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graciouslittlethings · 9 years

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Should I Get a Baby Monitor?

There’s a lot of hype over baby monitors these days. While this device is an essential in the West as the culture there generally is for babies to sleep in their own room, over here in Asia we usually co-sleep or sleep in the same room as our babies! So, is a baby monitor really that necessary?

Regardless of whether baby sleeps alone or sleeps with you, I think a baby monitor is essential. To help you decide, let me share with you why I think so! ;) I’ll also share at the end of this post some criteria which I think are really important in a baby monitor and a decent brand which I found on Lazada!

Why I think a baby monitor is essential:

1. Extended eyes and ears for parents

When Baby Dozer was born, I was in a perpetual state of stress. I had read so much about SIDS and crib hazards that I could hardly get anything done without checking on him every few minutes. Too much info can sometimes be a bad thing. Anyway, I decided that I would ALWAYS stay by his side so as to be able to monitor him first-hand.

I soon found out that as he grew older, it was impossible to be by his side all the time. One has to return to normal life, you see. During the daytime especially when Baby Dozer took his naps, I could not be in the same room as him unless I decided not to get anything else done. Clearly, the rational way to work around this issue was to get a baby monitor, which leads me to point number 2.

2. Baby’s safety

The whole reason why I would want to monitor baby all the time is because I want to make sure “He’s OK”. It pays to be paranoid rather than sorry and with technology being so affordable these days, there’s really no excuse to scrimp on something so simple which could possibly save a life.

A decent baby monitor allows me to hear and see my baby so if I see or hear something alarming, I can tend to it immediately rather than discovering it too many minutes later.

3. And baby’s safety again

In point number 2, I talked mainly about hazards to baby from inanimate objects. Well, let’s face it. In our Asian culture, we hire domestic help and it is very common for us to entrust our babies to our domestic help if both parents are full-time working parents.

Baby monitors these days double up as CCTV of sorts and can be placed throughout the house. It is only natural that people will “buck up” or “be more cautious” if they know they’re being watched. Hence, if your baby is in the hands of domestic help, wouldn’t you want to be able to observe your baby at all times to ensure that he / she is in safe hands?

4. Very useful when you sleep train baby or try to set up a routine for baby

I’ve written a fair bit about how I managed to sleep train Baby Dozer here as well as set up a routine for him here. I’ll give you an example of how the baby monitor helped me when I was in the midst of all this training.

I follow Dana Obleman’s method in sleep training baby. She is a sleep consultant from Canada and part of her advice is if baby wakes up in the middle of the night, refrain from going to baby immediately because USUALLY, your baby will surprise you and actually go back to sleep. Now, this is if you have followed all her methods AND you are very sure that baby isn’t in genuine distress.

But…how would you know if baby IS or ISN’T in distress?

This is where I observed baby on my baby monitor! I could watch AND hear him while keeping tabs of the time because typically baby monitors have a time stamp on the screen. If I saw that he was unable to settle himself after 5 to 10 minutes, I would go to him. Or if I saw that he had thrown his soft toy out of his cot, I would go to him because he needs it to settle down and sleep.

5. Reduce stress

Finally, worrying is non-productive especially when there is a clear and simple solution. Rather than worrying or guessing about baby’s condition, why not be sure about it?

OK, so you’re convinced. Which baby monitor should you get?

We made the mistake of starting off with a lesser-known brand and we had quite a challenge setting it up and using it. After having gone through the whole experience, I think the following are good criteria to have in a baby monitor:

Decent brand - preferably a brand which you should have heard of

Affordable price - this is relative based on your affordability but I’d say RM400 is a good price to start with

High definition (HD) - yes, it helps A LOT to be able to see your baby and his / her surroundings clearly

Audio - you MUST be able to hear your baby clearly else how would you be able to hear him / her cry?

Night vision

Able to pan and tilt - this means that you can control the camera to move it around so you can see as much as possible of your baby’s surroundings

Accessible from mobile devices such as your phone, laptop or tablet

Any ideas on which brand I should get?

Please don’t ask me which brand I was using because even though I had my challenges, I was thankful that the after-sales support was decent. I personally don’t prefer to offend any party too. ;) Anyway, to write this post, I did a search on Lazada which is my new favourite online shopping place (hehe).

This D-Link baby monitor looks like a pretty decent buy. Affordable price, night vision, able to pan and tilt, accessible from mobile devices and it is a decent brand.

Bonus functions are its temperature sensor (very good if baby sleeps in an air-conditioned room), ability to pinch and zoom (wow!), sound and motion detection alerts (double wow!) and 2-way audio!

If you’d like to check out other brands, do try to make sure they have the essential features highlighted above.

Hope you enjoyed this post and have a great week!

If you find Gracious Little Things helpful, like my Facebook page at facebook.com/graciouslittlethings or Instagram at instagram.com/graciouslittlethings to receive updates whenever there’s a new post!

Also, please check out my new venture at facebook.com/littlebabygrains where I sell organic baby rice for your babies suitable from 6 months onwards!

#babymonitor #shouldigetone #safety #preventingsids #dlink #lazada

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