introducing Owlet

Every pregnancy is different, but pregnancy after miscarriage, stillbirth or infant loss is in a category all its own. I know because I've listened to the stories of women whose children suffered birth trauma, like mine, as well as read pretty much every memoir I could find about loss during pregnancy and infancy. I guess I was looking for my tribe, for confirmation that my feelings are normal. I've learned that no matter how many children you've birthed before, pregnancy after a loss is like starting all over again – not fresh, but in a new paradigm. It is a paradigm in which bad things really do happen in low-risk situations, vigilance is required to prevent tragedies and yet, alas, not all dangers can be avoided.

It's not all bad, this new paradigm. In fact, I daresay it is true. It's life.

Near the end of my first trimester I concluded it was logically more likely I would give birth to a live, healthy baby than not. This didn't feel true, but I would remind myself it was true. Logically. And so began the ongoing process of reimagining motherhood.

At a Facebook support group for women pregnant after HIE (Eleni's type of brain damage), we discuss prenatal care, inductions vs. cesareans, bonding and breastfeeding. I remember when one mother asked for opinions about sleep monitors for baby. She didn't mean a sound monitor or video monitor, but rather the kind that is designed to alert you if baby stops breathing. It was early in my pregnancy, not long after Eleni had died, when the wires and beeping machines had been cleared away, and our house finally sounded more like a home than a hospital. I thought, no way. No way do I want to return to wires and monitors and alarms with my future healthy (?) baby. I can't wait to have a baby that doesn't need all that! I can't wait to raise her like I did Aria and Liam: confident, fearless, easy.

Months and months later, the topic of sleep monitors came up again on the support forum. I guess I had done some processing. For one, I knew that the mother I am is changed forever. No going back. My new “confident, fearless, easy” will be different than the old version. And I suddenly realized that just as I am opting for more vigilance to have a safer pregnancy and birth than ever before, I would rather opt for more vigilance to protect my baby after she is born.

Why not a sleep monitor? It may sound a little silly, a little excessive at first, but then so did carseats once upon a time. 10 times more babies pass away from accidental suffocation than from car accidents. It's not a pretty fact, but that doesn't make it go away, unfortunately. If there is a noninvasive device that could alert me to a potentially life threatening situation, why would I not want to use it?

Why indeed.

A little looking led me to the Owlet. There are several baby sleep monitors available these days, but this one makes the most sense to me. The Owlet is a pulse oximeter. This is the same technology used in hospitals to monitor heart rates and oxygen levels. Actually, we used a hospital-grade pulse oximeter at home to monitor Eleni. It was one of our most important tools.

But the Owlet is better than that from my perspective. It's wireless (thank heavens!) and wears like a soft slipper, appropriately sized to fit well. It communicates data to a small, dimable device that lights up different colors designed to indicate no concerns (green), poor connection (blue), low battery (yellow) or breathing/heart rate alert (red).

The same info can simultaneously be routed to your smart phone designed so you can receive alerts even if you step outside to get the mail. Frankly, this would have been preferred to the hospital pulse oximeter for Eleni, at times. Not when she was critically ill, but at times when she was well but we wanted to keep watch just in case. It's so wonderful that the Owlet indicates when it's just a poor sensor reading or low battery situation. And the portability is amazing! In my opinion, the Owlet combines vital information with convenience factors appropriate to a healthy baby.



As part of my research I listened to what “regular” parents who've used Owlet had to say about it. I found a few instances where parents complained about experiencing 1-2 false alarms in months of use. Oh, I laughed out loud! How wonderful to only encounter false alarms! For all to be well, again and again. Sign me up for that reality! But, more seriously, several parents had found their baby not breathing well when the Owlet alerted them and were able to resolve the problem by removing a loosened blanket from the sleeping area. In one case when a baby had several alerts, the parents brought their concerns to a doctor and eventually discovered the child had sleep apnea.

This is a safety device that works. And if it goes off, there is often going to be something you can do to help. That's why I'll be using Owlet for my baby-to-be, and that's also why I wanted to share it with you. Owlet markets itself as the car seat of the crib. I think that's a fair comparison. Yes, it's somewhat pricey, but so are car seats. Yes, it'll take a bit of effort to use, but so do car seats (actually, they take considerably more!). I imagine there will come a day when using a sleep monitor like Owlet is not something that resonates mostly with parents who have experienced loss or are close to someone who has. I hope there comes a day when most of us use them.

Thanks for allowing me to share. I try to go easy on projecting my new “paradigm” in this space, because I don't want to be a fear monger and I don't want to convert this to a parenting blog! On the other hand, this seemed like an important message to get out. It's something a lot of us could do, and would probably wish we had done if...

For full disclosure I should include that after deciding to use an Owlet, I contacted the company to request a complimentary device in exchange for mention on my blog. They sent one (they sent three actually; we had terribly luck between lost packages and my dog) and then patiently waited until I was ready to talk about this. October happens to be SIDS Awareness month*, and as we are just 5 weeks from induction-day I figured it was time. I will be sure to tell you what I think after baby is born, and our family has a chance to put Owlet to use.

Our new master bedroom is almost ready and the bassinet is out!

*Because the cause of SIDS is unknown, Owlet cannot and does not claim to prevent it.