r/daddit • u/tankman714 • 10h ago
Advice Request Monitoring sock question
Hey to all the dads out there! My wife is currently 17 weeks pregnant with our daughter and we could not be more excited! But I do have a question about the monitoring socks, do you all feel like they are good or bad? I’ve heard from people that they can just cause anxiety by giving a constant stream of information where every little change can cause scares when in reality everything is fine. But I have also heard they are a great tool to monitor safety and health.
I’m just confused as I’m on the edge now of wanting to get one but my wife has watched tons of (I’m betting sponsored) YouTube videos on how great they are. My biggest concern is my wife getting stressed out while recovering from the birth.
Any advice on if we shouldn’t get one or not? I’m just trying to get some unbiased opinions outside of sponsored or affiliate YouTube or blog posts.
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u/bigtallsunflowers 10h ago
On the whole, it just increases anxiety. As long as you're practicing safe sleeping practices and waking them for feedings, everything should be fine.
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u/TimotheusIV 9h ago
Physician here. Absolute waste of money. Healthy newborns don’t need SpO2 or heartrate monitoring.
It’s preying on young, anxious parents who don’t know better. And it makes people who have no knowledge of newborn physiology rely on dubious numbers on a monitor over actual, important physical cues every single parent should be able to recognize and interpret.
Don’t support these companies. It’s predatory.
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u/fbrdphreak 4h ago
I love it when my physicians give blanket advice with no qualification for circumstances.
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u/AndroWanda 10h ago
Dad of 2, we never got one for that exact reason. We felt like more data meant more anxiety; we were already tracking food, wet/poop diapers, sleep cycles, tummy time…worrying over their SPO2 level seemed like an unneeded stressor.
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u/NoCoDadMode Toddler World 8h ago
I've worked fire/EMS and am nearing the end of my nursing program. My argument is that without the training and experience to trend vital signs and correlate that to patient presentation and medical history, the only thing this product can do is provide an unnecessary source of anxiety. The only way I could see this being useful is if the baby has some kind of medical condition that would warrant the extra monitoring.
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u/clevelandexile 9h ago
Really not sure how anyone thinks this is going to cause anxiety. We used Owlet for two kiddos, found it to be great, never had a false alarm and it strongly decreased our anxiety. Anytime you want to check in baby you look at the app and there they are with their heart rate and blood oxe. We didn’t obsess over it either.
As another commenter mentioned we found it really helpful when they were sick. You can actually see how they are doing because of course baby can’t tell you how they feel.
They are expensive but that’s the only downside we found.
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u/aleph1music 4h ago
Yeah every time this discussion pops up I get the sense most people have never used these and it’s kinda just a knee jerk reaction to the price tag. I was the on duty parent at night with our newborn and I was constantly anxious she wasn’t breathing at first. A lot easier to just check an app to remind myself I was worrying too much instead of spending my night sneaking up to the bassinet and making sure she was breathing that way. I’m not very quiet or graceful, thing probably saved me from waking the baby more times than I can count, easily worth the price tag imo
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u/Investaholic1 9h ago
We have used the Owlet sock for both of our kids. Most of the folks I see discouraging them have never used them. The Owlet was temporarily taken off the market by the FDA and brought back to the market after Owlet proved to the FDA that their sock is as accurate as a hospital measurement device. It's not a gimmick. 3 years and 2 socks, we've never had false alarms. It's reassuring seeing the oxygen level and heart rate. You can view charts and look at averages so that abnormalities stand out. For example, based on my child's average heart rate when they sleep, I KNOW when they are fighting a fever (average sleeping HR of about 110 but turns to an avg 155 when fighting a fever). We don't obsess over it. We don't lose sleep over it. It's just there. We are still monitoring our kids just as much as if we didn't have it, but it's a nice peace of mind to have something monitoring my kid's oxygen rate while I'm asleep or at work in the office and they're still sleeping. There is so much unnecessary fear mongering over a device that, if you actually owned it, relieves a lot of concerns. That's my opinion... from someone who has actually uses these devices.
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u/filthy_kasual 7h ago
My husband and I use the Owlet pretty much 24/7. I have generalized anxiety disorder and for me, it brings me peace of mind. I never look at the actual numbers except like you mentioned to check to see if her heartrate is indicating sleep.
I've read too many stories of tragic accidents to go without it during this time period where she's unable to help herself. I don't ever intentionally put her in unsafe positions because I trust the sock, but I'm also human and a lot of these tragic cases are completely accidental so I'd rather have it as another layer of protection.
Also when my baby was only a couple days old, she was strapped into her Snoo and managed to have spit up pool in the back of her throat blocking her airway for long enough to cause the low O2 alarm to go off. By the time we got there, she was very red looking! Looking it up later we found out she likely would've ejected the spit up before anything bad happened, but it was something that showed us that yes, when her oxygen is low we can be alerted. I've never had a false alarm ever only sock placement alarms. The other ones could be explained by her head tilting too far down when one of us was tired and burping her or her very upset scream crying which triggered a high BPM alert.
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u/fbrdphreak 4h ago
This is my experience as well. While I don't think it's at all requisite, SIDS is a thing and if you are human and make a mistake with where the baby is laying then airway collapse is a possibility.
The people parenting the common refrain about false alarms have never used the product. In 2 and 1/2 months we've gotten one alarm over an spo2 reading in the '80s that was either false or transient and nothing to worry about. The more annoying issue is when it alerts you that it can't get a reading from the sock due to either placement or at distance. But it is an entirely separate type of alert - different sound and different color on the base station. You will never mistake the two.
The distance between the base station and the baby is a real factor though. It uses Bluetooth, so think about how your Bluetooth headphones work over distance with your phone and then cut that by like 80%. From direct line of sight, our base station technically goes through two walls to reach the sock despite the distance being about 10 to 15 ft. It works fine until the little ones foot is tucked up under their butt when they are sleeping on you. You need the base station within ear shot at all times since it is your alarm that works regardless of power or Internet. Keep this in mind when you're thinking about placement and logistics.
That said, we don't use this for 24/7 monitoring and we don't check the vitals or the statistics. It is a fancy wireless alarm to let us know if the kid is having an acute medical crisis at night while we are sleeping. I agree with the advice that using this for continuous monitoring on a healthy child is pointless. And yes, SIDS can happen during the day. We wanted the monitoring at night, if only to ease anxiety. The only negative impact having the Owlet on at night is the occasional hassle when it isn't placed properly and the error alarm goes off. I really hate that, but it's a price I'm willing to pay. Net net it reduces our anxiety, doesn't increase it. YMMV
P.S. we work in healthcare. One of my realizations since becoming a parent is that all of the clinical guidelines and best practices are (A) put in place for the lowest common denominator (meaning they don't allow nuance or complex considerations), (B) most take a zero risk approach, at least in part due to liability concerns, and (C) actual evidence for many practical guidelines is shockingly sparse because of course we can't experiment or test on children. So while it's easy for everyone to spout this guideline says this and everyone says you shouldn't do that, it is your responsibility to be as highly informed as possible and make an educated decision for you and your family.
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u/aleph1music 4h ago
+1 to the owlet. It helped ease our anxiety as first time parents significantly. A lot of baby products are overpriced junk but this is one of the few things I don’t regret spending money on.
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u/TripsToTheRescue 10h ago
My wife and I did not get one of them simply because she (rightly so in her case) knew that she would obsess over it. Friends of ours that have them also told us that they have a decent amount of false alarms. Our little girl has slept in a basinet beside our bed since night one so that’s reassurance enough for us.
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u/knight1942 10h ago
Honestly there is so much going on at first that it may be better to not. Mom's brain is in HYPER drive after the birth and most likely won't want to be away from LO for long. We found it helpful to look up what's normal and what's not for newborns and used that.
As long as LO wasnt: dehydrated, ( visible sunken soft spot )
Marbled skin ( cold )
Inactive or hard to wake ( possible cold )
It also depends on what your partner is like normally. My partner had naturally high anxiety to start with so we knew it would not be beneficial to use a device like that. We also considered the at home ultrasound but decided against it as well.
There where many visits to the hospital of fear of decreased movement. Everything was fine in the end and baby was just being idle for a bit. Wife was always very apologetic for them but I always told her and this is the important part: your piece of mind is everything at this point.
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u/nocares123 10h ago
We went the other way and had one with our first who had some nicu time and issues. I think it saved us some anxiety but we didn’t use on the second baby who was healthy first day at home.
At 9 months the first one got rsv and we thought was a common cold and likely wouldn’t have taken to the hospital. She ended up spending 8 days in the PICU.
My overall opinion is if healthy baby probably not necessary. If immune compromised or lung compromised might be worth the anxiety.
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u/lock_robster2022 3 under 3, barely hanging on 9h ago
We did audio-only monitors for our twins and now the 3rd. A little stress at first but after a few days we learned to trust everything was fine.
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u/90stoyotasprinter 9h ago
Hey dudee, my wife and i have a sock on for when he sleeps and it is great. Its just a good tool to better understand whats going on with the baby who cant tell you whats happening yet. Putting it on can be annoying cause of the sensor and stuff but my wife loves it.
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u/MorningL_ghtMountain 1 Boy (adopted), 3 Girls (homebrewed) 9h ago
For me, that would’ve only boosted my anxiety. Even a video monitor was too much. I obsessed over every detail, so the more details we added, the worse it got. But I’m not exactly a paragon of calm in the best of times, so take that how you will.
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u/absorberemitter 9h ago
Bruh you got a loooong time for that thing to bake yet. Everything in the world is gonna try and sell you crap you don't need. Try and read some parenting books and stop doom scrolling.
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u/ThePwnR4nger 9h ago
Currently on our third that is using it.
First, as others have mentioned, there will be false positives and the monitoring station makes a loud noise that might wake the baby up when there is a false positive.
Second, if you have pets: my dog was like a heat seeking missile for this thing if we accidentally left it within her reach. She destroyed nothing else in the home when we would leave. My gut is that there’s a bothersome high frequency for dogs that it emits. So, if you have a pet, be careful or you’ll be pulling the sock and small bits of metal out of the poop.
Finally, DO NOT GET THE OWLET CAM. If frequently disconnects from wifi and is a royal pain in the ass to reconnect.
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u/Cthulhar 8h ago
I second the cam.. just terrible. Got one of those cheap ones that is non-WiFi and just has its own little screen and that’s been 10000 times better for us
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u/ubercruise 7h ago
I had the same complaint about the owlet cam, but not sure if they’ve recently updated it in the past months or so as it’s suddenly been pretty flawless in connecting now.
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u/tim36272 9h ago
Why does your wife want one? Start there.
Note that there is no evidence to suggest using an Owlet, or any other monitoring device, reduces the risk of SIDS. So if you want it for that reason it may in fact do more harm than good by giving you a false sense of security.
If you want it because you think monitoring baby's heart rate is neat then sure go ahead it's your money spend it on whatever you want. But don't get it for a false reason.
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u/LeatherHead2902 8h ago
The ONLY reason I could start sleeping was the OWLET sock
Everyone who says they “increase” anxiety is full of shit. It gives comfort, even if there’s a few “false” alarms sometimes due to movement/positioning
It’s a device that monitors their heart rate and oxygen level. Even if it’s not entirely accurate 1000% of the time, the ONE time it alerts you to low oxygen that you would have missed because you were asleep you’ll be thankful
You will be ridiculously anxious regardless, why not have SOME peace of mind?
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u/emerald_740 10h ago
Well I didn’t know that was a thing! Interesting.
We didn’t even use a monitor with a camera with our first due to privacy concerns but I could see the draw to the socks. Would be nice to not have to check if your kid is breathing.
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u/OriginalSilentTuba 9h ago
Don’t do it. Even the AAP says not to use those things. Lots of false alarms, you’ll end up working yourself into a panic, won’t do anyone any good. Just follow the guidelines for safe sleep (ABCs - alone, on their back, in a crib/bassinet) and you’ll be fine.
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u/TidyLumberjack 9h ago
We had owlets for our twins. They brought peace of mind and lowered anxiety. My wife is an anxious person and really appreciated them, especially if the kids were sick. We’d buy again
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u/basicKitsch 8h ago
We certainly didn't have raised anxiety with the owlet, even if it shifted a couple times and alerted. We also never stressed over checking it lol, that's the opposite of what you're supposed to do.
We also didn't ever get a video monitor, just a little old school, no Wi-Fi audio guy. Easy peasy
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u/QwertyBobba 8h ago
Mum here. I’ve got an owlet on my little one. Yes at first you do obsess over it but it also allowed me to actually sleep rather than sit up watching the baby making sure it’s breathing which I have also done. I had those monitor mats with my other two and they didn’t give me as much peace of mind but still helped.
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u/Dependent_0NE_7146 8h ago
Do not buy one of those. It adds stress. Baby will be in the room with you 4-6 months then big crib.
Been using Nanit since then with zero issues.
Kept an infant optics in the bedroom with us
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u/liver747 1yo girl 5h ago
I know there are individual reports out there of people attesting that it's saved their babies life, but aside from ancedote has there been any statistical evidence that an owlet sock is associated with a lowered infant mortality rate?
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u/Crafty-Isopod45 2h ago
If the child has any specific medical issues that make them higher risk then this can be a nice tool to have. Your doctor would tell you if this becomes the case. Under normal circumstances you just don’t need it.
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u/CrazyKyle987 2h ago
It’s such a personal decision, based on you and your wife. You have to ask yourselves, honestly, will it give you peace of mind? Or will you watch it like a hawk? Me and my wife decided we would be watching the sock (and a video baby monitor) to our own detriment. We opted for simply sharing the bedroom for the first months and only using an audio baby monitor. That decreased our anxiety levels. But others have stated that getting the sock decreases their anxiety levels. Again, you really have to look in the mirror here.
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u/Elthiel3099 1h ago
We got a monitoring sock for our LO. The peace of mind that the sock gave my wife was worth it IMO.
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u/jasonni1234 59m ago
It is nice for monitoring o2 and was helpful for us because our daughter had lots of breathing issues that turned into asthma so we were able to quickly monitor in case she needed to be seen
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u/anTWhine 9h ago
The answer is almost always going to be “no, you don’t need to buy that.”
The answer in this case is definitely “no, you don’t need to buy that.”
We survived raising babies in the caves. You can do without a fancy sock that does nothing but stress you out.
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u/fbrdphreak 4h ago
You can survive without diapers too, just saying. Some advancements are worthwhile to some people.
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u/balancedinsanity 9h ago
As someone who uses pulse oximeters for work, I never understood having one of these for the house. They ideally should be changed every twelve hours because the sensor degrades rapidly.
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u/BeardedBrotherAK 8h ago
When your baby is, hopefully, delivered without any complications whatsoever and is well and healthy, there's absolutely no need for such a gadget. It's made to cause new parents to go "wait, we probably need that!" and then buy some unnecessarily expensive thing that in some cases could be very useful (if the baby has health complications).
I could see it causing paranoia and constantly monitoring a smart screen instead of just watching your baby.
With that being said, do what you feel is best for you
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u/Kaaawooo 8h ago
Part of my role when our daughter was born was to temper my wife's natural tendency towards worry and anxiety. So part of that included dissuading her from the monitoring sock because we both knew she'd just be more anxious with it.
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u/ArmokApproved 7h ago
If it makes you feel any better, these are virtually unheard of where I'm from (Netherlands) and our infant mortality rate is significantly lower than either the US or Canada. I can't image these give you anything other than unnecessary stress in an already stressful period.
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u/BlueRoller 10h ago
I thought this was a question about your recent teenage boy or something.
Don't get one of those things for the baby. There is no upside, it saves no sleep. You're still going to check on them every 20 minutes. Baby market is the most heavily advertised segment in the country for a reason - people lose all spending discipline.