Baby moverment sensor mat?

andycarmi

I m thinking of buying a baby movement sensor mat. The movement sensor mat is placed under the mattress and sounds an alarm after 20 seconds if no movement from the baby.

Argos is selling them for £54.99. Good price?
Have you used one? Are they any good?
Thanks.

hobo28

My mate had one. They are rubbish. Stupid thing kept going off if baby fell into a deep sleep. When they can move a little too and move off the mat the thing goes off too. After a while no-one reacted whenever it went off so it became a total waste of time.

My advice is to just get a normal listening device. Placed close enough in the room, you can pick up the baby's breathing anyway. Don't fall for the marketing rubbish which plays to every parents paranoia and save some money!

ziggy2004

I agree with Hobo think they are a waste of money I have a simple monitor which only cost £15 but as it picks up ds breathing I have never had to worry.
X Anne

rio

I too think they are a waste of money, no matter how many times we repositioned the mat there was always some area of the cot it didn't cover, and that was the area DS decided to roll on to. From what I've heard if there is a risk of a genuine problem then the hospital will kit you out with all the high tech stuff you need. Friends of ours had a baby two months premature, and when they came home they had a whole bag full of kit to use to keep an eye on baby. As long as you can hear baby breathing on a monitor you will be fine.

andycarmi

rio wrote:

As long as you can hear baby breathing on a monitor you will be fine.

I do have a monitor. BUT when we sleep we can't hear the standard monitor. Where are the mat is alarmed!

I m I just being an over worried 1st time parent?

holstar

andycarmi wrote:

I m I just being an over worried 1st time parent?

..probably!

did your mum have a sensor mat for you? I'm guessing not.....and you're still here.

My parents didn't have a sensor mat, or a monitor, I slept in a different room to them from day 1 (isn't the current advice that baby should sleep in parents room for first couple of weeks/months?)..and I'm fine.

As others have said, probably a waste of money

skylight

You are being over worried!

Manufacturers play to your fears and look forward to making the obscene amounts of money out of parents.

I can promise you faithfully (Pregnant with number 4!!) that you will prod your little one every so often anyway - just to make sure! Its a natural reaction and so is every other fear you will have.

But, you cannot wrap them up in cotton wool and to much fear can make you very paranoid and scared and you will not enjoy your baby as you should.

Follow the midwifes information - not too many covers, dont let baby overheat, steady room temprature etc etc.

rio

No I don't think your being over worried at all. After all we bought one because we wanted the added security of knowing little one was safe. The problem is the mat itself, it can only pick up movement directly on it or one or two inches away. I remember one time our alarm went off in the middle of the night and we rushed in only to find little one had rolled to the other end of the cot and was playing with his cot toys happy as larry. Ours worked well when little one was just born and in a small crib, as small babies do not move very far if at all, but once our son was five months old and in a normal sized cot it was a waste of time, and eventually we ended up unplugging it and just using the monitor section.

andycarmi

holstar wrote:

..probably!

did your mum have a sensor mat for you? I'm guessing not.....and you're still here.

My parents didn't have a sensor mat, or a monitor, I slept in a different room to them from day 1 (isn't the current advice that baby should sleep in parents room for first couple of weeks/months?)..and I'm fine.

As others have said, probably a waste of money

My Mum didn't have a mat or monitor. Yes current advice is 6 months in same room. I was in my own room at 3 months and yes I m fine. :-)

I m very lucky DD is 8 weeks and sleeps 8 hr a night. So DH thinks in a couple of weeks she can go in her own room. WHICH does scare me so thought the mat would give me peace of mind.

WestonDave

Not sure if its still the same but we were given one of these as part of an expensive monitor setup. However it clearly stated that it couldn't be used with a sprung (as opposed to foam) mattress. We'd got a sprung mattress (because we'd got hold of a cheap cot bed and wanted a mattress that would last with it) so couldn't use it and ended up asking if we could swap it for something else.

(Funny thing was the swapped one came with a temperature monitor thing that bleeps continuously if the temperature strays outside prescribed limits - we quickly found the off switch for that after one summer night where even with all the windows open and the fan blowing we couldn't get the stupid thing to register below its limit. Still laugh about that - we were awake sweating in our room - DS was out for the count in his room blissfully sleeping under the only fan in the house).

To be fair I found it hard when he moved to his own room because I was used to hearing him shuffle and snuffle whereas DW could sleep through a hurricane and didn't notice!. In reality the mat thing would never have been any use as DS is fairly mobile in the night - we used to take bets on what position he'd be in by morning - most often 180 degrees from where we put him and hiding under his cot top changer. Even now at nearly 2 he can still sleep 90 degrees across the cot rather than straight up or down!

andycarmi

Al_Mac wrote:

Babies are designed to scare you $hitless What ever you do, what ever you buy, the little "angels" will cause you some kind of heart failure on a regular basis DD nearly 14 and DS 12, still manage it regularly.

If the alarm sounds and DD just moved off the mat. That wouldn't give me peace of mind.