I, and every new parent I know, am terrified of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, better known as SIDS. It’s the leading cause of death for babies between one month and one year old, killing approximately 130 per year peacefully in their sleep in Australia. And so we check constantly to see if our babies are still breathing.
Illustration by Sam Woolley.
Friends have asked me if this obsession dies down over time. I’m on my third baby, and I don’t worry as much as I did with my first. But if she’s been napping for more than, say, half an hour, I still creep into the room and stare at her chest until I can be sure I see it going up and down.
Can you blame parents of babies for being paranoid about whether our little ones are still alive halfway through a nap? We don’t even have a clear picture of why SIDS happens, so it’s hard to figure out exactly how much to worry. The risk is remote, but every parent is told (often at the hospital where their baby is born) that we must always put babies on their backs to sleep and maintain a safe sleep environment. So we take action every day, just in laying our babies down, to try to shift the balance against SIDS. It’s on our minds.
The current theory about SIDS is based on a “triple risk“: The baby has a subtle brain or breathing problem, they reach a stage of development where their body’s functions are temporarily “destabilised” and then a factor in the baby’s environment tips the balance against the baby. That factor could be secondhand smoke, or it could be sleeping on their stomach instead of their back.
Can Technology Help Us Stop Worrying?
I know I worry more than I need to; SIDS is rare. Knowing that doesn’t stop the worrying, though. And that’s why I was intrigued by the ads that keep showing up for me on Facebook, for a device that promises to worry about your baby’s breathing for you.
The device, Owlet, is wireless and fits in your baby’s sock. If your baby stops breathing, the company says, the app will sound an alarm. You can check your phone anytime you like (from the next room, from your date, from your business trip) to reassure yourself that your baby is still alive.
This sounds awesome. It also sounds like the ultimate in obsessive parenting: Do you really need to track your child’s every breath? It’s probably unnecessary. It’s also $US249 ($337), which is the only reason I haven’t bought one. It also doesn’t ship to Australia. If it were $30 at Target, I bet it would be considered standard-issue baby gear: Carseat, crib, nappies, breathing monitor.
Owlet isn’t the only gadget along these lines: Sproutling ($US299 [$405]), Mimo ($US199 [$269]) and Monbaby ($US169 [$229]) all offer, among their features, the function of telling you if your baby is still breathing. They each work a little differently. Mimo and Monbaby feel the motion of the chest; Sproutling checks heart rate; Owlet monitors blood oxygen in the same way as those finger clippy things in the hospital. None of these are sold in Australia, but the Babysense 2 and clip on Snuza function on a similar premise to the Mimo and Monbaby, detecting motion.
So will these monitors help in a real emergency? Owlet says it will alert you if your baby stops breathing, but it doesn’t say what you should do when it alerts you. Not that I have a clear plan for what I would do if my dark room peerings showed a non-breathing baby. I can envision my reaction, though: Pick her up, pat and rub her, scream for my husband, call 000, begin CPR.
Owlet’s website doesn’t consider this possibility. Their list of Common Questions includes only one in the right ballpark: “Does Owlet guarantee the safety of my baby? No… Your baby’s safety is your responsibility.” The rest of the top questions are about things like fit and washing instructions. Buried in the tech support section, Owlet gives a list of things to do if the device sounds a red alert. Basically, you should check the fit of the sock.
This seems strangely half-arsed for something sold as a lifesaving device: There are no instructions on how to use it to save a life. Either Owlet never thought of this (hey, SIDS is rare), or they’re being skittish about the fact that their product is not regulated or approved as a medical device. Still, my sneaking in and checking on the baby isn’t a medical device either.
I asked David King, a clinical lecturer in paediatrics at Sheffield University, why he doesn’t think that Owlet and similar monitors are useful for parents. He wrote as much in a paper in the medical journal The BMJ.
“These devices have never been tested in any meaningful way,” Dr King says. In other words, we don’t know if they could actually save a life. In the 1970s and 1980s, he points out, research showed that monitors did not prevent SIDS deaths, and possibly could not. This 1988 review published in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences mentions several deaths that occurred during monitoring where the babies could not be resuscitated. Just because you know a baby stopped breathing doesn’t mean you can do anything about it.
If a device isn’t helpful, are we better off without it? Using and checking a monitor could end up making you worry more, especially if there are false alarms. The authors of the 1988 paper noted that monitors increased anxiety in parents, especially when one parent wanted to use the device and the other didn’t. The monitors of the time were expensive and cumbersome, with wires that could accidentally disconnect. Today’s monitors should be simpler to deal with, although I could see date-night arguments breaking out over whether one half of the couple should stop checking their baby monitor app so much.
The founder of Owlet dismissed Dr King’s concerns by noting that he is not a parent, and thus can’t relate to the constant worry. “I’m not saying they should be banned or anything,” Dr King says. He just thinks parents should know that a monitor like this doesn’t “have some sort of medical role” and that the devices’ makers should avoid implying that they do.
After all, is there much of a difference between a breathing monitor like Owlet, and a video baby monitor that lets you snoop on your child’s rising-and-falling chest? Sometimes we just want another way to check in.
I can’t help thinking that if a person is worried enough to buy and use a breathing monitor, maybe they could put their nervous energy to better use — either instead of one or in addition to it. Here are some things that really could save your child’s life someday (or somebody else’s).
- Sign up for an infant first aid and CPR class. Hospitals and fire departments often offer them, or check with St John Ambulance or Red Cross.
- Create a safe sleep environment for your child, which means laying them on their back with no stuffed animals or bumpers around, no matter how cute they are.
- Read up on child safety, which goes way beyond sleep: Once those little ones learn to move around, they can find toxic things to eat, fall off their bikes and endanger themselves in all kinds of horrifying ways. Welcome to parenthood.
I won’t tell you to relax and not worry. SIDS is a real risk, and obsessive worrying may even be a universal aspect of parenthood. So the best you can do is keep risks in perspective. Car accidents are also a common cause of death in children and adults, but we click our seatbelts and just try to drive safely. So if you get peace of mind from checking on your child’s breathing from an app, go ahead and do that. And if you sneak in to watch their chest rising and falling in the crib, that’s fine too.
Comments
9 responses to “A Gadget Won’t Save Your Baby From SIDS”
Thank you Beth. My baby days are over, three daughters, the youngest now 3 my hubby and I took shifts watching our first breathing as she slept, then were more sane checking occasionally with the next two, but it’s super scary when they are so little. This is the best advice for new parents.
we had a very basic breathing monitor on our baby’s crib up to about 6 months old after she could roll her self back. We also both trained in baby first aid with CPR included (btw baby CPR is something i hope i never have to do it is horrible even on a dummy).
I think the monitor reduced our anxiety, it meant we didn’t need to go check every 30 minutes, and could rationalise that little voice when lying in bed asking ‘is she ok’. It did false trigger occasionally but for the heaps of other times i preferred it.
If you get a non smart phone version it isn’t particularly expensive and ultimately combined with preparation and training its one more risk reduction.
Wait, so the device is useless because it doesn’t tell you what to do if your baby stops breathing?? But that is exactly what the device will do (assuming it works, I haven’t tested it): it will let you know if the child stops breathing. That is all you want…. If that happens, call an ambulance, do CPR, etc…. What do you want the device to do???
This is like saying that home alarms are useless because they don’t detain the perpetrator.
And the title is very misleading…. “A gadget won’t save your baby from SIDS”. Well, if the baby stops breathing, you will know. You can save the baby… Unless you want to keep your baby connected to a respirator 24×7. That gadget will save the baby for sure.
Seriously, you can be skeptical about these devices, but surely they don’t claim to do more than they actually do. They will notify you if the baby stops breathing. Period. Then it is up to you.
^^ THIS.
Seriously what a dumb and immature article. As a parent of two kids, one now 7 months old sleeping on her stomach on the bed I’m sitting on typing this (she’s fine and I’ve put her on her back again), I can tell you no device is going to tell you what to do when your baby stops breathing, it’s only job is to alert you so you can react fast enough to do something about it and prevent a horrific event from occurring. Your article reads like you’re the type of person who expects their washing machine to also hang the clothes on the line and iron them later.
These types of devices only increase your chances of saving your baby and nothing more, so let’s not go expecting the world of them for a few hundred dollars.
There has been a program in use in NZ for over 20 years I think. It is very simple and apparently effective in preventing SIDS. No app, smartphone or monitor needed. Simply wrap the baby’s mattress in polythene and securely tape it underneath.
A brief explanation is that there are fire retardants and other chemicals added during manufacture of the mattress or its materials and these together with a type of fungus that is thought to grow in moist and warm conditions can produce small quantities of toxic gas that can lie close to the mattress surface. Wrapping the mattress keeps out any moisture and in the event that there is any off gassing prevents it from escaping in the immediate area of the baby.
In NZ this has brought SIDS cot deaths down to zero in those families that practice this method.
Addition credence for this theory is that SIDS is statistically more likely in 2nd and 3rd children as often they will use the same mattress where the critical fungus has had a greater chance of establishing it self.
A couple of links that cover it better than I can.
http://www.bmj.com/rapid-response/2011/10/29/cause-and-prevention-cot-death-sids
https://www.healthychild.com/has-the-cause-of-crib-death-sids-been-found/
This is one time I actually agree with the comments given after an article especially the one from samaddison
Jesus Chris that is incredibly interesting! Thanks for link!
Glad to help. We did it for both our kids as the evidence seems sound and pretty much zero downside risk.
Hi, we have an owlet monitor which we imported from the US via a website that acts as an intermediary for US companies that don’t ship to Australia. Yes it was expensive, but we love it – it gives us peace of mind. We have followed the 3 steps you mention (i.e. first aid training, safe sleeping environment and sleep baby on her back). A couple of nights ago the monitor alerted us to low oxygen levels. I ran into the my baby’s room and found she had rolled over to her tummy and was lying face down. I picked her up and fortunately she was ok. My heart was pounding, and I thought thank god she was wearing the owlet. What if she hadn’t been?
All really easy to say if you’ve never had a baby that has died – whether it be of SIDS or not.
Some of the points in this article need questioning. I am sure everyone agrees that even though a monitor tells you a baby has stopped breathing that it does not mean that the baby can be saved or resuscitated. But at least it gives you the chance to try and save them, that can only be a positive thing. The device has a role and the parents have a role, of course first aid training is a good idea and required so at least you have a better chance. I think the fact that certain products note that they are not guaranteed or designed to save a life or to be totally relied upon is what they should state, because other steps are required as noted in the article, like first aid, safe sleep environment etc. The most important fact we need to be aware of is that the product can do what it sates, is reliable and works. So what we need are technical reviews that confirm this, then from my point off view I cannot see how these safety devices can be anything but a good thing to add to the list of keeping your baby safe.