Breathing sensor monitors – are they worth it?

Of all baby products, these sell peace of mind most directly: a device that watches your child’s breathing while you sleep. It’s easy to understand why people buy them. Almost every parent has leant over the cot at night, at least once, to listen.

The honest question isn’t whether the technology works, but what exactly it gives you and what it can’t give you. Below is what we found, without recommending any model.

One caveat: this isn’t medical advice. If you have a concern about your child’s breathing or sleep, talk to your paediatrician.

What types there are

They all do essentially the same thing: if they don’t detect movement or if a value goes outside the set range, an alarm sounds – on the device, on the parent unit or on the phone.

What paediatric recommendations say

We rely on the safe sleep recommendations of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP, 2022). Two ideas there concern these devices directly:

• Cardiorespiratory monitors used at home are not recommended as a strategy for reducing the risk of sudden infant death. There is no evidence that they would prevent it.
• For consumer devices – socks, clips, pads – there are no data showing that they reduce this risk, and using them can create a false sense of security, which can lead to relaxing the safe sleep rules.

This doesn’t mean the devices are dangerous in themselves or that they measure wrongly. It means that nobody has shown that a healthy child is safer with them than without them.

Why they aren’t medical devices

A monitor used in hospital is a medical device: it is clinically validated, calibrated, and its alarm reaches a person trained to intervene. Most products in baby shops are sold as consumer goods, for “parents’ peace of mind”, and that is exactly what the instructions say, in small print: that they don’t diagnose, treat or prevent anything.

Some manufacturers have meanwhile obtained medical clearances for certain models or functions, in certain countries. If that matters to you, check in the documentation for the exact model, for the European market, what exactly is certified.

False alarms

A baby normally breathes irregularly: faster, slower, with short pauses. They move towards the edge of the mattress, where the pad no longer senses them. The sock slips. The clip comes off the nappy.

The result is, now and again, an alarm at three in the morning for a child who is sleeping peacefully. One false alarm a month is a small price. Several a week mean parents who sleep worse than they would have without the device – and, sometimes, trips to A&E for no reason.

There’s also the opposite effect: whole days without a single alarm, which can make you believe the device is “looking after” things. That is where the paediatricians’ concern about false security comes from.

What really matters

The things known to reduce the risk are simple and free:

We explained them at length in the guide to the cot. No sensor replaces them and none makes up for their absence.

Who they might still make sense for

Being honest to the end: some parents sleep better with a device like this, and parents’ sleep matters. It may make sense if:

• you know what you’re buying – an object for your own peace of mind, not a safety device;
• you follow all the safe sleep rules anyway, as if the device didn’t exist;
• you cope well with false alarms and won’t look at graphs ten times a night;
• you can return it if you notice it unsettles you more than it helps.

It’s probably not for you if you’re already anxious and are looking for something to make the fear go away. Most of the time it doesn’t go away, it just moves onto the phone screen. In that situation, a conversation with your doctor helps more than a subscription to an app.

If your doctor recommends monitoring

Some babies – born prematurely or with certain medical problems – go home with a recommendation for monitoring. In that case you get, through the doctor, a medical device, with clear instructions and a plan for what to do if it goes off. Don’t replace it with a product from a shop and don’t decide on your own to stop using it.

If you buy one anyway

• Install it exactly as in the manual. Under-mattress pads have precise requirements about the surface they sit on and the type of mattress.
• Cables at a distance. Any cable must be at least a metre from the cot or completely inaccessible to the child – the same rule as for any monitor.
• Nothing extra in the cot. If the device needs a pillow, an insert or an accessory on the mattress, it doesn’t fit with safe sleep.
• Check the size on socks and bracelets and respect the age up to which they are intended.
• App, account, subscription. Find out which functions remain if you don’t pay monthly and where the data about your child ends up.
• Keep the option to return it.

Our recommendation

For a healthy child, born at term, you don’t need a breathing monitor. That money does more good spent on a firm mattress and two sleeping bags. If you want to hear or see your child from another room, an ordinary monitor is enough; we compared the options in the guide to monitors and in monitors without Wi-Fi.

And if you feel that you won’t be able to sleep without a device like this, buy it knowing what it is: a safety net for your peace of mind, laid over the safe sleep rules, not in place of them.