Baby monitor? Breathing monitor?

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DC1 due this month. We live in a 1 bedroom flat and baby will be sleeping in our bedroom with us. We haven't purchased a baby monitor yet and were thinking we probably won't, as the door to the bedroom in our flat is always open - as are all the doors - and babygated (we have dogs). The furthest we would ever be away from the baby alone in crib in the bedroom is about 7 meters. We don't have TV/music loud so we would still be able to hear baby crying. Is it ok not to have a monitor in these circumstances? We are thinking about purchasing a cheap monitor for when we go and stay with MIL as she has a large house with upstairs bedrooms.

I was, however, looking at products such as the following on eBay:

cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=350262551840&ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT&afsrc=1

It is a small monitor that clips to baby's clothing and monitors breathing, emitting a 'vibration' to remind baby to breathe if he stops, and an alarm if breathing effort isn't detecting after 20 seconds. Has anyone ever used one of these? Do they actually work? Is it worth the money? We were thinking we could spend the money we would have spent on a baby monitor on something like this. But not sure if it's a reliable product or not.

I don't have one of these but it does look quite good if you a neurotic first time parent :o We bought a monitor with a breathing sensor pad and it did help me relax more when DS was tiny and asleep in his cot, but he's 10 months now and we haven't used it for ages. If you just want a monitor for occasional use, I would get something a bit cheaper.

A cheaper option is this one: snuza

I've not had one myself but heard of others likeling it.

I've heard that occasionally breathing monitors go off randomly. Very scary.

A friend of mine had a monitor which went off randomly and gave her mini panic attacks on a regular basis - baby was always fine. This seemed to be the general concensus when I looked into them - my identical twin died of cot death at 11 weeks so it was something I was worried about.

I would say, just get a basic monitor for parents' house.

We had an angelcare breathing monitor for DD (now 2)- the kind that goes under the mattress. I was very glad we had it and will definitely use it again this time. It only went off twice that I can recall, one time she had wriggled down to the bottom of the cot. The other time she was fine but I do sometimes wonder whether she had stopped breathing for a few seconds and was roused by the alarm. Probably not, guess I'll never know. Personally I found it very reassuring, and I think I would have been much more worried and scared without it.

The other thing I'm going to do this time is to wrap the cot mattress as per New Zealand advice here

Heard about this on MN, it sounds a bit 'too good to be true' but I can't see how it can do any harm.

Thanks for the advice. PrincessScrumpy, sorry to hear about your sister. :(

Have read good reviews about the Angelcare sound/movement monitor so we'll probably go with that one for the benefit of the movement monitor at home and the sound monitor when we go to MIL's.

We have the Angelcare monitor & think it is fab. The only times we've had false alarms is when DD wedged herself down the end of her cot, and that's only because the piece of plyboard DH put under her mattress (you have to place the sensor mat on something solid) didn't quite reach the end!

We just have cheapy "sound only" monitors at GP houses (DD visits once a week) both bought at baby sales for about a fiver!