We've got a baby monitor. It's probably classed as a mid-range model and it will allow us to hear if baby's crying. In a flat, it,'s fairly unlikely that we wouldn't notice but it's better to be safe than sorry. It also has a visual light display that crying is still being detected even when the volume is down low.
K___ mentioned that you can get all sorts of baby monitors. Some of them check breathing and some of them have sensor pads that you can attach to the baby's stomach, pressure pads under the baby or ultrasound beams, all of them are designed to do the same thing; tell you that the baby is breathing correctly.
From what I've read, many parents seem obsessed with checking their newborn is still breathing every five minutes. It's an understandable fear that your baby might stop, though thankfully quite rare in reality. One in 1,500 babies in the UK dies unexpectedly for an unknown reason (unknown prior to post-death investigation). To give some sense of how rare that is, a casual Google reveals that the chances of a baby born in the US being a hermaphrodite are 1 in 1,500. The chances of a meteorite impact creating an astroblem the size of the imaginatively-named 'Meteor Crater'* in Arizona during 2006?
Yup: 1 in 1,500. It is rare.
With that said, it does happen. Some doctors actually believe that the breathing monitors can create a false sense of security when they are in use and much doubt has been cast on their effectiveness (largely due to the fact that they don't measure airflow, so only go off once breathing has stopped). Certainly cot deaths still occur, so what's the answer?
I don't pretend to know but even before knowing any of this stuff, I think it's fair to say that both K___ and I were anticipating that we would probably not get a lot of sleep and that we would be checking the baby regularly. There's some good sense advice that you can follow - BUPA has some here.
I guess all you can do is be sensible. Keep the baby at the right temperature, away from smokers (sorry smoking friends), don't let it sleep in a bed with a man (i.e. me) who flails about in his sleep, and most of all, don't let it have a quick Scotch just before bed time, no matter how much it grizzles, check the baby regularly and then cross your fingers. Panicking is unlikely to make much difference either way.
* Yes - it is the same one, Marillo-fans.
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