The digital age and the rise of various apps have helped people manage their physical and mental health better. For mothers who have babies, apps that track the infants' bodies and movements helped them monitor their child better.
Some apps help parents track their babies' sleeping patterns, eating habits and diaper changes, among others. Other apps such as a bedside video monitor and motion detector serve as a replacement for the more traditional baby monitor, according to Time.
Parents Are More At Ease
Apps that detect a baby's motion can tell parents if a sleeping infant isn't moving for an unhealthy amount of time. Thanks to the app, parents can be alerted quickly and prevent Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, or SIDS. SIDS can occur during the first six months of an infant's life and is slightly more likely to affect baby boys, NHS wrote. Babies born prematurely or with low weight at birth have higher chances of SIDS.
Melissa Knobloch, a 33-year-old mother with a 10-week-old son, said the digital parenting aids give her a "peace of mind," Time further reported. Cocoon Cam, for instance, is a baby monitor that tracks and analyzes a baby's heart and respiratory rates, activity levels and temperature. Parents can look at all this information through a real-time audio and video feed routed to their smartphones.
Mimo, a company in Boston, sells a washable crib sheet that monitors babies' movements and sleeping patterns. Mimo CEO Dulcie Madden said the firm aims to help parents get better sleep. Many parents, especially those who have newborns, tend to have poor sleep at night because they have to get up every few hours to tend to their child.
More Examples Of Digital Parenting Tools
Another digital parenting tool is New Deal Design's Sproutling, a wearable device and sensor-tracking technology that wraps around an infant's ankle. Through Sproutling, parents will be able to track their baby's sleeping patterns, Wired reported.
Sensors picked up by the device's soft and waterproof straps will then be transmitted by the Sproutling app on parents' smartphones. It alerts parents when their baby is awake or if the child has a fever.
Other baby monitor apps are Dormi, Cloud Baby Monitor and Baby Monitor 3G. The latter becomes a baby monitor when you have two iOS devices. One iOS device serves as the Baby Station, which stays put in the baby's room to watch over the infant. The other device is the Parent Station, which is carried by so they can watch and listen.
