby's cot/moses basket. the matress is then replaced and you can put your baby to sleep on the mattress without them noticing the pad beneath. The pad is linked to the 'angel' which is the main body of the machine. It has two switches either side- on and off and light. You turn the switch to 'on' and then leave your baby in peace for the night.

Should your baby stop breathing the angel will alarm and if you have a large house or you want to monitor your baby's snuffles and whimpers you can take the handheld monitor around the house with you like you would any normal baby monitor.

The sensor mat can be turned up and down depending on how sensitive you want it. We have never had it on anything but 5- the most sensitive.

The functions

The handheld monitor detects the temperature in the room. This is an important factor in cot death, it's important babies don't over heat so you can rest assured just by glancing at the large numbers on the screen to see what the temperature is in the room your baby is sleeping.

The nightlight function is brilliant, I always turn this on at the same time as I turn on the sensor mat as a way in wihch I can know that I have definitely turned it on.

The main body has a light section where there are LED lights down the middle- one showing that it is on, another that the power is lost, another when the alarm sounds and one which flickers as your baby moves. These lights are so tiny that if they are in the same room as you you don't notice them.

advice

This sensor mat is extremely sensitive. It's amazing to think it can pick up the tiny movement of your baby as it breathes even through a thick mattress. It is, vital that you do not put a fan on in your baby's room whilst using this. The motion from the fan is enough just to confuse the mat and make it pick up on the motion from that so if your baby did stop breathing it wouldn't alarm.

It is also important to remember that sometimes babies have dreams and whilst dreaming they can hold their breath. The mat sensor alarms if your baby has stopped breathing for 20 seconds. We have had one occasion where it alarmed whilst Baby B was being cheeky and holding her breath mid-dream.

Also, as your baby gets more active they can roll off the mat and so the alarm can go off. I, however, think it is far better to be over sensitive than under sensitive and it has only done this 3 times in the whole of Baby B's 8 months of life.

How is it operated?

The machine plugs directly into the mains although there is apparently an option to use batteries but we have never looked into it. If you lose power supply the machine makes a noise so you are alerted to it, this is a different noise to the alarm so you don't panic!

Opinion

We recommend this highly. Yes it is v ery sensitive so we have had 3 horrible moments in the middle of the night when we've heard teh alarm go off but we've also had 8 months worth of sleeping with ease. When Baby B started to sleep through we didn't worry, we didn't start to question 'is she okay? We've not heard a noise from her all night...' because we knew that if anything was wrong the angel would have gone off. We didn't have to keep getting up and checking on her and when we had the very hot nights in the summer we were able to rest assured that the temperature was under control as we could see what it was.

I don't know whether if Baby B did stop breathing whether the fact we'd be alerted to it straight away would make much difference but it does give us that reassurance that she is okay.

I honestly could not do without this product now. I know a lot of people say it's just a bit extreme and leads to paranoia but it does just the opposite. We know of people who keep peering into their baby's bedrooms to check that they're okay when they've had a cheeky lie in, we know of parents that get up and down in the night as they're so worried but we don't. We can sleep soundly knowing that the angel is looking out for our baby for us.

We bought our angel from mothercare a year ago for £70. I don't think that this is expensive, not when you look at the basic baby monitors which are just a listening device and nothing more. This does so much more than that and is so worth it.

If I was to improve this mat I would make it have an ability to be bigger. I think it's the size it is as it fits nicely into a moses basket but in the cot it looks a bit lost, it would be good if you could increase its size in due course.