Adam M

hi all,
looking for a baby monitor and am not sure which make to consider.

Am not fussed by price, more concerned by user reviews and sound quality.

Any help would be appreciated.

Suresh

We've got a Philips one (model SBC SC 465) which we've had for 2 years now. It has a pretty good range - 200-300 metres I'd guess - and has been trouble-free.

moses

mate their r good priced ones in woolworths and try first learning centres too


tommi tippee and a few others and also try an asian cash and carry for hardware and household stuff, u get em cheap

and your baby born yet mate, all the best when it is

kingofturds

iTrader: (1)

http://www.mothercare.com/invt/lw4680&bklist=

I bought this one,tells you the room temp and has an excellent range on it.For an extra £30 you can get the same version but with a built in camera, although the picture is pretty poor imo

KiwiGTI

Waste of money if the truth is known, the amount of money we wasted on unnecessary things for our first child was horrendous. (parents managed alright for thousands of years before they were invented)

A lot of midwives say they are not needed and you shouldn't be that far away from a baby that you can't hear it crying anyway. There is also no evidence that they prevent any decrease in the occurrence of anything like SIDS either.

imlach

Yeah, and also the digital cordless ones are generating large amounts of 2.4GHz RF close to your babies head for more than 12 hours per day That's higher frequency than your mobile phone (0.9GHz and 1.8Ghz). OK, it might not be as powerful as the radiowaves being emitted by your phone, but the high intensity of pulsed frequency on such a young brain is still under investigation.

DECT digital cordless phones, which work on 1.9GHz, can often emit up to 250mW from the base station in your house to get the signal about 100m from it. A mobile phone can generate up to 250mW next to your ear, and one can often find one's ear getting warm after long periods of use. Digital baby monitors, which can also transmit up to 100m+ must also be close to 250mW to acheive this range. Even Phillips suggest keeping the monitor at least 1m from the baby.

The old analogue ones work at around 108MHz (0.1Ghz).

We turned our digital one off. Don't miss it really. As someone said, did your parents, and your parents before have them?

bootsy

dont buy a tomy walkabout classic they're crap nothing but hassle (we had 3 replacements before getting our money back)

OzzyWRX

I bought the Angelcare monitor, it has 2 sensors which are placed under the mattress and detects the baby breathing. An alarm is triggered if the baby stops breathing for more than 15 seconds, it's great peace of mind for SIDS The sound is crystal clear and no interference.

Scooby Snacks 23

Just far enough to nearest pub then

lozgti

So true.Just made a blood pact with my wife not to buy any more unnecessary stuff.

Baby monitors will drive you potty.Honest.

hail-hail

Well, I reckon a monitor is an essential buy.
Once we heard a cough and splutter and then nothing. Decided to go an check, and lucky we did, our 3 month old was silently choking and couldn't breathe, we would never have heard it without the monitor.

I have also found it allows you to go an settle the baby down before they get too upset. Yes you will here then crying without it, but by this time they fully awake and gotten themselves into a right tizzy. If you cen intercept and settle them down they will be back asleep in seconds, not minutes/hours.

It has worked for us, as our girl has always slept through the night 7ish till 8ish every night, and I put this down to her bed being a nice place to be and I put this down to the fact that she has never had the chance to cry and cry in bed without us going up and settleing her down.

Brendan Hughes

I'm in the undecided camp. They're OK for peace of mind, and we couldn't hear our baby crying in our concrete house. We've a Philips, might be the 465. Seems sensible as at least the receiver is rechargable and portable, and you can adjust the sensitivity according to how far you want it from the baby / how much you want to stress about each noise. We only use it for an hour or so a night, btwn her and our bedtime, as we still sleep in same room - not sure what will happen when she goes to her room. If I was to buy another I might consider one that has 2-way intercom feature, so when wife is downstairs fussing baby she can ask me to bring milk etc from upstairs and I could ask how much - but we're surviving quite well without it. I'd also consider one a bit smaller, so when we have garden parties it can be carried round with the mother rather than being a big plastic blob stuck on a table.

Ideally I'd like one that can be paired to a bluetooth earpiece, that would be unnecessary most of the time but extremely useful at garden parties etc.


Can I give you a couple of other tips? Bottle warmers are an utter utter waste of money, use your kettle and a mug - and be prepared to be extremely disappointed with no-touch thermometers that scan the forehead or whatever, they don't seem to be accurate to more than 1C and that's the level that shows when the baby's a bit ill. We took one back which was crap (varied by 4C!) and are tolerating but not really trusting the second. Bit gimmicky IMHO.

Drunken Bungle Whore

One word of warning though - 2 of our neighbours had the same brand of baby monitor, both tuned to the same frequency. Let's just say it wasn't just the baby's crying that they heard....

Alas

We don't have a baby monitor.

But then we didn't think we needed one for the dog as we can still hear him fart on the wooden floor from 4 rooms away

OzzyWRX

That's the whole point of the AngelCare monitor, it sets off an alarm if either the baby stops making any noise or stops moving.

http://www.angelcare-monitor.com/eng...angelcare.html

Paul3446

We had a motion sensor one, with a pad under the mattress, if there's no movement for 20 seconds then it sounds an alarm. Cost £100 but it was worth every penny. A couple of times it went off and we went legging it in there, rubbed his back a bit to stir him and he was fine. Who knows if he'd actually stopped breathing or not? But at least we were alerted. The main thing is you know that your baby is still going to be alive in the morning, barring mechnical failure obviously.

It always struck me as a bit odd just having a monitor, as if a baby stops breathing then it will probably just go quiet, and if you're asleep, something quiet isn't going to wake you up!

hail-hail

That's the type I had, there are occasions when it went off, you charge up stairs and everything is fine, but I'd rather have a few panics and run upstairs, than to wake up in the morning to the unthinkable.......................

Paul3446

Yes, admittedly when they go in a bigger bed they can roll away from the monitor and give off false alarms, but as you say, the other scenario is unthinkable.

I can't imagine having a baby without one to be honest.

KiwiGTI

Just how old do you you monitor your kids for?

Parents are far too paranoid these days, unnecessarily.

A very good book that puts common sense back into parenting is The New Basics by Michael Cohen.

Paul3446

I suspect that anyone who has suffered a cot death would disagree with you.

If the technology is there why not use it? Could you live with yourself if you didn't have one and something happened? How much do you spend on tarting up your car and yet bulk at spending £100 on something that could save your kid's life?

KiwiGTI

That was my point, I've had 2 of them and they were a waste of money. I know the medical profession and statistics back me up anyway so not overly bothered.

Bluntly, if your child has SIDS they are dead already when the alarm goes off, you won't be able to rescusitate them. (Apnea or the stopping of breathing is not a cause of SIDS)

Paul3446

Well personally I'd rather know 20 seconds after they stopped breathing than 8 hours!

As I understand it infants can sometimes literally forget to breathe and they don't yet have that reflex that makes them do so. I believe that some sort of intervention may help in these circumstances.

I take the view that you can't be too careful, it's a bit like having a car alarm, it's not a perfect solution and won't guarantee that someone won't nick your car, but it gives you a warning at least.

As for listening to medical opinion on matters like these, it changes from year to year, for example they used to say to put children to sleep on their front, this has now been proved to be dangerous.

jason77

I have a tomy walkabout thingy - not the best but it did it's job!

We heard a tiny faint cough through the monitor when we were downstairs which sounded a bit funny - we went up to check one her and found that she'd spewed proper thick spew and was lying face down in it - all in her sleep - and we'd hate to think what could have happened if we hadn't have gone up or had the monitor.

Similar thing with a friend where they were in their living room and heard funny noises coming through the monitor.. turned out their wee one was having a convulsion from being too hot (room temp was ok) and she was unconcsious (sp?) for 8 mins, who knows what would have happened too if they hadn't have heard that through the monitor.

Baby monitor's do have a great benifit over not having one.

Next time round we will be getting the one with the motion sensor on it.. better safe than sorry.

J

hail-hail

Are you not reading the posts on this thread.........

3 people have managed to intercept a potentially dangerous situation by using a baby monitor!!!

ok so all the people on this website that are 30/40 didn't have a baby monitor and are all fine........stating the obvious........but its the people who should be 30/40 now that didn't make it that concers me.

you say gullible...........I say careful

Mungo

We had a Tomy and it was fine - you could hear every single noise from the baby's room. in fact, so much so that we turned it off as it kept us awake.
A question for those parents who say "we heard such-and-such a noise and went to investigate, heaven knows what would have happened otherwise" - did you take it in turns to stay awake and listen to the monitor all night? No, I thought not. As a new parent, you're operating on little enough sleep without having to worry about every little squeak from the nursery.
The times that a monitor is useful is when you are so out of earshot from the nursery that you wouldn't hear a baby screaming.

hail-hail

Maybe my wife and I are actually super heroes in disguise, but even in our sleep we can filter out the normal noises, but we both wake up when we heard something out on the oridinary 9/10 we are right and the little un has been sick, done a wallopping great dump etc.............

And if you get your babies sleeping pattern correct then you should not be operting on little or no sleep....

Option 1: Baby stirs......I hear it on the monitor and go upstairs and comfort her for 10 secs.......she goes back to sleep

Option 2: Baby stirs........baby stirs again..baby gets restless.......baby starts whimpering........baby starts crying...........go upstairs and comfort her for 20 mins -> 1 hour until she eventually goes back to sleep. Baby repeats this 2-3 times per night and before you know it you have baby with an irregular sleeping pattern.

I'm sure lots of people have lots of different ways to deal with things, but this is what what we done and we have a healthy happy baby who sleeps through the night now and always has. I personally put this down to teh advantage of having a monitor