Since we had a whole week to prepare to bring our baby home, I was completely overwhelmed by baby monitor options. Short story on why I love the Angelcare baby monitor: PEACE OF MIND. Not only do I know my baby is breathing, I know she’s safe in her bed and no one has stolen her in the middle of the night.
Long story: When you are a crazy, anxiety-prone mom like me who can’t sleep as it is, you want this peace of mind so you can get as much shuteye as possible. At 14 months, my baby is well past the major risk of SIDS, but I can’t tell you how nice it is to know that she is safely snoozing in her crib. Can I keep this thing until she is 18? There will be no teenage girl sneaking out of this house!!!
I didn’t actually use the monitor until she was about 5 months old, but my friends wanted to throw me a baby shower as soon as she was home, and I wanted it on the registry. When a trusted friend told me about Angelcare, it was a no-brainer for me.
So here are my pros and cons about the monitor so you can weigh them for yourself.
This is not a sponsored post, but it does contain affiliate links, which help support the blog of this working mom. For more info, see my policy.
How the Angelcare Baby Monitor Works
Sensors go underneath your crib mattress and detect tiny movements such as baby’s chest moving up and down due to breathing. If the monitor detects no movement after 20 seconds, an alarm sounds on the parent handheld so you can be alerted and go check on baby.
Pros
- It alerts you if it stops detecting movement in the crib for 20 seconds. These are tiny movements like breathing. It was amazing to me that this device placed under the mattress could detect these things, but it really does work.
- It monitors the temperature in baby’s room. This is especially useful if you live in a two-story home with different thermostats (we have a one-story home, but the horror stories about a second story getting too hot while mom and dad sleep unknowingly are very scary).
- It is sound-activated so that you don’t have to hear background noise until baby cries. This means she can rustle around, or we can have a sound machine on in her room, and we won’t hear anything until she makes some noise. Awesome for mommy and daddy’s sleep!
- The screen options are very flexible, allowing you to turn the movement monitor on or off, etc.
- It’s one of the few options on the market that do these things, so if you get overwhelmed with research like I do, it makes the decision easy for you.
Cons
- The setup can be challenging. I’m not going to lie — I may or may not have cried into my glass of wine a little the night we tried to set this monitor up. Most of the complaints I see are about the need to put a hard board or surface underneath your mattress so you can place the sensors flat under it. That was no problem for us. Our issue was that we have a vintage crib that doesn’t have slats all the way around (solid wood at the ends), so it was a challenge to find a spot to place the camera and get a good view into the crib. It can be frustrating, but once you are set up, you are good to go!
- False alarms: they do happen, as I was warned, but they have been very rare. She sometimes works herself into a corner and the sensors stop detecting her. We simply moved her back to the middle of the crib. The nights of peaceful sleep I have gotten far outweigh the few nights we got a false alarm. If you are getting more frequent false alarms as the child ages, note that it does need to be adjusted for sensitivity as your baby grows. You can find information about this in the FAQs on the Angelcare site.
- The range is not that great in our house. This could be completely due to our layout, but be sure to check how much range you need between your favorite places in the house and the nursery!
There are a lot of monitors out there that may have more bells and whistles, but we are pretty simple parents who just want to know baby is safe and be alerted when she needs our attention. If this is the peace of mind you want, I highly recommend the Angelcare baby monitor. I hope this post helps in your search for the perfect baby monitor for your family!