Do I need a 'smart nursery'?
What's the latest offering for a baby's nursery? Sleep tracking devices like Mimo can now record a baby’s breathing, position, sleep/wake state, and provide audio.
Today's guest blogger is Meghan Walls, PsyD, a pediatric psychologist at Nemours/AI duPont Hospital for Children.
I am a pediatric psychologist by trade. My other full time job is mom to two beautiful girls. I work with parents on positive sleep habits, setting routines, and helping their families get a good night of sleep. Then I go home to my five month old who is in the throes of a sleep regression and try to put my words into practice.
Recently, a New York Times review about new sleep tracking devices, including the Mimo caught my attention. I am always interested in new sleep products, especially those for infants. Tired parents everywhere hope the next big thing is the answer to their prayers – or dreams. I decided to try it out on our baby to see how it stacks up.
To give some background, our traditional monitor is a video monitor with sound. It also reports temperature in the room. I have been known to turn the volume down to low overnight so I don't over-respond to the little noises.
Enter the Mimo. Technology keeps giving us new ways to monitor our behavior from exercise to eating. Sleep is no different. The Mimo lets you monitor a baby's breathing, position, sleep/wake state, and provides an audio monitor. The information is all sent directly to your iPhone, tablet, or Android. It comes with three soft kimono onesies and you attach a small turtle onto the lillypad on the onesie. In turn, you get a world of information at your fingertips. We often ask parents to monitor their children's sleeping patterns in order to come up with a good plan to get sleep on track. This does it for you, without tip toeing into the room hoping your baby doesn't wake up.
This is a pretty cool system if you're looking for very specific sleep information about your baby. A few things that I think could use improvement: There is lag in information delivery. As a safety issue, you would want to know immediately if there were any issues with breathing. Also, the audio is not as great as other audio monitors that I've heard.
I think this may be a good pairing with a video monitor, but on its own, it may leave parents too confident or perhaps worried that the information isn't correct. Overall, it's probably not "necessary" to have all of this information, but if you're a parent who thinks knowing your child's every sleep move would help you set good routines, then why not?
More importantly, make sure you are setting a good stage for your baby's sleep and that you're attending to your child appropriately. Relying more on your parental instincts and less on technology may be the best bet.
If you are struggling to get your baby to sleep, here are some quick tips for encouraging optimal infant sleep:
Always put your baby on their back to sleep.
Swaddles can help calm the moro reflex in the early days and help soothe babies.
White noise helps block out the sounds in the house that may wake your baby.
Give your baby a few minutes before responding to see if they will go back to sleep on their own. Babies can wriggle, grunt, and even let out a few cries, but still be in the midst of a sleep cycle.
Set a good bedtime routine so your baby knows what to expect. For example, a routine could be bath, books, feeding, and bed from an early age.
Put your baby down drowsy, but awake.
Learn more about normal infant sleep habits here from KidsHealth.
Editor's note: Rest Devices, the makers of Mimo, sent Walls a Mimo to review for this blog.
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