Our Nursery Monitor System
[Note: This post was originally posted July 15, 2020 on a previous blog of mine]
I wanted to dedicate a post to talking about some of the measures we have taken to ensure the wellbeing of our son. I’ll start by saying that I don’t actually think these items are necessary to keeping a baby safe, but rather, these items have simply given us an extra dose of comfort—comfort that we greatly appreciated in our first months of parenthood!
When I first heard about the Owlet, they had just released their first Owlet Smart Sock, a baby monitor that fits on baby’s foot that was able to track baby’s heart rate and oxygen levels. I thought it was pretty cool, very pricey, and maybe a little superfluous, considering humanity has survived millennia without having such an invention.
As time progressed and we decided to have kids, however, I began realizing that my husband and I were pretty bad worriers! He, a slight hypochondriac, and I, a level-1 doomsday prepper, made for an interesting couple to have babies. Perhaps the thing that worried us most about babies was simply the thought of keeping them alive. I mean, we could barely keep our neon tetras alive for more than a month. So when pregnancy happened, we began looking up strategies for keeping a baby safe while keeping us sane.
For us, it soon came down to having a good nursery system that would at least give us visual access to our baby at all times. This meant we wanted a video camera in the nursery that we could pull up on our phones whenever he was in there. During our hunt for the perfect camera, I rediscovered the Owlet sock, and soon decided that getting an entire monitoring system—the Owlet Monitor Duo, which consists of both the Owlet Smart Sock and the Owlet Cam—would be the ideal way to go, should finances allow us to have both. (The Owlet Smart Sock now registers at USD$299, while the Owlet Cam is USD$149. You can get them both together now for USD$399 on their website).
I registered for both items individually, knowing that our chances of getting the items would be greater if they were bought separately. We ended up getting the Owlet Smart Sock from family, and we used our Target gift cards to buy the Owlet Cam later on.
I wanted to talk about what is included with these products, the set-up process, what these products do, and whether I think they’re worth the money.
First, what’s included:
The Owlet Smart Sock (we have the second generation) includes:
3 sizes of washable fabric socks in a pretty mint color
the Smart Sock Sensor (this goes inside the fabric socks)
the Base Station (this goes on your nightstand or wherever you want it—this is the charging station and alarm)
charging cords
The Owlet Cam
Camera
Magnetic Base (super cool, so that you can tilt it however you want)
Power cables
Mounting Kit (so that you can’t see any ugly wires, and so that your baby can’t tug on them!)
A really cute feature of the Owlet Smart Sock is that you can now purchase different colored and patterned socks on their website!
Next, the set-up: If you’ve seen Owlet products, you know they’re as slick-looking as Apple products. And that’s saying something in the world of tacky-looking Fisher Price baby world of today. Thankfully, the Owlet products were as easy to set up as Apple products are, too. Instructions are given on the App when you download and sign up for it. The App is free, too, but I believe you can purchase a subscription on it if you want to save data (like your baby’s heart rate, etc.) for future purposes. We didn’t feel the need to do that.
For the Owlet Smart Sock, set-up includes downloading the App, finding a place close to your bed for the Base Station, connecting the Base Station to your WiFi, and plugging the sock insert into the Base Station to charge. The App will guide you each step of the way and it’s pretty simple. You can find tons of videos on YouTube showing you how to do it if you find it confusing.
The set-up process for the Owlet Cam is similar, except that you’ll also want to mount the camera on the wall. I think this might be one of the downsides of the Owlet system—that there is currently no option of being able to attach the Cam to the crib itself. For times that we have traveled, it would’ve been nice to have the option to take the Cam with us.
Overall, super easy set-up.
What these products do: Okay, so here’s the purpose of these products.
The Owlet Smart Sock, as mentioned earlier, monitors baby’s heart rate and oxygen levels while baby sleeps. While Owlet of course can’t claim that their products will help prevent SIDS, that is basically the idea behind it—to alert you if your baby’s health is in jeopardy. If your baby’s heart rate gets too low or too high, or if baby’s oxygen drops below 80%, your Base Station will set off an alarm to let you know.
Next, the Owlet Cam is, of course, a video camera. It has your typical modern-day baby cam features—night vision, two-way audio, and a 130 degree wide angle lens. A neat feature I hadn’t banked on before purchasing it was that it also tells you the temperature of your baby’s room—and whether it’s too warm or cold in there. The best feature about this specific camera, though, is that it is built to work seamlessly with the Owlet Smart Sock, because you can open your Owlet App and not only see your baby’s face, but also your baby’s heart rate and oxygen info coming from the Owlet Smart Sock.
Here’s the big question though: are these items worth the cost?
To revisit my earlier statement that we believe these are luxury items meant to provide parents with comfort, we would say yes, these items are definitely worth the money in that respect.
In our experience, we have loved being able to have all our baby’s info together on one App.
In particular, the Owlet Smart Sock has especially been worth its cost. Though we had read that some people experienced false alarms going off for their babies, we only experienced that happening twice, and I want to explain why it happened each time:
The first time the Base Station went red and the alarm sirened was actually the very first night we put the Owlet Smart Sock on our son. He was barely a week old, and we were still figuring it out. So because the sock wasn’t on properly, it couldn’t read him properly, causing the alarm to go off. This, of course, taught us to always make sure it was on right!
The second time the Base Station went off was when Charlie was probably 6 or 7 months old and was being babysat. I had explained to the babysitter how to put the sock on Charlie, even telling her if she wasn’t confident to not worry about it. But sweet Olivia (the babysitter), I’m sure wanting to please us, still put the sock on—on top of Charlie’s footie pajamas! What’s actually so cool about this though is that the sock’s sensor was actually so strong was still able to give us a reading even through the pajamas! My husband and I were on our way home that night when we pulled up the Owlet App to see if Charlie was asleep yet. That's when I noticed that his oxygen levels were around 85%, and I said, “That’s so weird. He’s not sick, and he seems to be sleeping just fine…” Not two minutes after walking through our front door, however, did we hear the Base Station alarm. Panicked, we ran into his room and immediately picked up our very groggy Charlie to make sure he was okay. We then took off his sleep sack and noticed the Owlet Smart Sock on top of his footie. Though poor Olivia began crying in relief, my husband and I had a good laugh about it afterward.
One of my most profound stories from our Owlet experience, however, happened when Charles was about 8 months old. He came down with a very vicious case of RSV that landed him in the ER by day 2. Charlie was struggling to breathe and sleep. It was a terrible week for us all, as you can imagine. But as I talked to the doctor who was re-hooking Charlie up to the hospital’s heart and oxygen monitor, I asked him where Charles’s oxygen was supposed to be. He told us that anything under 90% was cause for concern, and that if it ever dipped below that, we should call a doctor or simply bring him in. I can’t explain the tremendous guilt I then felt, realizing that Charles’s oxygen levels had been in the lower 80s only the night before! Though I did eventually forgive myself and move on, what this experience taught me was that because of the Owlet, I had further insight into my child’s wellbeing that I wouldn’t otherwise have if not for this product. I thought that was pretty neat.
A last thought is that I’d probably be lying if I said everything was perfect with this system. While the Owlet Smart Sock works very well, we both agree that there are things that could definitely make the Owlet Cam better. The feature I most wish it had is the feature the Nanit Plus Smart Baby Monitor has—the ability to detect when your baby rolls over! Also, the Cam only works if the WiFi works, which is so annoying when the internet is out. But, we have noticed that the updates over the past year have helped the Cam work better than before. So we can’t complain!
All in all, I’d say this is a great system to purchase if you’re looking into getting one. I’d definitely recommend it! Happy parenting. :)
Grace
