This is our newest piece of baby gear:

The Snuza Halo

It’s a baby movement monitor.  It is peace of mind.

When I was pregnant I tossed around the idea of getting the Angelcare monitor — another type of baby movement monitor — and inevitably decided against it.  The Angelcare works with a unit that is placed under the child’s mattress and is very sensitive… enough to catch that baby stopped taking breaths from about 7″ of mattress away.  Reasons why I decided not to get it: First of all, John sleeps in his crib only during the day and spends his nights either in his bassinet or in bed with us (never the whole night and not every night, but it does happen occasionally) and the Angelcare can’t be used with out bassinet and obviously wouldn’t work for our bed.  Second, I honestly thought, “we’ll never need it.”  I never really thought much about SIDS until John was born but, damn, the idea that he can just STOP BREATHING at any time pretty much freaks me the hell out.  For real.  Noah was pretty freaked out too and he slept so lightly the first weeks of John’s life that I bet he really would have heard if John had failed to take a breath.  Then I was reading a story online one day a few weeks ago about someone’s Angelcare monitor going off and the mom thought it was just another false alarm (the monitors are known for those) when she went in to the nursery to reset it.  Only, IT WASN’T A FALSE ALARM!  Her baby wasn’t breathing but as soon as she reached out and touched her child, she (the baby) took in a deep breath.  As babies sometimes do, she just forgot to breathe.  Most times the baby will start breathing again on his/her own but sometimes they don’t and that causes unimaginable devastation.  I don’t even want to think about it.

I was sold that I needed to get a movement monitor or just vow never to sleep again.  It was then that I remembered that there was another movement monitor that clipped onto the baby so it could be used anywhere the baby was sleeping.  After a few minutes of searching I found it.  I read more reviews about it, tossed around the idea of getting it, even lamented over the price for a moment — and when I think of all the dumb stuff I blow just as much or more on — then I realized that I was an idiot if I didn’t buy it and was mad that I even thought for a moment about putting a price tag on something like this.

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