As new parents, your main drive and instinct is to protect your little one from anything and everything. It’s only natural that you want to ensure your baby is safe at all times, whether you are with them or not. This is especially true at night. Perhaps this is why sleep monitoring for babies has gained popularity now that sleep monitoring technology is available.
In this article, we will take a look at how smart devices and apps can help with sleep monitoring and the benefits, as well as drawbacks to this kind of information tracking.
A Greater Peace of Mind with Smart Devices
Most parents want their baby close to them at all times. But there are times when you just want to lay your little one down and get on with things. It’s easier to do household chores, watch television or simply read a book when you know your baby is ok.
Keeping tabs on sleep patterns is an excellent way to stay in control of your baby’s wellbeing. During their first year of life, babies sleep and wake multiple times per day.
This is when sleep monitoring for babies can be especially useful. Keeping a trusted eye and ear next to your baby not only gives you peace of mind. Tracking sleeping habits helps parents navigate their own lives too.
Currently, in 2022, parents who want to keep an eager eye on their tot can buy hardware that connects to WiFi and broadcasts the stream directly to a smartphone, smartwatch, tablet or computer in 4k high definition. All of that, in addition to being able to monitor sleeping and waking times.
Whether it’s multiple wake times during the night. Or just the daily cycle of eat, sleep, poop and play. You can track it all.
Benefits of Tracking Baby Sleeping Habits
Medical issues aside, there are many benefits to being able to track your baby’s sleep patterns. You will be able to plan your day effectively. For example, you can plan to go to a restaurant when you know they are going to sleep all the way through the meal and wake up afterward for a feed.
Or say you need to get some housework done. Or you just want to sit and relax in peace with your favorite movie. With monitoring, you know when you can schedule it around their nap times.
Perhaps the main benefit of sleep monitoring for babies is that it allows the parents to gain a deeper understanding of how their little one acts day to day. This allows them to bond more and increases confidence in their own parenting abilities. It can also help them to identify any sleeping issues associated with a minor illness. This information may be of use to a doctor when diagnosing.
Timing Bedtime with Sleep Insights
Tracking a baby’s sleeping habits also lets you be proactive. You can get them ready for bed a short while before you know they are going to get tired. This eliminates the stress caused by trying to feed, bathe or play with them when all they want to do is sleep.
If you know they fall asleep around 7 pm you can ensure they eat at 6 pm and have a bath at 6:30 pm. That means as soon as 7 pm rolls around you can put them to bed with minimal fuss. This makes the child-parent experience much calmer and more organized, alleviating stress on both sides.
Parents can also work their baby’s schedules around grandparents, relatives or friends visiting. This ensures the baby will be awake and alert for all those memorable moments. Or alternatively be ready for when the babysitter comes, just to be tucked into their crib and ready to enjoy a peaceful night’s sleep.
Best Baby Sleep Tracking Apps
While there are many sleep tracking apps and smartwatch devices dedicated to sleep monitoring for adults, the baby sleep monitoring market has gone relatively untapped. Most parents really want to keep track of the sleeping and waking habits of their children. But without attaching a wearable device to their child.
There are plenty of choices when it comes to sleep monitoring for babies, especially in the realm of apps. Let’s take a look at the key features of our top five picks for baby sleep tracking apps.
Sync many different devices to this free app (including your babysitter or relatives device). Track sleeping patterns and feeds, as well as diaper changes.
All of this information works together to give you a visual guide. Understanding how your baby experiences day and night allows you to make plans in advance.
With this app, you can enjoy the peace of mind in knowing lots of scientific research has gone into the development of the algorithms used in this app, which gives you a bespoke and personalized plan for your child.
It focuses on sleeping rather than other metrics. But when you get into the swing of using the app you can plan sleep times more carefully and gain more confidence as a parent.
A well-designed app from a big brand name. Quickly understand your baby’s sleeping habits, with data such as the length of time they sleep and average wake time.
The information gained can help you schedule your day for maximum efficiency. You also get recommendations and a sleep score.
Taking sleep monitoring to the next level with access to a host of professionals. This app is capable of performing a detailed and tailor-made sleep analysis of your baby.
This app works intuitively to monitor the sleeping patterns of your child. Best of all a predictive algorithm informs parents when their child is likely to get tired so you can take proactive steps to get them ready for bed.
See your baby’s day-to-day life from a different perspective with this iOS app. Easily add all the information about your baby’s sleeping habits as well as feeds and diaper changes.
The visual way in which this app presents the data gathered allows you to identify specific trends regarding your baby’s patterns, and act in advance to make every day as smooth as possible.
Why Do Baby Sleeping Habits Need to Be Monitored?
It may just be a symptom of our modern society to be able to track everything. For thousands of years, this kind of helicopter monitoring wasn’t possible for parents. Given parents generally don’t stray too far away from their young children, and babies are equipped with their own 120-decibel vocal alarm system, it didn’t seem necessary.
However, there are tragically too many cases of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) which is a real concern for parents. Especially if they have already experienced this with another child. When SIDS is a concern, apps or devices that assist with sleep monitoring for babies can be crucial.
Some babies may even have heart problems, need oxygen at home, or have experienced difficulty breathing in the past. Having a breathing or heartbeat detection system in place can help parents feel safer about keeping an eye on their baby when it’s asleep.
In these extreme cases, sleep monitoring is justified. But for the most part, it is actually counterproductive to have your baby physically monitored in this way. Monitoring a child with a medical device, if it is not physically needed, can cause more stress and worry to parents.
On the other hand, if your baby has not experienced any medical issues and you simply want to monitor them visually and audibly as they sleep, using an app or device to track all of that is a great idea.
Last Updated on February 17, 2022