Are they effective?

[Becca69]

Hi there
Im paranoid about SIDS but have been told by my HV that the breathing monitors are ineffective at preventing SIDS; the nhs also say this. However. I’ve read lots on here about how they ARE effective.Any thoughts?
Thankyou

None of them are medical grade or medically approved.

They can increase anxiety through false flag events, alerting when nothing is wrong.

We used one and found it helpful, we did get some false alarms but I don’t mind that

We have the Snuza Hero and it does reliably go off if it doesn't feel movement. I suppose they don't officially recommend them because they shouldn't replace safe sleep practices and might make some feel complacent. And any tech can fail, or the batteries can run out. The monitor helped me get some sleep myself after my babies had been safely put down for the night though. I'd have been terrified of them randomly stopping breathing at night without it, it just felt like a good second line of defence to have.

None of them help prevent SIDS. They may warn you the baby has already stopped breathing but they don’t prevent that from happening.

How old is your baby? Sleeping in the same room as an adult is in when under 6 months and following safe sleeping guidelines are reducing the number of babies who die from SIDS.

No but they can alert you within 30 seconds of your baby stopping breathing and give you a chance to try and do something about it, which is precisely why they use them in NICU. Safe sleeping and following the guidelines is essential I agree, but they do work well for some families and serve a purpose

Totally agree it's important to remember they won't prevent SIDS in themselves. My reasoning for getting one was that I would rather be alerted straight away in the event that anything did happen, but there's no 100% effective prevention, sadly.

They may alert you when baby stops breathing or moving for 30 seconds, and that might enable you to do something about it.

Otherwise you could follow safe sleeping guidelines for 6 months and be in the room your baby is sleeping in. IMO it is no hardship to either keep a baby downstairs with you in arms or Moses basket until bedtime, or put baby in a cot/bed and stay in the room to watch quiet TV/read/chat/knit/sleep through the evening. Nobody is saying don’t pop downstairs to make a cup of tea; just base yourself in the room baby is sleeping in for the evening for 6 months.

Trust me, there are bigger sacrifices to come!