Baby Monitor to Prevent SIDS

[ZevasMom]

I don't understand why more parents don't purchase the baby monitor that beeps if your baby doesn't move (breathe, move, etc.) for more than 20 seconds.  It isn't that expensive, only $75, especially when you compare it to the life of your little one.  I used the monitor from day one.  It was such a load off my mind.  I know it works because I have had a few false alarms - my DD moved to the edge of the crib and the pad (under her mattress) couldn't pick up the sensitivity of the movement of breathing.

I couldn't imagine losing my DD - more research needs to be done!

[jutov05]

I think that is a great idea. If i get pregnate again.... i would get that for sure no price could compare to the loss of your little one!

[girl0319]

Where do you get that at?

[ZevasMom]

I bought my at walmart... You can find it online at walmart.com
It is called the BebeSounds Angelcare Movement Sensor and Sound Monitor
with one sound monitor - http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.do?product_id=2620238
with two sound monitors - http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.do?product_id=5633501

[hannerann]

I wish I had had a monitor like that in 1983, my 9 week old son Matthew died. The doctors said it wasnt sids but, I dont think they knew what killed him...Personally, I think that I had the Strep B in my system, and at that time they never checked pregnant women for that...nor did they do a glucose tolerance test, to check for gestational diabetes...which now I know that I had....go figure..If I had had a monitor like this, then maybe I would still have my baby Angel Matt.....

[ZevasMom]

I will say a prayer to my mommy, she is in heaven... I will tell her to find your angel and rock him in a rocking chair... Mom loved rocking babies!

[XFlamomof4]

Unfortunately, even the machine will not save a child from SIDS. SIDS is instantaneous, there is no coming back from that. I've done so much research on it since my best friend lost her little girl in June of 2006. She has since had another little girl who is on an Apnea monitor now, but even the doctor told her, the machine is not going to save a child.

[martikadragoon]

I'm 9 weeks pregnant w/number 1 right now. You know, I almost died a couple times... My mom said I actually FORGOT to breath, she witnessed it. Once at the hospital and once at home.

She jostled me to wake me up/make me breath and it worked. I'm pretty worried about this little one  and we really want a girl. I've heard that they say to place a baby on it's back to sleep.

Does anyone know if this really works well?  I plan on getting a movement monitor. I've got a baby monitor from my mom that lights up w/noise. but that's all.

Thnx Cindie

[ZevasMom]

I respectfully disagree with you... There is "coming back" from SIDS.  Just like people come back from stopping breathing everyday.  They say that SIDS is caused from the baby "forgetting" to breathe... Like Martikadragoon said, I think that if the monitor went off, and you were able to jostle the baby, or even do CPR, you would have a chance at saving the baby...

[annievfro]

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[annievfro]

My cousin was sent home from the hospital with a monitor, the hospital also trained her parents in neonatal CPR prior to releasing her to their care. The hospital had been able to detect with there equipment a decline in respirations, then a cessation of all respiration wich lead to a rapid deceleration in heart rate- with no apparent cause, this progression of events if it had gone undetected in the home would have become a SIDS death.  Obviously they were able to ressucitate her, and arm her parents with the skills to do the same.  Therefore it is entirely possible to save a baby- the trouble with SIDS is it often strikes with out warning, prior-disposition, and at times when the baby is not being closely monitored (everyone sleeps)... If you can't catch SIDS while it is happening then you can't save the baby- but if you CAN catch it you will have a beautiful 12 year old girl like my cousin.

[suzoola]

I lost a beautiful 8 week old daughter to SIDS in 1984.  As I was told at the time, there is no way for an autopsy to differentiate between an apnea death and a SIDS death.  I did go on to have another daughter in 1988 and she was placed on an apnea monitor at the hospital which came home with her.  The respiratory therapists that did my training with the monitor cautioned me that the monitor would only let me know that breathing had paused.  If it were caused by apnea, stimulation would help.  However, if true SIDS - there would not be anything that can be done.  Problem is, both apnea deaths and SIDS deaths are determined when there are no other obvious causes to point to.  At the time of my daughter's death, one of the cops that came told me that her son died in her arms while she was rocking him.  She had all the CPR training and everything but there was no bringing him back.  I wish there were an answer and i wish there were more hope, but it seems cruel to make people think there was some chance *if they just hadn't been asleep* or *in the other room*.  20+ years later, those questions still haunt me even without the interjections of others.

[here4theinfo]

Not to burst anyones bubble. The research that I have read on these monitors suggest they are not always able to catch a baby who stops breathing due to SIDS. The best thing to do especially if you have lost one baby is make sure that your doctor sends home an apnea machine for the first 6-12 months. I honestly think every parent should be sent home with an apnea machine no matter what the condition healthy or unhealthy. The monitors are a good because they give you that extra comfort, but an apnea machine would be so much more comforting for parents. Wouldnt you think??

[crabscanfly]

I have an angel care monitor as well far walmart, i payed 120.00 dollars for it. I got it after my sisters baby passed away on july 12. and iam telling you i have a peice of mind with that, we tested it with our hand and it work. i think they are well worth the money, and some say it may not always work,. and i have read that in so many sites. and that maybe true, but least it gives us a peace of mind, and i do believe if they stop breathing, you have so long to save them. if that was not the case, paremedics wouldnt bother tryeding...

[Babybaw4]

Thanks for the advice.. I just found out yesterday I am pregnant and reading on all sorts of stuff. I will keep that in mind.. Thank-you..

[sdo527]

I had the angel monitor with dd, but we wound up co-sleeping so it wasn't an issue. With ds, he was breathing rapidly at first and the pulmonologist highly encouraged us to co-sleep because being near us would help his breathing regulate. With some minor modifications (no pillows, only a sheet, etc.) it's worked out beautifully and he's always right there in my arms (or now crawling on my face) but either way that was the reassurance I needed.

[abbysmommy4]

As suzola said, I was told the same thing when my son passed away.  If a child is going to die from SIDS, it is going to happen and there is nothing you can do to revive the child.  It truly baffles me.  All of my children since him have been on the apnea monitor till they were about 8 months old.  It helped me sleep to a degree, but I still wake up checking my kids.  This one will come home on a monitor too.

[crabscanfly]

aprently you have so many minutes to save them, i was reading in a book. my sister has her check up tommrow. we are going to ask the doctor and see, i think its like 5 minutes or something

[FLMommyX5]

My son almost died in the hospital of SIDS while he was sleeping. They were able to recucitate him after 2 minutes. He turned black with his head arched back and his mouth open. It was the most frightening day of my life. I was given an apnea monitor although my son doesn't have apnea. It happened again at home at 3months. I was able to bring him back. Now my baby is 5 years old. I have another child and she needed assistance at the hospital while sleeping on her 2nd day. We now have a monitor for her. I feel confident that these monitors save babies. I know the idea that something could have been done to save a lost baby can haunt a mommy who lost one, but one must remember that you can not blame yourself for not acting on information that you did not have. As the saying goes "hindsight is 20/20".  With as much as we spend on our babies (toys,clothes, furniture) I think it is well worth the investment.

[kristine9190]

SIDS is a simultaneous shut down of the organs in an infants body, there is no reaction time, it isn't a forgetting to breathe thing, there is no prevention of SIDS. My niece passed of SIDS in April and we have been told there is absolutely nothing that could have been done once the body began the shutdown.

[Deannainlasvegas]

I am new to this site and was reading different forums here I came across this post and wanted to comment.  I have the angel pad your talking about I didnt get the monitor till I had my 2nd son, and I believe i got it after I gave birth to him but wanted it because I feared alot more with him then my first son.  You see my mother lost her 2nd born in 1967 to SIDS he was a healthy baby at 9 months old and just saw his pedi with a clean bill of health but she found him the next morning.  my 2nd babys name is jayden perry (Perry is my brothers name) I was born a year after him so I never knew him but i feel in my heart I do.  especially when i look at my boys.  Parents do not go through many months of pregnancy preparing for the babys death instead going through preparing for a long long with their baby.  You know the happy healthy thoughts we are suppose to have.  So i can completely understand why a parent wouldnt think to buy this machine and only people who have this fear would.  I never heard of it till i had my 2nd son and got it on ebay.  And to be quiet honest although it has given me peace of mind at night it didnt during the day when i was holding my son and he choked on his own breath and couldnt breath.  I think it its going to offer you more peach of mind then get it but remember its not going to save your childs life its only going to alert you if something is wrong.  I started to read some of these posts and i have to say i just couldnt even finish because i was getting so emotional my heart aches for these parents and my mother as well .. May God bless you all

[Deannainlasvegas]

so sorry for my typos....i meant to say

Parents do not go through many months of pregnancy preparing for the babys death instead going through preparing for a long life with their baby.  

I think if its going to offer you more peace of mind then get it but remember its not going to save your childs life its only going to alert you if something is wrong.

[BettyBoo123]

My daughter died of Cot Death 21 years ago.  More commonly known as SIDS.  

At the inquest the coronner explained that this cause of death is given when there appears to be no other reason for the child to die.  In other words they dont know what has caused it.  Because of this, maybe the thousands of children who have died of SIDS might have potentially died from different symptoms that the medical profession have yet to learn about, some which may you may be able to resuscitate, so you should never say never....xxx  nobody knows.

Most children who have died of SIDS werent actually on these monitors (like my baby).  Who knows she might be with us if I was alerted to the fact that she hadnt taken a breath for 15 seconds, as it happens Im not sure how long she had gone without a breath before I found her, it could have been up to an hour.  

If baby's are found hours, even minutes, after they have taken their final breath then yes, its unlikely that resuscitation will work, but if more mothers used these monitors then maybe one day someone may prove that there is a chance to resuscitate just as long as the child is found quickly.  

My second daughter had a mild apnea problem (at around 2 months old) which having a monitor meant I could keep prodding her to continue to breath.  Maybe my first child had a similar condition which could have been detected had she have had a monitor too.

What can I say, GET A MONITOR - YOU HAVE NOTHING TO LOOSE AND EVERYTHNG TO GAIN....X

[emily831]

As the previous person stated, SIDS is when they don't know what else caused the babies death so you can't say that the babies system is shutting down and there is no coming back from that.  My son had a heart defect that was detected in utero - thank god because they said that babies can sometimes live for up to a month with this particular defect and once the baby starts to get bigger it's heart cannot support it anymore and they die from lack of oxygen.  My son was totally fine when he was born, his apgar was a 9 and all of his vitals were stable.  If I had not know about his condition he would have been sent home from the hospital and the doctors told me that within a month his heart would not have been able to supply enough oxygen to his body and his death would have just been chalked up to SIDS.  Yes they do perform an autopsy but it only shows MAJOR heart abnormalites and really when you think about it the body is very complicated and A LOT can go wrong.  A lot of children stop breathing for a few seconds while they are sleeping and what I have read and been told is that a child with true SIDS has something wrong with their brain and they cannot rouse themselves and begin to breathe on their own, they need to be startled or stimulated. I also have an angel care monitor and has brought me great peace of mind.  It works like a regular monitor too so why not be on the safe side.  If you read the reviews on amazon you will see that people have wrote in that it actually saved their child's life.  My heart goes out to everyone that has lost a child to SIDS or anything else - god bless.

[TerryA581]

The monitors don't prevent a death from SIDS, it only tells you your baby has died. Now if your baby had another problem and stopped breathing it could very well help. SIDS babies die and do not come back, there has never been a known case of revival of a SIDS death, it just doesn't happen. SIDS is the shut down of the body, it's like a light switch, only it doesn't turn back on. I know this after researching and keeping up on the new findings for 19 years, my daughter died way back then.

[falada1025]

Babies can be saved if caught in time.  Our daughter just died 40 days ago.  She was 16 months old.  Don't think that once your baby turns one that the risk is over.  She died from SUDC which is basically SIDS for children 1-11.  It is less common and not known about to most parents.  Your children are still at risk.  An apnea monitor can save your child.  One of the best ones for little babies is Respisense.  It attaches to your baby so it can be used anywhere.  The angle care should be used until your child is out of the SUDC range.  Why take the chance?  It's better to spend $100 and have a chance to save your baby than to find them blue and cold in the morning.  With SIDS and SUDC the child goes to bed healthy.  The most common symptom that all parents say after losing a child to either SIDS or SUDC is complete silence on the monitor that night.  A sound monitor is not enough.  You also can't see if your baby is breathing on a video monitor.  You can only tell when they are moving.  I would pay anything to have my baby for one more day.  I wish all moms could understand how truly devastating it is and take every precaution they could even if it didn't work.  We still may have lost our daughter if we had an apnea monitor, but at least we would know that we took every precaution we could.  Please take that same precaution with your kids.

[crabscanfly]

You cannot save a baby, Who may die from SIDS or SUDC. And even if you spend that money on the angel care monitor or the ones that clip, It clearly States on the box. You cant save a SIDS baby, You cant put them on life support and drive yourself in sane, while you watch your baby, hooked up to the monitors, thats it. im sorry to say, but if you could save a SIDS baby or SUDC CHILD. There would be alot more children here today. You can learn more when you go to SIDS Conferences, They tell you lots.

[WifeofAnt]

I don't really get these monitors.  Say the baby like gets some swaddle or something in their mouth and starts to choke on it.  Baby wakes and if choking bad enough cannot make noises to alert you via baby monitor but continues to wriggle around and fight.  The baby continues to wriggle until the lack of oxygen causes him/her to pass out right?  Detecting motion isn't going to help you here because by the time the movement has stopped for 10-30 seconds the baby is already oxygen deprived.  Lets say it was a 1 minute struggle, 20 seconds for the monitor to respond, 5 seconds to rouse the parent to awareness, 10 seconds to get to the child's room, then the time to find the object, remove it (either by fingers or 'back blows'), then most likely CPR.  It could be 3 or 4 minutes easy that the body was deprived of oxygen.  So much time could be saved if the child slept in the same room and near the mother (like in a crib or bassinet by her bed) because it is her instinct to constantly be unconsciously monitoring her baby for signs of stress.

[raha0998]

If SIDS is a sudden unexplained death than I can't see how we can say it cannot be prevented...what can't be prevented? IF we don't even know what caused it, or what it is, how can we say it can't be prevented? SIDS is something, is caused by something, some sort of disorder in the brain/body that has yet to be identified, and if/when it's cause is found out, we should then get some ideas of how to prevent it. Wether SIDS is truely related to apnea we don't know, but if it is found that it is related to apnea, then these monitors surely would help. Even if it is a sudden shutting down of all body systems, something is causing that chain reaction to occur and there is some event preceding the shut down that could be identified, and therefore, possibly prevented...

[redfish72]

I agree that IF a baby dies of SIDS then nothing to date could prevent the death.  However, babies do not all die of SIDS.  A lot of babies do die of apnea or other problem from which they could be revived.  So, a monitor should give a parent a level of peace.  The problem with these monitors is that they are basically cheaply made and not reliable.  With the technology that is available today someone will soon come out with a monitor that is more sophisticated.  For example, one claims it runs on batteries so no chance of electrocution... What?  Does the monitor that they send you home with from the hospital run on batteries? NO. Why? Because, the child could not be electrocuted by a low voltage source.  Who wants to change batteries every week or so and worry about them running down.  How about a monitor that has constant power and has battery backup?  I think the idea is good but come on your cell phone has more thought and technology behind it than these monitors.  I would buy one of these and will if I have another child, but I hope they improve before then even if they cost a little more.