Do baby listening monitors cause sleep problems?

[mears]

I have noticed that a number of friends who use baby monitors have babies who sleep poorly. I think one of the reasons for that is the minute they hear the baby waking in another room they attend to them immediately.
I am not talking about newborn babies - they were with us in the bedroom till about a year. During the day when they were older I would put them in the cot for morning and afternoon naps.
I never used a monitor with any of my children because I could hear them crying when they were fully awake.
I think that babies often half waken and then go back to sleep after a rumble around - I have stood outside a room and listened to grumblings that have ended in slumber again.
We had friends staying recently who immediately went and lifted their year old baby the minute they heard stirrings going on via the monitor. The baby was invariably crabbit and grisley for about an hour after getting up. I felt he should have been left a bit longer but kept my opinion to myself.
What does anyone else think about baby listening monitors?

Sorry but I do not understand what you will gain by having this baby monitor with an almost 2 years old........ TURN IT OFF !

Enid, yes there have been cases where it has saved babies lives. Extremely premie babies can sometimes suffer from sleep apnea several times a day for the first year and the parents need to be alerted so that they can move the child to start him/her breathing again.

Personally, I think they're fantastic and wouldn't be without mine. I can ignore any minor wimpers safe in the knowledge that nothing is seriously wrong and she is still breathing. If anything it makes me more relaxed.

But premmie babies usually have hospital monitors that measure breathing, not the commercially available movement sensitive ones.

Dear All

Thanks for the thoughts which echo my own. Just have to persuade dH now!! This will be very difficult I suspect. I knocked the thing flying yesterday (completely accidental) which would have been an excellent time to stop but dH managed to repair it. I would not have been without it for the frst 12 months anyway, just for for reassurance, but it has gone on long enough...

Cath B, Why not just switch it off - by accident, of course - at the baby's end. As your DH sleeps through all noise he won't notice anyway and you can have a good night's sleep. After a week or so of this you can tell him the thing's been switched off for ages and nothing bad has happened and you want to stop using it. Alternatively, just tell him you need your sleep and if he wants to listen to the monitor all night he can take it into another room or make up a bed on the sofa and listen to it to his heart's content there. I confess, if it was my DH being so stubborn, I would do the latter like a shot. Good luck. It's well past its sell by date IMO.

To be truthful I could not live without our monitor. With all the noise in my house between the tv, and the others siblings I would never hear my child cry or even call out.

CathB, Try dropping it out of the window then see if DH can fix it

I did like the baby monitor when DH was a baby. We stopped using it when he was about 12 months. It gave me extra piece of mind, my hearing is not too sharp, that I would not miss him. I could take the hand held parent unit bit out with me when I hung out the washing etc.

I am planning on using the same monitor this time, baby due in 3 weeks, however my DH has plans of putting a camera into the children's bedroom so that when the baby moves in with his big brother (probably not until he is at least 6 months and can defend himself to a degree) we can flick the television over and see what they are doing in there, aaaargh! Does anyone have any suggestions of how to put him off this idea, I have tried by saying that these cameras are too expensive but he seems to think he can make one based on a door entry system we saw on some flats we viewed once (he knows the electrician who did the work who reckons you can do it for about £30). The monitor I can just about cope with but no TV cameras!!!

Sorry that should say when DS was a baby!

Demented - those camera systems are about £50 from kiddicare. We have one but we never used it until DS was 6 months old as he was in our room (with the camera in his). Now we use the camera but not the audio monitor.

Actually quite useful now as we're just hitting the "I can climb out stage" - he's frequently standing in the cot and has taken to hanging on to the top rail and using the mattress as a trampoline. I've also had to remove the toys he slept with as he was piling them together and climbing on top to get higher. Suspect it'll be only a matter of time before he's over the top rail - and he's not even 9 months yet!

Our baby monitor picks up police radios and other babies crying sometimes - does anyone else's ? We only have it on when we're downstairs. At night we switch it off as her rooms right next door anyway

Demented, I have one friend who has used a camera since DD was a baby. Although she is now 3 my friend can not bring herself to turn it off. DD is a really naughty child. In my opinion it is because she has realised that she is being watched and doesn't like it. If anything naughty was happeneing then surely being able to hear is enough to get your attention??

Tillysmum, it's a very common problem to pick up other signals on your baby monitor. They are not incredibly sophisticated and there is not that much bandwidth that they play on. Some models come with band options but if everyone in your street has the same one then you are stuffed again.

Installing the camera made me laugh. Could you suggest he gets a separate tv set to watch the baby on and pref keeps in the loo or something? You can carry on with your normal life and he can get his technolgy fix.

Baby monitors seem to be very useful for soap opera plots.

Good idea Malmomum! I'm sure we would hear if they were murdering one another, still trying to convince DH though!

I felt quite silly when reading this thread..my ds is over 2 & we are still using the monitor. Mainly because the layout of the house means we can't hear him call out let alone cry. We did attempt to stop using the thing as we too felt he was old enough, but we just couldn't hear him, we by chance heard him sobbing when we put some rubbish out in the dustbin and so felt so guilty we hadn't heard him before hand over the tv noise etc. We are expecting baby N02 in a few weeks & so we moved the monitor into what will be the other babies room eventually, hopeing it would pick up ds noise as well, but it didn't..so now we are having to contemplate having 2 monitors at same time!! I really don't want to go down that road believe me, we really wanted to not be using it for ds by now but are in a dilemma as to what to do....any suggestions.....

Dixie- exactly our problem. ds1 on top floor of 3 certainly can't be heard from the ground floor, and ds2 at 5weeks in own room also impossible to hear from various points of the house (and no, its not a mansion!!). We did end up buying a second monitor. Both sets have 2channels so can be set apart, and I know I needn't be straining my ears at all nap/sleep times. i wouldn't be without them. And far from making me rush in at every squeak, I can tell from the monitors whether its a full on "MUMMY!!!" or just a bit of chuntering in their sleep.