The Back Story:
It took awhile for me to trust our baby monitor. I didn’t believe that the voice-activate setting would work, and pictured my poor baby crying his head off in the other room.
Note: We live in a 2 bedroom apartment, and there is virtually no room in the house where you could not hear a baby from another room.
So, this is a post for all the other neurotic new moms out there who are worried that their baby monitors won’t actually allow them to monitor their babies.
Product Description
The Sony Baby Call Baby Monitor has three settings: On, off, and voice-active. The “on” setting is a bit much – you hear absolutely everything, and if your baby requires music or a white noise machine to get to sleep, this is not a benefit.
Voice-activate is smart enough to recognize a repeated sound, so it filters out the background noise. The sensitivity is good – it picks up our baby’s cries pretty early on, so he’s hasn’t reached the full-out “WHAT THE HECK IS GOING ON” stage by the time we reach him.
The “send” half of the monitor plugs in, and the “receive” half has a detachable plug, so you can carry it from room to room. When the receiver needs to be charged, it beeps at you until you hunt down where you’ve put the plug and recharge the battery.
Price
The monitor costs $45 at Baby’s R Us, and there’s currently a 10% discount if you use the code 930851. It’s $42.50 on amazon, but then of course you have to ship it.
Either way, I think this is a fair price. You and your baby get security, the monitor lasts a long time so you can reuse this with each child you have (or give it to your sister) and you don’t even need to buy batteries.
Overall, the Sony Baby Call Baby Monitor has allowed me to sleep easier, and to stop making 3 minute check-ins when our baby is napping. Also, while letting our baby sleep in his own room is traumatic for Mom, it gives our baby quieter, less-interrupted sleep and will probably decrease the chances that I’ll need back surgery from contorting my body in weird shapes to protect him when he’s in our bed.
