Peace of Mind

Since Dawson has started sleeping on his stomach and me being the most paranoid person in the world, this is like the best thing ever...


We bought this movement monitor yesterday and I am already so in love with it! I wish we would have bought it a long time ago! Let me explain what it is and how it works and then I will tell you about all the cool features!

You put the sensor pad under the mattress and it senses all movement. (over the entire mattress...it doesn't have to be on top of the pad) The main purpose is to alert us if Dawson stops breathing. If it doesn't feel any movement for 20 seconds, the unit in his room beeps once to try to stimulate him...if it still doesn't detect movement a few seconds after that, then the monitor that is in our room (or downstairs...whichever we are using at the time) starts beeping to let us know something is wrong.

There were a ton of reviews on this and I read through a lot of them...there were a lot of people who said their baby's had stopped breathing and because of the monitor they were able to save them. I was almost brought to tears as I was reading through them, just knowing what might have happened if they hadn't bought it. :-(

Anyway, we tested it after we put it under his mattress, we turned it on without him in the crib and sure enough about 25 seconds later the alarm was going off. Then we tested it again...still without Dawson in the crib, we turned it on and Dave touched the corner of the mattress, he didn't put hardly any pressure on it, just touched it every couple seconds and the alarm didn't go off. We figured him barely touching would be about the same movement as if Dawson was laying perfectly still and just breathing.

I slept really good last night (and so did Dawson, yay!) knowing that I didn't have to check on him every hour or so. (A little extreme, I know but I couldn't help it!) Especially since he started sleeping on his stomach! I started checking on him even more often because I was worried he would start to turn his head and end up face down or something. I know he knows how to lift his head and knows how to roll over but I was still worried about it.

So besides detecting movement, it is also a sound monitor. We already had one of those but this one is so much better! It's so quiet, our other one had a lot of static. This one, I can barely tell that it is on unless Dawson is making noise. You can also set it to "voice activation" where the sound monitor is off unless there is noise, then it turns on. I think we will just keep it on all the time though, you can barely tell it's on when it's quiet anyway.

It also tells us the temperature in Dawson's room (on the monitors that stay with us). We can program it to alert us if his room gets below or above certain temperatures. It's kind of neat. :-)

There are a couple other features but those are the ones that I like and will use the most.

I just took this picture of Dawson...he is taking a nap right now and this is how he fell asleep. I turned his head a little after I took the pic...I don't know why he likes to sleep with his face buried like that but it makes me even more happy that we bought the movement monitor!




Speaking about how paranoid I am all the time has brought back a couple memories from when I was a teenager. (I've always been a worrywart!) My little brother was probably about 3, which would have made me about 15. I took him in the backyard so he could jump on the trampoline and I was going to watch him. Once he started jumping I started freaking out because I thought he was getting too close to the edge. I started running around the trampoline, so I could catch him if he fell of. *lol* I kept yelling at him to stop jumping so I could take him off. After that I could never watch him jump...in fact, I didn't even want to know if he was going out to jump or else I would get really anxious. :-/

Another story...this was when my sister was about 5, again I would have been about 15. Anyway, I was staying home from school because I was sick or something. Arika was in kindergarten and she was outside waiting for the bus. The bus stop was probably about 50 feet away from our house. And about 30 feet away from the bus stop on the other side, was some railroad tracks. I heard a train coming and I knew sometimes the kids would run up to the tracks and run back to the bus stop. (I don't think they ever did it when a train was coming) But I was still worried so I looked out the window and I couldn't see Arika! So I ran out the front door, barefoot and in my nightgown, screaming for Arika. I probably looked like a mad women and can laugh about it now but at the time I was really scared! She was at the bus stop...I just couldn't see her from the house.

I think I am going to have to put Dawson in a bubble as soon as he starts walking. :-P Poor kid isn't going to be able to do much or I might have a heart attack!