Safety/Sleep Monitors

Both of my girls are on Apnea monitors and will hopefully be coming of them at the begining of August. I feel quite nervous about them coming off and was wondering what you use for safety monitors...has anyone used angel care monitors ? and advice is really appreciated.
thanks !

 

I used the angel care monitors until nearly 12 months, and they worked very well for us although it took us a while to get the settings right. If you set it too sensitive it detects too much movement and vice versa. I stopped using them because my kids move around a lot in the crib and when they rolled off the sensor pad the alarm would go off in the middle of the night and scare the bejeezus out of us. Although the alarm went off, we never had any actual instances of apnea as far as I could tell.. multiple times I could see the kids moving or breathing and sensor pad was just not detecting the motion. It did give me some peace of mind in the early days though and if nothing else, I could tell when my MIL was trying to steal the babies away from their cribs when they were supposed to be napping! :lol:

Did your girls have apnea? My understanding is that the doctors don't take them off the monitors until they're quite certain that the apnea is no longer a problem, but I can definitely understand the fear of it recurring. I would definitely talk to your ped to ease your concerns when they do come off the monitors, maybe they have some further advice about how to reduce the risks and/or keep an eye on them.

 

I can definitely relate to the fear of going from constant monitoring to nothing!! It is scary.

We used the Angelcare monitors for a while--and they did their job, which was to detect movement and baby stealers. :ibiggrin: Apnea is of course different from movement and a baby can be moving but not breathing, so the Angelcares are not the same thing as an apnea monitor. Like PP said, the docs wouldn't take them off the apnea monitors unless they felt it was safe.

But if the Angelcare is going to give you piece of mind and your babies are too young to climb out/reach out and get entangled in the cords, then you have nothing to lose but some money and a few years off your life with the false alarms.

 

Did one pad work for both babies in the cribs ?

Yes both babies are on the monitors due to being preemies and also having an older brother who had a monitor.

Thanks

 

If you want to have both babies on monitors, you have to buy two units. If you just use 1 pad, then both kids have to stop moving before the alarm will go off.

The instructions say that the monitor is not intended for twins in the same crib. However, we were able to rig up 2 sensor pads while the boys were in 1 crib together.. they both laid on top of a sensor at either end of the crib and because they were swaddled, they never really moved off the sensor. When they started wriggling around more we had to move them to separate cribs and of course we put a sensor in each crib then.

 

We did use angel monitors after the twins came home from hospital. We dont anymore. You will know when you can stop using it. You should do whatever makes you comfortable.But trust your instinct. You are their mom. You know if you need the monitors or not. Doctors dont know for sure. So go with your judgement not doctor's recommendation.

My b/g twins got released from nicu. Doctor said they're fine without monitors. 2 days later, my girl got apnea. We rushed her to childrens hospital. She was monitering for another 1.5 weeks. She got 1/2 times in there. We still used the monitors for our kids until recently (now they are 3 months old). And I still sleep in their room at night.

 

Hi i know its a worry my two used to stop breathing with silent reflux but generally only while feeding i used anglecare monitors for ds1 and the twins , mine were in two cribs and had a monitor each then they were in one big cot bed and i bought respisence monitors which are suitable for twins in one cot or if a parent sleeps with their baba,(we never did) the respisence clip on the nappy (no wires works by battery)and can be used anywhere there is also one called snuza and it works the same i like having the peace of mind of having the monitors ds1 had his till he was 2 , hth!

 

I have been looking at the Snuza too, but havent heard of anyone in America using them. Did you get alot of false alarms on them ?