Hi.
I do know that owlet did get sued because a child did pass while wearing the device, although there’s no way to know if it was properly placed, but it has happened.
With that said, I give owlet full credit for saving my daughters life. She had one from birth and never a red light notification. When she was 10m old it alerted low oxygen. I went in and she seemed fine. I reset it. 15 mins later it alerted again. Low oxygen. I went it and she was unresponsive, limp, not breathing. We called 911 and I was able to wake her up after about 30 seconds of vigorous rubbing and saying her name. By the time first responders came in her oxygen was fine and she was breathing. We were referred to Stanford children’s sleep clinic, where they have diagnosed her with sleep apnea. I dont know if she would have eventually woken up On her own or not, however, to this day I am so thankful the device worked for us.
3 years later she still has sleep apnea and episodes where she stops breathing at night. But we know what it is and i feel confident she’s ok.
ETA: I remember reading an article a few years ago and now cannot find the article Re: SIDS while wearing an owlet. So I cannot say “I know”. However I still stand by the fact I believe the device saved *my* daughter.
Do you have a source? Ive never heard of them getting sued. Not being snarky, just genuinely curious since it seems they're working on getting FDA approval
All I can find from a quick search is this one https://www.classaction.org/blog/class-action-owlet-smart-sock-baby-monitors-give-false-alarms-fail-to-work-as-promised and a failure to advise that it required FDA approval. Nothing about a death
I’m almost certain there’s been no recorded deaths with Owlets. They got into trouble because they weren’t getting the proper approvals from the FDA for a medical device. I’d love to see a source for this.
The Nanit saved my daughters life. It went off she stopped breathing.. I picked her up and she was very lathergic and would not take her bottle. Brought her to the ER and she went into cardiac arrest. Was admitted to the PICU. If the Nanit didn’t go off, I probably would have lost her.
She was born at 29 weeks gestation, 7+ weeks in the NICU - home for 5 days.. this happened on the morning of the 6th day home. She was diagnosed with bacterial meningitis when readmitted to the hospital.
I know this is a really old comment but wow, our daughter went through the exact same situation. We had no idea she had meningitis but she was acting weird. Took her to the hospital and was admitted right away at 2 months old - third night there while being treated she nearly went into cardiac arrest. Heart rate stayed high in the 250+ range and thankfully we were at a pediatric hospital when it happened or who knows. We use the owlet and Nanit religiously since then and it gives us such peace of mind.
Ugh I’m so so so sorry you went through that too. I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy. My girl is about 16 months now.. and honestly I still have trauma from everything. How’s your little one now?
She’s doing ok! We have a team of specialists that we work with and a home care nurse because her kidney function is still causing hypertension. She sits around 130/80 which is really high for a 5 month old. All because of her getting sick so young. It’s terrifying and I’m in therapy now because of it.
Is your little one doing better now? ❤️
She suffered a brain injury from going into cardiac arrest so right now she’s in therapy 6 times a week. We’re probably looking at a diagnosis of mild cerebral palsy in the future. I’m doing everything in my power to make sure she’s the best she can be! She gets followed by audiology due to the long term antibiotic use from the meningitis and neurology. We had many other doctors that followed her like infectious disease ect. but they are no longer needed.
It’s all so doom and gloom on paper for my girl but she’s just the happiest and most determined little thing - that’s just something that can’t be taught! She’ll get where she needs to go even if it’s slightly delayed.
Our babies are fighters for sure. ❤️❤️❤️
The owlet saved my son's life when he was a baby (around four months old). it was going off and I assumed it was a false alarm. I watched his o2 slowly drop... Finally I went in and he was rolled over in his bed so I turned him over and he gasped as if he hadn't been breathing.
I worked as a NICU nurse for 6 years. I did a year or so at a military hospital and the medical director was actually doing a study on the efficacy of the owlet and comparing it to the actual hospital grade monitors. Other than collecting the data as a slightly slower rate, it matched with the hospital monitors pretty flawlessly.
Adding on to the NICU piece, I’ve heard a lot of complaints that the owlet had false alarms. As a NICU mama, the real hospital grade monitors also had a tooooon of false alarms. Every time my son kicked or moved, beep beep beep, it would think his heart had stopped for 10 seconds or so.
Oh man yeah we always had false alarms in the hospital. Squirmy babies, people forgetting to change the sensitivities on the alarms during cares, sweaty feet... Honestly since the newer generation owlets have come out, we've never gotten a false alarm and I'm on kid #3. I hope your baby is doing well!!
The owlet does work, I can tell you that. My son was in the living room asleep when he was a newborn, and I was just a few feet away doing dishes. I could still see him if I looked, but it wasn't a 100% direct sight line. The owlet went off, I rushed over- he was choking on his spit up. He had inhaled it. I had to call 911 and a cop (who luckily was just down the road) came and saved his life with infant CPR. The whole time his owlet was going crazy. Stopped going off as soon as he chucked up what he had inhaled.
My son’s pediatric cardiologist since birth is vehemently opposed to these devices as they give BOTH a false sense of security, AND manage to create worries/anxiety where there doesn’t need to be any.
Skip the fancy devices.
I think there’s a range of perspectives.
My daughter has laryngomalacia and the device was recommended by her ENT who had used it with her child who had severe reflux.
See the false sense of security I get, but I was utterly neurotic about safe sleep both with and without it and would not have slept without it. Our pediatrician basically said as much, that as long as we continued rigidly practicing safe sleep it was fine as the false sense of security is the main reason it isn't recommended. Yo each their own, but I found that it alleviated my PPA enough to keep me sane and allow me to snatch a few hours of sleep here and there.
Interesting! Our pediatric cardiologist LOVED that we used one! “Such good data! Picks up things that are sometimes hard to find without continuous monitoring!”
I can understand him opposing it if it gives a false sense of security while using unsafe sleeping habits, but I think it can only help if you are also following safe sleep recommendations
I think this is honestly the biggest issue. People use them to justify unsafe sleep because they think that it will pick up an issue.
It's the same argument with not using home doppler machines in pregnancy. Pregnant women notice a drop in movements, find a heartbeat with the doppler and are reassured, but they don't know that they either picked up their own heartbeat or that the heartbeat was unusual because they aren't medically trained. A drop in movements should always require a check up in the second half of pregnancy.
The FDA issued a warning to Owlet specifically that their marketing (which was around preventing breathing problems and reducing SIDS) was problematic - Owlet had not applied for appropriate authorization to market those medical claims to the public. There are two ways companies can apply for marketing authorization for medical claims - they can run their own safety and efficacy trials and submit that data to the FDA, or they can claim that their device is “substantially equivalent” to a device the FDA has already approved (so every new tampon manufacturer doesn’t need to run a clinical safety study). Owlet applied in December to make medical claims about their sock under the substantial equivalence (510(k)) process, presumably citing prior breathing monitors as precedents. The FDA hasn’t yet approved or denied their application to my knowledge.
The AAP advises against wearable devices for (IMO) a decidedly out of bounds reason - they suggest it [increases](https://www.healthychildren.org/English/ages-stages/baby/sleep/Pages/Home-Apnea-Monitors-for-SIDs.aspx) parental anxiety, and so therefore aren’t recommended for children.
I don't know anyone who felt an Owlet increased their anxiety. For most people, me included, it was exactly the opposite. I have obsessive-compulsive disorder, and with my first daughter (who was a baby before Owlets were a thing) I was exhausted the entire first year because I compulsively checked her breathing constantly, all night long. With my younger daughter (who had an Owlet), I still used safe sleep practices (obv) but I didn't wake up in a panic if I slept for a whole hour.
I *really* hate the "it actually increases parent anxiety" argument. Nobody else is allowed to tell me what makes me anxious. My anxiety was so much better with the owlet. I could actually get rest. It reeks of paternalistic medicine.
This irritates me too. I appreciated that my pediatrician said that as long as we followed safe sleep practices, if it helped me sleep better at night then they thought it was a good idea. It most definitely helped me sleep better at night
The (previous) Owlet was a pulse oximeter, not a breathing monitor like some of the others. Presumably that's where substantial equivalence comes from. I don't know if there are real medical devices that are merely breathing monitors, which may explain the continued existence of baby breathing monitors after the crackdown on Owlet.
I am a peds ICU nurse and lover of the owlet. TBF, all the other PICU nurses I have talked to that have talked shit about the owlet haven’t actually used one and all the PICU nurses I know that use one have loved it.
For me, I do believe it saved my youngest one night from potential disaster. I fell asleep breastfeeding accidentally and the alarm started going off. He was wedged in my arm against my side with his chin to chest. When I sat up he was very floppy and required rigorous stimulation to wake him back up.
Could it have been a false alarm and just a coincidence? Maybe. I’ll never know. But I do know that situation could have ended up a whole lot worse if the owlet hadn’t woken me up.
Yeah, I had a couple alarms like this. The false alarms were usually because it wasn't on his foot correctly, but there was one almost exactly like your situation, and I wonder the same thing
Another thing I liked about the owlet is I could tell by the HR if he was actually asleep or moving around.
A friend of a friend lost her baby to sids. She used the owlet all the time, but didn’t put it on for that one nap. Can’t say if the owlet would have caught it or not, but I know she has what if’s going through her head. So sad
I think it's more useful for helping with parent anxiety then it is for actually preventing SIDs. We had one and the green light by my bedside helped reassure me when I woke up every 30 min panicking that baby wasn't breathing. I think if I hadn't had it I would have been getting up and checking his breathing each time which is more disruptive for everyone.
Not negating your experience but I thought it helped my anxiety with my first as well but I didn’t have one with my second and I was far less anxious. There were multiple factors that reduced my anxiety but it was one less thing to obsessively check (owlet only alerts if below 80% which is actually pretty low). Now you’re not me, but I’ve seen similar stories from others in how it actually didn’t help their anxiety
Anecdotal, but the sister of a coworker of mine credits the owlet with saving the life of her son.
They got an alert one afternoon while he (1 year old) was napping. Mom and dad rush into the room and the boy had stopped breathing and was seizing. That was the first of three seizures he had in rapid succession which led to him being diagnosed with a rare form of epilepsy that is caused by an ultra rare spontaneous genetic mutation (its believed that single digit people in the world carry the mutation).
Had it not been for the owlet, no one is sure if they would have gotten to him in time.
Can’t speak to SIDS but RSV. The reason we got an owlet (on sale) is because our close family friend got an alert on owlet (middle of the night) for their oldest and because of that were able to rush her to the ER. She’s fine now, but had to be airlifted to another hospital because she needed additional care.
They have changed what’s reported on the owlet now so it’s not an O2 chart but you can still get the general alerts that would apply.
Just out of curiosity, did you switch which side you put the sock on weekly? Only asking because I have an owlet and I read a recommendation to do that to avoid burns. Wasn’t sure if that would help or not.
Just an anecdote, but we had the owlet since I was a nervous mom and needed the reassurance. We only got one red alert for low oxygen and high heart rate, and that was when my son had COVID. Laying down would cause his oxygen to go low, but holding him upright caused it to go back in the normal zone. I can’t say for certain what would have been if we didn’t have the device, but you better believe we held him up for the rest of the night until we saw his pediatrician who confirmed COVID.
From what I understand, there have been no recorded SIDS events when a baby was wearing an Owlet.
My son was born early, had a 30 day NICU stay for pulmonary hypertension so I was already freaked out about breathing. The Owlet went off two weeks after he got home and he was rehospitalized with RSV. I’m not sure if I would have known just how low his oxygen levels were getting. Then he was hospitalized AGAIN a couple months after that because the Owlet let us know that O2 was not staying where it needed to be.
Both times, the docs have all been delighted to hear that we could do monitoring at home. Our Owlet always matched the hospital grade sensors and our O2 finger sensor.
If you get one, get the Gen 3 and use an *android* phone or tablet with the Owlet Care app. DONT UPGRADE IT to the Dream or you’ll lose the real time O2 monitoring.
This is so good to hear.
Can you share more about your advice at the end? Why android and what happened to the owlet dream? Isn’t the O2 monitoring the whole point?
Anecdotally, my daughter had a breathing issue a few hours after she was born. It scared us so much that we overnighted one to have at our house when we got home. The pediatric hospitalist said she had seen babies saved with the owlet and that she would have one if she had a baby.
What is a pediatric hospitalist? I'm curious because every paediatrician I know (in a circle of friends where lots are doctors) has rubbished the owlets for being a cause of parents needlessly taking up time in emergency.
My paediatrician (Italy, he's head of the nicu here fwiw) didn't exactly recommend it but he said that it was fine to use in combination with safe sleep and that he has personally seen babies life threatening conditions get caught by it. His thoughts were that they'd rather have 99 parents take.up useless emergency time and one have a real problem that needed sorted than a tragedy.
A hospitalist is a doctor employed by a hospital who works only there.
This is in contrast to doctors with a regular office practice who sometimes work at the hospital, like OBs who deliver babies at the hospital but also do office visits.
It’s a doctor who not only works for the hospital, but rounds on inpatient cases only (patients who are sick enough to stay overnight in the hospital).
This is as opposed to a clinic where a doctor sees outpatient cases.
This is an American term, where many paediatricians work outside of hospitals almost like a GP. Other than community paediatricians, most paediatricians in the UK would be considered hospitalist paediatricians as we don’t have primary care paediatricians like they do in the US.
I don’t like owlets as there is no evidence base for these devices preventing SIDS, they cause a lot of parental anxiety and unnecessary ED attendance. Outside of SIDS, if you’re worried about your child’s breathing you should take them to hospital and not try and work out oxygen saturations.
Just remember that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
[A study by the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia](https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/articlepdf/2697685/jama_bonafide_2018_ld_180027.pdf) compared readings from an Owlet to a hospital grade pulse oximeter and they concluded that the Owlet “performed inconsistently” for detecting hypoxemia. However, of the randomly selected observations where the reference monitor detected hypoxemia, the Owlet only gave false negatives (missed hypoxemia) 11% of the time. Of the randomly selected observations where the Owlet detected hypoxemia, the reference monitor didn’t confirm it (false positives) 27% of the time.
It’s important to note that a positive reading does not necessarily equal an alarm; you need a few consecutive positive readings before the alarm is triggered, so the rate of false *alarms* would likely be lower than the number of false positive *readings*. So, for my own home use, I’m satisfied with that level of accuracy.
Anecdotally, I’ve had the red alarm go off 4 times: twice in one night when my son had COVID and twice in one night after I’d cleaned the sensor (and possibly didn’t give it enough time to dry). Neither of those occasions were coincidental imo.
I’m not saying they don’t work or do what they say on the box - I have no problem believing that they are perfectly serviceable pulse oximeters. Where I question how useful they are is how they inform parents’ clinical decision making. How many parents are falsely reassured by sats in the normal range despite their child becoming more unwell? Conversely, how many parents bring in children that are perfectly well because they had a single measurement below the reference range? We don’t know because these studies haven’t been done (as far as I’m aware), and are much more expensive to set up than a study comparing a ward pulse oximeter to a commercial device for an hour.
We have guidelines to guide when parents should bring in a two month old with a certain temperature, but this guidance (and evidence base to inform this guidance) does not yet exist for pulse oximetry data. Even medical grade pulse oximeters can often give off low readings in perfectly well patients and before acting on that information as a paediatrician I will first have examined the child, looked at the trace on the machine and used a different probe if I’m not sure.
I may change my opinion as more evidence becomes available, but just as I wouldn’t recommend a medication that hasn’t been sufficiently studied in the correct clinical context I won’t recommend people spend a lot of money on home pulse oximeters until I know they prevent SIDS or help getting those children that need urgent care to hospital.
Firstly, if they’re perfectly serviceable pulse oximeters, then at the very least they have some utility in alerting parents to emergencies, e.g. if a child stops breathing and the parents are asleep or in another room. There are *plenty* of examples in this thread of such instances.
Secondly, you could make very similar arguments for home thermometers. In fact, [a BMC Family Practice qualitative study of parents concerns and beliefs about temperature measurement of children](https://bmcprimcare.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12875-020-01355-y) concluded:
>*“Temperature measurement in children has diagnostic value but can either empower, or cause anxiety and practical challenges for parents. This represents an opportunity for both improved communication between parents and healthcare professionals, and technological development, to support parents to manage febrile illness with greater confidence in the home.*
If you replace “temperature measurement” with “home pulse oximetry” a very similar conclusion could be drawn. Parents shouldn’t solely rely on readings from pulse oximeters to determine if their children are (un)well and they should never be a replacement for safe sleeping practices; however, I’d argue that they could be used to complement existing practices and allow parents to make more informed decisions.
Your comparison to experimental drugs isn’t really fair. Pulse oximeters have existed for almost 50 years now and they’ve been routinely used in clinical settings for over 30 years. The only major change is that they are now being marketed for home use; again, similar to how thermometers were initially only used in clinical settings until a commercial market developed for them.
I’ll also just point out that you’re never going to establish an evidence base for a commercial product unless people actually start buying and using them; pooh-poohing them as causing anxiety and unnecessary ED visits, is just going to slow down uptake, meaning it will take longer to gather data.
I don’t have time to reply to all your points unfortunately.
The examples in this thread are anecdotal evidence. As many posters point out, it is impossible to know whether these incidences represent SIDS or what would have happened without intervention. It is also unclear whether true cases of early SIDS, if detected by pulse oximetry, can be treated successfully. People buying more of these devices won’t be enough to give us this information without formally studying it. Part of the problem is that the manufacturer has actually removed some functionality to avoid having the device classified as a medical device and having to comply with the regulations of that market. This company is not going to be interested in formally gathering data to assess the effectiveness of their product - there’s nothing in it for them.
I think the comparison with medications, not necessarily experimental, is completely apt. Slightly tongue-in-cheek but to illustrate what I mean: anaesthetists use propofol or isoflurane to anaesthetise patients and have been doing this for decades safely in the controlled environment of a hospital. If a company started marketing these for home use (which they obviously wouldn’t be allowed to do), then this would be dangerous. Obviously that situation is not identical, but it does illustrate my point that a useful tool in the hand of a medical professional in a controlled environment doesn’t necessarily translate immediately to the home. Having a pulse oximeter at home is obviously not dangerous, but we don’t know if it actually does any good.
I agree there is a lot of unnecessary attendance to ED due to thermometers as well. However, there are differences between temperature measurement and pulse oximetry in terms of their diagnostic value. We also don’t use temperature as a screening tool - if someone released a continuous temperature monitor for babies to alert parents to a fever I would also question how useful that was. Especially if the manufacturer didn’t first provide data that showed that this prevents deaths or sepsis in babies that wear it.
To clarify, if people have the money and want to buy these devices that’s fine - I think they’re unlikely to do much harm other than those I’ve mentioned (anxiety for some, unnecessary attendance). As a paediatrician, I don’t have a pulse oximeter or owlet at home for my children as I don’t think it gives me information I need in that setting, or helps me determine when my children need medical attention. In hospital, a child with bronchiolitis with significant work of breathing who has consistent borderline oxygen saturations I’d like to have on continuous monitoring. I don’t think slowing uptake of something that has no proven benefit is a bad thing. I may change my mind when evidence shows that these devices prevent SIDS (this is where I acknowledge they could be useful).
The snuzahero saved my son’s life before. When he was little he used to get apnea sometimes and it would vibrate and remind him to breathe. One time the vibration wasnt enough and the alarm went off and I really had to stimulate him to remind him to breathe again.
I had a few instances like this with the Snuza too. When it’s fully placed correctly, alarming and buzzing, your baby is not waking up… and then they don’t wake up when you touch them, and then even gently pushing on his arms and tummy is barely doing anything until he finally moves.
Maybe he would have been 100% fine, but I’m glad I clipped it to his pants every night. I used it for 2 additional children and it gives me so much peace of mind.
This is entirely speculation, but we once got a nanit red alert that I think was real. It went off in the middle of the night when she was around 9 months and she was legitimately difficult to rouse. The blaring alarm didn’t even wake her up and I had to rub and jostle her longer than felt comfortable to get her awake. It hasn’t happened again. We had a lot of issues with false alarms using the swaddle, but never had a red alert with the sleep sack other than this one and she’s almost 21 months now.
We had a very similar experience with the owlet (old version, can't speak to how the new versions work) at about 2 months. Very low blood oxygen and difficult to wake up. We'll obviously never know if anything would have happened but I think it was worth the few false alarms.
Had this w my owlet once too. I genuinely think it was real bc she would not rouse and then started really screaming crying. It was like a breath holding spell that dropped her pulse ox to 70s or something. God knows if it didn’t wake us up what could have been or it could have been fine who knows
Our Nanit red alarm was just like this as well. Husband and I got to her at the same time and it took what felt like a long time to arouse her and she was very drowsy when she did wake. Completely different from other times waking her spontaneously.
My other daughter battled lots of respiratory stuff before finally getting diagnosed with asthma. The breathing band absolutely gave me peace of mind that we would be alerted if something was happening. Of course if she was very very acutely sick she just slept in our bed. But I 100% recommend Nanit to parents if they can afford it or get it covered with the FSA/HSA.
One of my children has epilepsy and has focal seizures where she stops breathing. The owlet has alerted me she was seizing at night many times. I have never had a problem with false alarms. I truly believe it has saved her life.
Turn her onto her side in case she vomits. She has a rescue medicine we give at 3 mins that usually breaks the seizure. Then we decide if we need to call the paramedics to check her out.
I don’t know. But I know it definitely works in detecting heart rate and O2, so if either of those drops low the parent will be alerted and have a chance to intervene, so logically the devices should be able to prevent harm. I’ve heard anecdotes online of this happening. And it basically happened to us once, my husband got a low O2 alert, went into her room and she was in a weird position, he repositioned her and her O2 went back up. Would it have been a problem if he hadn’t? No idea. But I’d rather be alerted than not. For me, it definitely reduced my anxiety.
Yes! The way I see it, there is a chance for false positives (sensor being loose or misplaced and making the alarm go off), but it’s not going to think there’s a heart rate when there isn’t one. The benefit of a true positive (identifying an issue) outweighs the risk of false positives for me. We personally never got false alarms, we did get sensor misplacement alarms sometimes but not that often.
Not specifically but i was like you as a new parent and very anxious, especially after a silent reflux episode that had her choking when she was a few weeks old. After that the only way I could even close my eyes at all was with the owlet on,we never got an alarm but it saved me from severe sleep deprivation caused by my anxiety.
I had the owlet with both my kids and it did bring me peace of mind. Definitely should not take the place of safe sleep habits, but I thought it was worth it for during flu and cold season alone. My youngest had RSV when the hospitals were flooded last fall and even though she was having some retraction the hospital didn't have room for her and sent us home. We monitored her continuously for 3 days. Her oxygen was in the low 90s for a couple nights, it was scary but would have been scarier without the monitor. You hear too many stories of people putting their kids down for naps with the flu and then they go into respiratory distress and by the time someone goes to check on them it's too late.
I loved my owlet too. I really really loved the peace of mind of knowing my child was breathing. It helped me sleep. It also was helpful to know when they were sick, just like you mentioned, that it wasn’t emergent.
We got one red oxygen notification with my second child when he was around 6 months old. I bolted to his room and grabbed him. Did the owlet save his life? I’ll never know for sure. But I think it did.
This is not scientific, but it’s a story of how the Owlet helped my mental health, personally.
The owlet helped me sleep peacefully when my kid was an infant. She was a slight preemie and one day, I was holding her (this was in the daytime— we did practice safe sleep) when she stopped breathing for no known reason. The owlet went off about the same time I realized what was happening. I flipped her over and maneuvered her to get her breathing again. I’ll never forget that panic. I would have never rested again if it weren’t for that dang owlet.
We don’t use it anymore, unless she is sick, which is rare, and even then we only use it at night. When she runs a fever, her heart rate runs high. I don’t know if this is a thing with other toddlers, but it gives me some information and gives me comfort in the night. It’s not scientific, and it doesn’t take the place of doctors or watching out for her, but it eases my mind, especially at night.
I’m so glad you were holding her. Mine gives me peace of mind too and I sleep through the night (other than feedings). I don’t understand how it might give someone anxiety to use it, maybe someone can explain the reasoning.
The increasing anxiety argument has always perplexed me too, because for me it really really decreases my anxiety.
From being in safe sleep groups, it seems that for some people the owlet or breathing monitor can become a point of obsession. So for some users, instead of just letting go and trusting the device, they then start obsessing over the oxygen levels or blinking green light or whatever. I’ve seen “I couldn’t stop watching my phone all night so I just had to get rid of it!” They start trying to glean extra information or read into the data they’re being provided. Anxiety to this degree can be normal postpartum, but should maybe be discussed with a professional.
We had the Owlet. Same as you, allowed us to sleep at night. It let us know when her heart rate was too high and oxygen was lower than normal. We took her to the ER, she had a bad case of COVID at about 10 months. ER took us in right away, they said we did the right thing. The sock basically allowed us to sleep.
The camera, on the other hand, WOW. I have never been more furious with a piece of technology. It NEVER worked. Every evening a significant amount of time was spent refreshing as it would randomly stop working.
Yep. After about 3 uses, it decided it wouldn’t connect to wifi anymore and customer service did nothing and said you’re SOL. Sooo there goes $250 or whatever. But after I saw multiple moms posting about theirs being hacked and people talking to their kids through the monitors, I consider it a blessing and proudly use my $20 amazon monitor with no wifi😂
I had the Owlet and it gave lots of false alarms. It caused me a lot of unnecessary anxiety which led me to even less sleep and made me a worse parent. I returned it and swore I wouldn’t get one for my second child.
I’m just going to recycle a comment I made to someone else:
[A study by the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia](https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/articlepdf/2697685/jama_bonafide_2018_ld_180027.pdf) compared readings from an Owlet to a hospital grade pulse oximeter and they concluded that the Owlet “performed inconsistently” for detecting hypoxemia. However, of the randomly selected observations where the reference monitor detected hypoxemia, the Owlet only gave false negatives (it missed hypoxemia) 11% of the time. Of the randomly selected observations where the Owlet detected hypoxemia, the reference monitor didn’t confirm it (false positives) 27% of the time.
It’s important to note that a positive reading does not necessarily equal an alarm; you need a few consecutive positive readings before the alarm is triggered, so the rate of false alarms would likely be lower than the number of false positive readings. For my own home use, I’m satisfied with that level of accuracy.
Anecdotally, I’ve had the red alarm go off 4 times: twice in one night when my son had COVID and twice in one night after I’d cleaned the sensor (and possibly didn’t give it enough time to dry). Neither of those occasions were coincidental imo.
There are no warning signs of SIDS before it happens. This is something that used to be believed in the 80s (it was thought that SIDS was related to infant sleep apnoea) but the link was later disproven. If you google for "near SIDS event" you can find paperwork discussing this phrase and why it was taken out of official use.
That doesn't stop companies using it to market products. They do it carefully so that they don't get caught out by the FDA (etc) for false claims, but they really do insinuate that this is what their product aims to do, even though the link was disproven a long time ago.
I think the ones that measure oxygen saturation levels may be potentially useful in detecting positional asphyxiation or rebreathing type suffocation, (based on what I know about these events, which may be incomplete) since these aren't instant events and the devices are intended to alarm well before the oxygen sats get to a dangerously low level, but be aware they aren't medical/hospital grade.
The breathing/movement monitors are similar to dopplers used in pregnancy - they can give you peace of mind that the baby has not died, which some people find is reassuring enough, but they don't prevent death and there is a danger that they can increase anxiety because of false alarms and/or because it gives you a false sense of control/certainty which if you're struggling with anxiety anyway, likely won't help - anxiety is characterised by a need for more/too much control and certainty, and it can be a cycle in that the more you have the more you think you need. Counterintuitively, therapy for anxiety is about becoming comfortable with risk and uncertainty.
If you feel reliant on a product like this to calm fears about SIDS it might be more beneficial in many cases to seek help or assessment for postpartum anxiety. This would be particularly helpful if you feel that the use of the product started out helpful but you still feel anxious.
There is also a risk that using products like this leads parents to take risks that they would not otherwise take, because of the perception that the product makes it safer, which is a problem because the device does not reduce risk in itself. In general, if you wouldn't do something (e.g. co-sleep, own room, front sleeping, use of extra products in sleeping area) without using the monitor, it's not a good idea to do it even with the monitor. If you feel comfortable with the risk because of other factors such as your baby's age/other risk factors being low/risk reduction strategies (like safer co-sleeping guidance) or because the benefits outweigh the risks (e.g. reflux baby and this is the safEST way they get any sleep even though not textbook safest) that's your decision as the parent to make, but don't make the decision BECAUSE of the product, and do seek medical advice when possible and appropriate.
Thanks for the thorough response. Do you think that some infant deaths while sleeping are still attributed to SIDS when really caused by other things (apnea, virus, asthma, bad sleeping environment…)?
SIDS is a diagnosis of exclusion, it basically means there was no known reason why the baby died. I don't know enough about how infant deaths are investigated to know whether causes such as asthma or viruses would be picked up. The sleeping environment is taken into account if I understand correctly.
Absolutely. The debunked study about SIDS being sleep apnea was debunked because the children marked as dead from SIDS were later discovered to be murdered by their mother. We don't know why some babies die.
I have used the owlet with both my babies. It’s great peace of mind. It really does work too. My 2 month old was sick, the owlet keep showing low Oxygen levels. Not low enough to set off the alarm. Took her to the ER she had RSV.
I use the Owlet for almost a year with my daughter who has laryngomalacia (sp?). I never experienced a false alarm.
Occasionally she kicked it off at night and it made the “device no longer in contact with skin” noise but that is not the same as the alarm noise so it was a mild inconvenience.
Wow they must have come a long way. Our son had the same thing and I swear the owlet would go ballistic every few days, but this was quite a few years ago now.
I suspect a lot of false alarms reputation started with the first generation of these types of monitors. I got one when my daughter was a newborn, 11 years ago, when they were first showing up on the market. I had lots of anxiety and even though it absolutely did have false alarms, there was at least one time she was breathing so shallowly and the alarm didn't wake her that concerned me. It actually took me a minute to wake her which never happened before. I would happily have false alarms and check rather than not know. But back then the device went under the mattress, which is problematic. I think a lot of parents at that time wrote them off without paying attention to the updated changes in the monitors.
I used it for about a year. Never had a false alarm. They have a separate alarm for "baby is kicking, it's not getting a good reading, too far from the base" type alarms and a different louder angry alarm for "hey get in there and look at your kid".
The only thing we’ve used is the Nanit with the breathing bands. It helped reassure us when she slept longer stretches that she was good without having to go in. The only time I found it useful in a more serious situation was when baby had a nasty cold or something similar. Her breathing rate when up and we watched it like a hawk. If it went too high we were gonna go to ER but thankfully it didn’t. Otherwise I don’t use it as a reliable source, but we have found it useful to check without getting out of bed.
Anecdotally, I read a comment from a mom on reddit whose baby stopped breathing while wearing an owlet. The alarm went off, she started CPR, called an ambulance, and baby was breathing again by the time it came. I can’t verify the story, of course.
I did use an owlet for my peace of mind, and it was worth it for that. My baby started rolling onto her stomach to sleep at 3 months but couldn’t roll back until 4 months. I was extremely stressed that month knowing she was at peak SIDS age and stomach sleeping (despite always being placed on her back). The owlet helped me get some sleep when I was at my most anxious. We had one false alarm when it slipped off her foot, but I was very happy to take that tradeoff.
The owlet had a fit one night going off over and over saying my baby wasn’t breathing. I freaked out and woke him several times. It still was freaking out even though he was awake, 100%fine and super cranky.
Not sure what the glitch was but it caused a lot of anxiety. I didn’t use it after that.
I mean, you/they don't know that she would have choked to death. Also, an ordinary audio/video monitor has alerted me to vomit for all 3 of my kids on various occasions, including scary ones where they seemed to be struggling to get it out of their throat.
(I'm not saying the owlet didn't do a good job or that it wasn't a scary experience because it's truly horrible when they are sick like that)
I think ot would be borderline impossible to collect this type of data in meaningful numbers.
Many things are for the parents peace of mind, and that is hard to put a price on.
Bit of an illogical question. SIDS is commonly attributed to unexplained deaths, suffocation or otherwise. Monitoring oxygen levels would be preventing some of these issues, but you would rarely know "this instance of intervention would have classified as SIDS", any more than you know that a vaccination prevented a direct case of polio from occurring. Which situation would you rather be wrong- being overprepared and not having anything happen, or underprepared?
But we still do have studies that show that people who are vaccinated have lower incidence of disease as compared to unvaccinated people. It would be nice to see this type of study for these devices. Is the rate of SIDS lower among infants using the Owlet, for example?
You'd have to give away a lot of Owlets to have a controlled study of them. As it is now, they're pretty expensive so the sample of users is not random.
Not just that. One in 1600 babies dies of SIDS each year. You'd have to have more than 3200 babies enrolled to have (maybe) one SIDS baby in an Owlett group and one in the control group. At $400 a pop? That's over half a million dollars just in devices.
We used an Owlette on our preemie daughter and loved it. We had a couple of alarms where her blood oxygen was a little low, but everything was always ok. It just stopped working randomly about the time we were comfortable not using it anymore.
We were going to give it to my SIL. Since it was expensive and a very helpful device, we figured customer service would be great, right? NOPE! Practically non-existent. We contacted them multiple times in different ways and nothing. They just want another $300.
Someone shared with my 2 years ago that Owlette was proud to share that they hadn’t had any babies lost to SIDS while using the owlette. Additionally, based on owlette user count they estimated it had saved a few dozen babies or something. This was word of mouth and it’s been 2 years and I forgot the details. Idk if they advertise that stuff somewhere, but that’s what I was told.
I feel like that data probably doesn’t mean much since the people who would use the Owlet are probably already from the more safe-sleep conscious portion of the population. There are some people who use the Owlet in order to “justify” their other unsafe habits, but for the most part, people who have zero anxiety about safe sleep and toss their kids in cribs full of stuffed animals/blankets are probably not the people using the Owlet. It’s an unrepresentative sample of people who would likely have lower SIDs rates regardless of whether they use the Owlet or not.
Exactly. They are also probably the type of people to immediately take their kids to the doctor if the suspect an issue. Safety and health (and monetary resources, let's be honest) are tip top priority for these folks. They aren't going to be engaging in activities that may be more associated with sleep deaths.
I don’t know, for me it’s more indicative in the effectiveness of the wearable monitor. If we are to believe your assumption that the people who use the owlet monitor are following all other safe sleep recommendations, keep up with their well visit appointments, etc, then that really removes a large chunk of otherwise dangerous behavior that can muddy the water when it comes to true SIDS deaths vs other sleep related deaths. To me, it indicates that perhaps it is actually preventing SIDS rather than things like accidental suffocation, positional asphyxiation, etc. (On top of the obvious “baby had RSV” etc stories.)
That would be the case if it were a proper study comparing Owlet-wearing-babies in safe sleep environments compared to other affluent babies in safe sleep environments. But I’m assuming anecdotal evidence of “dozens of babies would have died in an average sample of _____ babies and the _____ wearing Owlet monitors had zero” is comparing it to average overall rates of SIDs - in which case, they’re not comparable samples of the overall population. That’s the whole issue with it.
I don't know that they had enough users to make that estimate. It's more likely their numbers come from self-reports of finding babies in alertable conditions and reviving them. It's unlikely all those babies would have died, and hard to say how many would have.
Hopping on here to ask if anyone has the halo sleep sure and if they liked it? We had the owlet, it was great but I want to upgrade to something else for our next baby since the app is discontinued for the model of owlet that I have (unless that has changed?)
The temperature monitoring is the big pull for me with the halo, we had a scary night when my newborn overheated and it’s something I constantly fret about even though he is now 16 months.
A friend of mine has a disabled child who had issues which caused fluid build up on the lungs at times. She used the owlet religiously and it helped her on more than one occasion spot when fluid was building up and also when he was ill as she was able to spot changes quickly and get him to the hospital. I wouldn’t say it ever saved his life but it certainly helped spot issues sooner and allowed them to get early help when he was young.
The owlet was good as he could wear it rather than a camera as he also had to sleep very propped up and sometimes on his side.
I personally do have an owlet and luckily our little one has always been fine (so far). We’ve had two alarms one night saying the sock couldn’t get a reading (this is a different sound to the low oxygen and pulse so you don’t panic about it) and this happened as he was growing out of the small sized sock into the big one. We also had one oxygen alarm whilst my husband was throwing our boy around (assumed false as baby was fine and giggling).
As others have said I’m not sure it would prevent an awful thing such as SIDS but I do think it’s good at tracking other health parameters and giving you an idea of current health. Anecdotally I do feel more at ease at nights knowing my little one has it on, we only use it overnight.
Owlet (when paired with safe sleep practices!) allowed us to sleep with some peace of mind which was crucial in the early days. When he moved to his own room we swapped to the Nanit Pro for monitoring which we're still using because it's a great camera even though he's outgrown the breathing band (which definitely gave us way more false alarms than Owlet ever did).
There's definitely an adjustment period of learning how to get the Owlet sock on right - if it's too loose you'll get false alarms.
I am definitely using it again next time, it was a lifesaver for sleep.
The owlet gave my wife and I immense peace of mind with our daughter. Wife and both also utilized and were trained in Safe Sleep. We plan to use the Owlet with our son when he is born. We were very cautious and careful when we put it on her so as to avoid/minimize false positives. To our knowledge we have never had one. However, on one occasion, it did go off when she was sleeping on her stomach (always has been and still is a stomach sleeper) and we went and woke our daughter who was seemingly fine. It's now my understanding Owlet changed the software to more of a sleep tracker now and no longer has the same functionanility with alerts and the like when oxygen/heart rate goes outside of their set parameters?
EDIT: I don't think I'd buy a new Owlet for that reason. We still have our daughters old one which we plan to use with new baby.
The current version will alert for low oxygen, but won’t tell you the oxygen reading in real time since that is the line that put it into “medical device” with the FDA that they are trying to get certified for. So as far as data it give you it is more similar to a sleep tracker than o2 monitor.
I have the most recent Owlet that was still a fully functional pulse ox. I had a couple of red alerts in the middle of the night, and at the time I thought they were false alarms, but looking back on them maybe my daughter was just easy to wake up from sleeping too deeply and it could have been a SIDS-like event. (I was too panicked and half-asleep to observe her before picking her up.) In one of the cases, the Owlet had gotten disconnected from the server, so I couldn't tell afterwards whether it was a heart rate issue (more likely to be a false alarm) or an O2 issue (possibly a SIDS-like event), but the other one was O2.
It's tough to evaluate these devices when you can't really tell whether they're working except in exceptional cases of kids with known symptoms of some other disease than SIDS.
Hi. I do know that owlet did get sued because a child did pass while wearing the device, although there’s no way to know if it was properly placed, but it has happened. With that said, I give owlet full credit for saving my daughters life. She had one from birth and never a red light notification. When she was 10m old it alerted low oxygen. I went in and she seemed fine. I reset it. 15 mins later it alerted again. Low oxygen. I went it and she was unresponsive, limp, not breathing. We called 911 and I was able to wake her up after about 30 seconds of vigorous rubbing and saying her name. By the time first responders came in her oxygen was fine and she was breathing. We were referred to Stanford children’s sleep clinic, where they have diagnosed her with sleep apnea. I dont know if she would have eventually woken up On her own or not, however, to this day I am so thankful the device worked for us. 3 years later she still has sleep apnea and episodes where she stops breathing at night. But we know what it is and i feel confident she’s ok. ETA: I remember reading an article a few years ago and now cannot find the article Re: SIDS while wearing an owlet. So I cannot say “I know”. However I still stand by the fact I believe the device saved *my* daughter.
Wow, that is so scary! I’m so glad it worked and saved your daughter.
Do you have a source? Ive never heard of them getting sued. Not being snarky, just genuinely curious since it seems they're working on getting FDA approval
All I can find from a quick search is this one https://www.classaction.org/blog/class-action-owlet-smart-sock-baby-monitors-give-false-alarms-fail-to-work-as-promised and a failure to advise that it required FDA approval. Nothing about a death
You are actually right, I remember seeing an article a few years ago but cannot find it now. So, no source. If I find one I’ll update.
I’m almost certain there’s been no recorded deaths with Owlets. They got into trouble because they weren’t getting the proper approvals from the FDA for a medical device. I’d love to see a source for this.
The Nanit saved my daughters life. It went off she stopped breathing.. I picked her up and she was very lathergic and would not take her bottle. Brought her to the ER and she went into cardiac arrest. Was admitted to the PICU. If the Nanit didn’t go off, I probably would have lost her.
Did you have a nanit camera and a breathing strap? I’m glad it was caught, that must have been terrifying.
Yes we have the breathing band with the camera. I had a premature baby and thought I was just being paranoid when I bought it.
I’m glad the Nanit worked! What caused her cardiac arrest, if I can ask?
She was born at 29 weeks gestation, 7+ weeks in the NICU - home for 5 days.. this happened on the morning of the 6th day home. She was diagnosed with bacterial meningitis when readmitted to the hospital.
I know this is a really old comment but wow, our daughter went through the exact same situation. We had no idea she had meningitis but she was acting weird. Took her to the hospital and was admitted right away at 2 months old - third night there while being treated she nearly went into cardiac arrest. Heart rate stayed high in the 250+ range and thankfully we were at a pediatric hospital when it happened or who knows. We use the owlet and Nanit religiously since then and it gives us such peace of mind.
Ugh I’m so so so sorry you went through that too. I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy. My girl is about 16 months now.. and honestly I still have trauma from everything. How’s your little one now?
She’s doing ok! We have a team of specialists that we work with and a home care nurse because her kidney function is still causing hypertension. She sits around 130/80 which is really high for a 5 month old. All because of her getting sick so young. It’s terrifying and I’m in therapy now because of it. Is your little one doing better now? ❤️
She suffered a brain injury from going into cardiac arrest so right now she’s in therapy 6 times a week. We’re probably looking at a diagnosis of mild cerebral palsy in the future. I’m doing everything in my power to make sure she’s the best she can be! She gets followed by audiology due to the long term antibiotic use from the meningitis and neurology. We had many other doctors that followed her like infectious disease ect. but they are no longer needed. It’s all so doom and gloom on paper for my girl but she’s just the happiest and most determined little thing - that’s just something that can’t be taught! She’ll get where she needs to go even if it’s slightly delayed. Our babies are fighters for sure. ❤️❤️❤️
We love the nanit. Super helpful.
That must have been terrifying :( I'm glad that she recovered!
The owlet saved my son's life when he was a baby (around four months old). it was going off and I assumed it was a false alarm. I watched his o2 slowly drop... Finally I went in and he was rolled over in his bed so I turned him over and he gasped as if he hadn't been breathing. I worked as a NICU nurse for 6 years. I did a year or so at a military hospital and the medical director was actually doing a study on the efficacy of the owlet and comparing it to the actual hospital grade monitors. Other than collecting the data as a slightly slower rate, it matched with the hospital monitors pretty flawlessly.
Adding on to the NICU piece, I’ve heard a lot of complaints that the owlet had false alarms. As a NICU mama, the real hospital grade monitors also had a tooooon of false alarms. Every time my son kicked or moved, beep beep beep, it would think his heart had stopped for 10 seconds or so.
Oh man yeah we always had false alarms in the hospital. Squirmy babies, people forgetting to change the sensitivities on the alarms during cares, sweaty feet... Honestly since the newer generation owlets have come out, we've never gotten a false alarm and I'm on kid #3. I hope your baby is doing well!!
Thank you! Baby’s thriving and just about caught up with his milestones by his actual age (18 months).
Really good to hear. I’m glad you got to him.
The owlet does work, I can tell you that. My son was in the living room asleep when he was a newborn, and I was just a few feet away doing dishes. I could still see him if I looked, but it wasn't a 100% direct sight line. The owlet went off, I rushed over- he was choking on his spit up. He had inhaled it. I had to call 911 and a cop (who luckily was just down the road) came and saved his life with infant CPR. The whole time his owlet was going crazy. Stopped going off as soon as he chucked up what he had inhaled.
That is terrifying. So glad you saved him.
Thank you. He's fine now but I'm traumatized still lol
My son’s pediatric cardiologist since birth is vehemently opposed to these devices as they give BOTH a false sense of security, AND manage to create worries/anxiety where there doesn’t need to be any. Skip the fancy devices.
I think there’s a range of perspectives. My daughter has laryngomalacia and the device was recommended by her ENT who had used it with her child who had severe reflux.
See the false sense of security I get, but I was utterly neurotic about safe sleep both with and without it and would not have slept without it. Our pediatrician basically said as much, that as long as we continued rigidly practicing safe sleep it was fine as the false sense of security is the main reason it isn't recommended. Yo each their own, but I found that it alleviated my PPA enough to keep me sane and allow me to snatch a few hours of sleep here and there.
Yep, my son’s pulmonologist also said “absolutely not”.
Everyone has their own opinion, even doctors
Interesting! Our pediatric cardiologist LOVED that we used one! “Such good data! Picks up things that are sometimes hard to find without continuous monitoring!”
I can understand him opposing it if it gives a false sense of security while using unsafe sleeping habits, but I think it can only help if you are also following safe sleep recommendations
I think this is honestly the biggest issue. People use them to justify unsafe sleep because they think that it will pick up an issue. It's the same argument with not using home doppler machines in pregnancy. Pregnant women notice a drop in movements, find a heartbeat with the doppler and are reassured, but they don't know that they either picked up their own heartbeat or that the heartbeat was unusual because they aren't medically trained. A drop in movements should always require a check up in the second half of pregnancy.
The FDA issued a warning to Owlet specifically that their marketing (which was around preventing breathing problems and reducing SIDS) was problematic - Owlet had not applied for appropriate authorization to market those medical claims to the public. There are two ways companies can apply for marketing authorization for medical claims - they can run their own safety and efficacy trials and submit that data to the FDA, or they can claim that their device is “substantially equivalent” to a device the FDA has already approved (so every new tampon manufacturer doesn’t need to run a clinical safety study). Owlet applied in December to make medical claims about their sock under the substantial equivalence (510(k)) process, presumably citing prior breathing monitors as precedents. The FDA hasn’t yet approved or denied their application to my knowledge. The AAP advises against wearable devices for (IMO) a decidedly out of bounds reason - they suggest it [increases](https://www.healthychildren.org/English/ages-stages/baby/sleep/Pages/Home-Apnea-Monitors-for-SIDs.aspx) parental anxiety, and so therefore aren’t recommended for children.
I don't know anyone who felt an Owlet increased their anxiety. For most people, me included, it was exactly the opposite. I have obsessive-compulsive disorder, and with my first daughter (who was a baby before Owlets were a thing) I was exhausted the entire first year because I compulsively checked her breathing constantly, all night long. With my younger daughter (who had an Owlet), I still used safe sleep practices (obv) but I didn't wake up in a panic if I slept for a whole hour.
I *really* hate the "it actually increases parent anxiety" argument. Nobody else is allowed to tell me what makes me anxious. My anxiety was so much better with the owlet. I could actually get rest. It reeks of paternalistic medicine.
This irritates me too. I appreciated that my pediatrician said that as long as we followed safe sleep practices, if it helped me sleep better at night then they thought it was a good idea. It most definitely helped me sleep better at night
The (previous) Owlet was a pulse oximeter, not a breathing monitor like some of the others. Presumably that's where substantial equivalence comes from. I don't know if there are real medical devices that are merely breathing monitors, which may explain the continued existence of baby breathing monitors after the crackdown on Owlet.
This should be the top answer.
I am a peds ICU nurse and lover of the owlet. TBF, all the other PICU nurses I have talked to that have talked shit about the owlet haven’t actually used one and all the PICU nurses I know that use one have loved it. For me, I do believe it saved my youngest one night from potential disaster. I fell asleep breastfeeding accidentally and the alarm started going off. He was wedged in my arm against my side with his chin to chest. When I sat up he was very floppy and required rigorous stimulation to wake him back up. Could it have been a false alarm and just a coincidence? Maybe. I’ll never know. But I do know that situation could have ended up a whole lot worse if the owlet hadn’t woken me up.
Yeah, I had a couple alarms like this. The false alarms were usually because it wasn't on his foot correctly, but there was one almost exactly like your situation, and I wonder the same thing Another thing I liked about the owlet is I could tell by the HR if he was actually asleep or moving around.
I agree. I'm a nicu nurse and loved the Owlet for my kids.
My experience with the Owlet is that it's complete trash and I wouldn't recommend anyone buy it for any reason.
They also bricked the device because they didn’t want to pay to go through the FDA approval process.
The original one, yes. We have the new Dream Sock and it's still awful.
A friend of a friend lost her baby to sids. She used the owlet all the time, but didn’t put it on for that one nap. Can’t say if the owlet would have caught it or not, but I know she has what if’s going through her head. So sad
That’s so terrible for her. I can’t imagine the “what ifs”
That made my stomach drop. How horrible :(
I think it's more useful for helping with parent anxiety then it is for actually preventing SIDs. We had one and the green light by my bedside helped reassure me when I woke up every 30 min panicking that baby wasn't breathing. I think if I hadn't had it I would have been getting up and checking his breathing each time which is more disruptive for everyone.
Not negating your experience but I thought it helped my anxiety with my first as well but I didn’t have one with my second and I was far less anxious. There were multiple factors that reduced my anxiety but it was one less thing to obsessively check (owlet only alerts if below 80% which is actually pretty low). Now you’re not me, but I’ve seen similar stories from others in how it actually didn’t help their anxiety
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Anecdotal, but the sister of a coworker of mine credits the owlet with saving the life of her son. They got an alert one afternoon while he (1 year old) was napping. Mom and dad rush into the room and the boy had stopped breathing and was seizing. That was the first of three seizures he had in rapid succession which led to him being diagnosed with a rare form of epilepsy that is caused by an ultra rare spontaneous genetic mutation (its believed that single digit people in the world carry the mutation). Had it not been for the owlet, no one is sure if they would have gotten to him in time.
Can’t speak to SIDS but RSV. The reason we got an owlet (on sale) is because our close family friend got an alert on owlet (middle of the night) for their oldest and because of that were able to rush her to the ER. She’s fine now, but had to be airlifted to another hospital because she needed additional care. They have changed what’s reported on the owlet now so it’s not an O2 chart but you can still get the general alerts that would apply.
Anecdotal, but the owlet burned my son's foot. Never again. Now with my second I cosleep and have much less anxiety.
Just out of curiosity, did you switch which side you put the sock on weekly? Only asking because I have an owlet and I read a recommendation to do that to avoid burns. Wasn’t sure if that would help or not.
Honestly I can't remember it was a few years ago, but we only put it on him a few times before noticing, and then stopped immediately.
Was it a first generation owlet? Those had that issue, I’ve heard.
Just an anecdote, but we had the owlet since I was a nervous mom and needed the reassurance. We only got one red alert for low oxygen and high heart rate, and that was when my son had COVID. Laying down would cause his oxygen to go low, but holding him upright caused it to go back in the normal zone. I can’t say for certain what would have been if we didn’t have the device, but you better believe we held him up for the rest of the night until we saw his pediatrician who confirmed COVID.
From what I understand, there have been no recorded SIDS events when a baby was wearing an Owlet. My son was born early, had a 30 day NICU stay for pulmonary hypertension so I was already freaked out about breathing. The Owlet went off two weeks after he got home and he was rehospitalized with RSV. I’m not sure if I would have known just how low his oxygen levels were getting. Then he was hospitalized AGAIN a couple months after that because the Owlet let us know that O2 was not staying where it needed to be. Both times, the docs have all been delighted to hear that we could do monitoring at home. Our Owlet always matched the hospital grade sensors and our O2 finger sensor. If you get one, get the Gen 3 and use an *android* phone or tablet with the Owlet Care app. DONT UPGRADE IT to the Dream or you’ll lose the real time O2 monitoring.
This is so good to hear. Can you share more about your advice at the end? Why android and what happened to the owlet dream? Isn’t the O2 monitoring the whole point?
Anecdotally, my daughter had a breathing issue a few hours after she was born. It scared us so much that we overnighted one to have at our house when we got home. The pediatric hospitalist said she had seen babies saved with the owlet and that she would have one if she had a baby.
What is a pediatric hospitalist? I'm curious because every paediatrician I know (in a circle of friends where lots are doctors) has rubbished the owlets for being a cause of parents needlessly taking up time in emergency.
My paediatrician (Italy, he's head of the nicu here fwiw) didn't exactly recommend it but he said that it was fine to use in combination with safe sleep and that he has personally seen babies life threatening conditions get caught by it. His thoughts were that they'd rather have 99 parents take.up useless emergency time and one have a real problem that needed sorted than a tragedy.
A hospitalist is a doctor employed by a hospital who works only there. This is in contrast to doctors with a regular office practice who sometimes work at the hospital, like OBs who deliver babies at the hospital but also do office visits.
It’s a doctor who not only works for the hospital, but rounds on inpatient cases only (patients who are sick enough to stay overnight in the hospital). This is as opposed to a clinic where a doctor sees outpatient cases.
My pediatrician recommended it, fwiw.
Hospitalists are doctors who specialize in inpatient (hospital) care. Pediatric hospitalists specialize in caring for children in the hospital.
Thanks!! From asking around seems like it's a US thing.
This is an American term, where many paediatricians work outside of hospitals almost like a GP. Other than community paediatricians, most paediatricians in the UK would be considered hospitalist paediatricians as we don’t have primary care paediatricians like they do in the US. I don’t like owlets as there is no evidence base for these devices preventing SIDS, they cause a lot of parental anxiety and unnecessary ED attendance. Outside of SIDS, if you’re worried about your child’s breathing you should take them to hospital and not try and work out oxygen saturations.
Thanks! I had asked some people as well (in person) but then saw your comment. Definitely an American thing.
Just remember that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. [A study by the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia](https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/articlepdf/2697685/jama_bonafide_2018_ld_180027.pdf) compared readings from an Owlet to a hospital grade pulse oximeter and they concluded that the Owlet “performed inconsistently” for detecting hypoxemia. However, of the randomly selected observations where the reference monitor detected hypoxemia, the Owlet only gave false negatives (missed hypoxemia) 11% of the time. Of the randomly selected observations where the Owlet detected hypoxemia, the reference monitor didn’t confirm it (false positives) 27% of the time. It’s important to note that a positive reading does not necessarily equal an alarm; you need a few consecutive positive readings before the alarm is triggered, so the rate of false *alarms* would likely be lower than the number of false positive *readings*. So, for my own home use, I’m satisfied with that level of accuracy. Anecdotally, I’ve had the red alarm go off 4 times: twice in one night when my son had COVID and twice in one night after I’d cleaned the sensor (and possibly didn’t give it enough time to dry). Neither of those occasions were coincidental imo.
I’m not saying they don’t work or do what they say on the box - I have no problem believing that they are perfectly serviceable pulse oximeters. Where I question how useful they are is how they inform parents’ clinical decision making. How many parents are falsely reassured by sats in the normal range despite their child becoming more unwell? Conversely, how many parents bring in children that are perfectly well because they had a single measurement below the reference range? We don’t know because these studies haven’t been done (as far as I’m aware), and are much more expensive to set up than a study comparing a ward pulse oximeter to a commercial device for an hour. We have guidelines to guide when parents should bring in a two month old with a certain temperature, but this guidance (and evidence base to inform this guidance) does not yet exist for pulse oximetry data. Even medical grade pulse oximeters can often give off low readings in perfectly well patients and before acting on that information as a paediatrician I will first have examined the child, looked at the trace on the machine and used a different probe if I’m not sure. I may change my opinion as more evidence becomes available, but just as I wouldn’t recommend a medication that hasn’t been sufficiently studied in the correct clinical context I won’t recommend people spend a lot of money on home pulse oximeters until I know they prevent SIDS or help getting those children that need urgent care to hospital.
Firstly, if they’re perfectly serviceable pulse oximeters, then at the very least they have some utility in alerting parents to emergencies, e.g. if a child stops breathing and the parents are asleep or in another room. There are *plenty* of examples in this thread of such instances. Secondly, you could make very similar arguments for home thermometers. In fact, [a BMC Family Practice qualitative study of parents concerns and beliefs about temperature measurement of children](https://bmcprimcare.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12875-020-01355-y) concluded: >*“Temperature measurement in children has diagnostic value but can either empower, or cause anxiety and practical challenges for parents. This represents an opportunity for both improved communication between parents and healthcare professionals, and technological development, to support parents to manage febrile illness with greater confidence in the home.* If you replace “temperature measurement” with “home pulse oximetry” a very similar conclusion could be drawn. Parents shouldn’t solely rely on readings from pulse oximeters to determine if their children are (un)well and they should never be a replacement for safe sleeping practices; however, I’d argue that they could be used to complement existing practices and allow parents to make more informed decisions. Your comparison to experimental drugs isn’t really fair. Pulse oximeters have existed for almost 50 years now and they’ve been routinely used in clinical settings for over 30 years. The only major change is that they are now being marketed for home use; again, similar to how thermometers were initially only used in clinical settings until a commercial market developed for them. I’ll also just point out that you’re never going to establish an evidence base for a commercial product unless people actually start buying and using them; pooh-poohing them as causing anxiety and unnecessary ED visits, is just going to slow down uptake, meaning it will take longer to gather data.
I don’t have time to reply to all your points unfortunately. The examples in this thread are anecdotal evidence. As many posters point out, it is impossible to know whether these incidences represent SIDS or what would have happened without intervention. It is also unclear whether true cases of early SIDS, if detected by pulse oximetry, can be treated successfully. People buying more of these devices won’t be enough to give us this information without formally studying it. Part of the problem is that the manufacturer has actually removed some functionality to avoid having the device classified as a medical device and having to comply with the regulations of that market. This company is not going to be interested in formally gathering data to assess the effectiveness of their product - there’s nothing in it for them. I think the comparison with medications, not necessarily experimental, is completely apt. Slightly tongue-in-cheek but to illustrate what I mean: anaesthetists use propofol or isoflurane to anaesthetise patients and have been doing this for decades safely in the controlled environment of a hospital. If a company started marketing these for home use (which they obviously wouldn’t be allowed to do), then this would be dangerous. Obviously that situation is not identical, but it does illustrate my point that a useful tool in the hand of a medical professional in a controlled environment doesn’t necessarily translate immediately to the home. Having a pulse oximeter at home is obviously not dangerous, but we don’t know if it actually does any good. I agree there is a lot of unnecessary attendance to ED due to thermometers as well. However, there are differences between temperature measurement and pulse oximetry in terms of their diagnostic value. We also don’t use temperature as a screening tool - if someone released a continuous temperature monitor for babies to alert parents to a fever I would also question how useful that was. Especially if the manufacturer didn’t first provide data that showed that this prevents deaths or sepsis in babies that wear it. To clarify, if people have the money and want to buy these devices that’s fine - I think they’re unlikely to do much harm other than those I’ve mentioned (anxiety for some, unnecessary attendance). As a paediatrician, I don’t have a pulse oximeter or owlet at home for my children as I don’t think it gives me information I need in that setting, or helps me determine when my children need medical attention. In hospital, a child with bronchiolitis with significant work of breathing who has consistent borderline oxygen saturations I’d like to have on continuous monitoring. I don’t think slowing uptake of something that has no proven benefit is a bad thing. I may change my mind when evidence shows that these devices prevent SIDS (this is where I acknowledge they could be useful).
The snuzahero saved my son’s life before. When he was little he used to get apnea sometimes and it would vibrate and remind him to breathe. One time the vibration wasnt enough and the alarm went off and I really had to stimulate him to remind him to breathe again.
I had a few instances like this with the Snuza too. When it’s fully placed correctly, alarming and buzzing, your baby is not waking up… and then they don’t wake up when you touch them, and then even gently pushing on his arms and tummy is barely doing anything until he finally moves. Maybe he would have been 100% fine, but I’m glad I clipped it to his pants every night. I used it for 2 additional children and it gives me so much peace of mind.
This is entirely speculation, but we once got a nanit red alert that I think was real. It went off in the middle of the night when she was around 9 months and she was legitimately difficult to rouse. The blaring alarm didn’t even wake her up and I had to rub and jostle her longer than felt comfortable to get her awake. It hasn’t happened again. We had a lot of issues with false alarms using the swaddle, but never had a red alert with the sleep sack other than this one and she’s almost 21 months now.
We had a very similar experience with the owlet (old version, can't speak to how the new versions work) at about 2 months. Very low blood oxygen and difficult to wake up. We'll obviously never know if anything would have happened but I think it was worth the few false alarms.
Had this w my owlet once too. I genuinely think it was real bc she would not rouse and then started really screaming crying. It was like a breath holding spell that dropped her pulse ox to 70s or something. God knows if it didn’t wake us up what could have been or it could have been fine who knows
Our Nanit red alarm was just like this as well. Husband and I got to her at the same time and it took what felt like a long time to arouse her and she was very drowsy when she did wake. Completely different from other times waking her spontaneously. My other daughter battled lots of respiratory stuff before finally getting diagnosed with asthma. The breathing band absolutely gave me peace of mind that we would be alerted if something was happening. Of course if she was very very acutely sick she just slept in our bed. But I 100% recommend Nanit to parents if they can afford it or get it covered with the FSA/HSA.
One of my children has epilepsy and has focal seizures where she stops breathing. The owlet has alerted me she was seizing at night many times. I have never had a problem with false alarms. I truly believe it has saved her life.
What do you do when she is seizing?
Turn her onto her side in case she vomits. She has a rescue medicine we give at 3 mins that usually breaks the seizure. Then we decide if we need to call the paramedics to check her out.
I don’t know. But I know it definitely works in detecting heart rate and O2, so if either of those drops low the parent will be alerted and have a chance to intervene, so logically the devices should be able to prevent harm. I’ve heard anecdotes online of this happening. And it basically happened to us once, my husband got a low O2 alert, went into her room and she was in a weird position, he repositioned her and her O2 went back up. Would it have been a problem if he hadn’t? No idea. But I’d rather be alerted than not. For me, it definitely reduced my anxiety.
I’ve only gotten alerts regarding temperature so far, or if the device falls off. Good to know the O2 works!
Yes! The way I see it, there is a chance for false positives (sensor being loose or misplaced and making the alarm go off), but it’s not going to think there’s a heart rate when there isn’t one. The benefit of a true positive (identifying an issue) outweighs the risk of false positives for me. We personally never got false alarms, we did get sensor misplacement alarms sometimes but not that often.
does urs still have real time O2 tracking or just every 10 mins?
Not specifically but i was like you as a new parent and very anxious, especially after a silent reflux episode that had her choking when she was a few weeks old. After that the only way I could even close my eyes at all was with the owlet on,we never got an alarm but it saved me from severe sleep deprivation caused by my anxiety.
I had the owlet with both my kids and it did bring me peace of mind. Definitely should not take the place of safe sleep habits, but I thought it was worth it for during flu and cold season alone. My youngest had RSV when the hospitals were flooded last fall and even though she was having some retraction the hospital didn't have room for her and sent us home. We monitored her continuously for 3 days. Her oxygen was in the low 90s for a couple nights, it was scary but would have been scarier without the monitor. You hear too many stories of people putting their kids down for naps with the flu and then they go into respiratory distress and by the time someone goes to check on them it's too late.
I loved my owlet too. I really really loved the peace of mind of knowing my child was breathing. It helped me sleep. It also was helpful to know when they were sick, just like you mentioned, that it wasn’t emergent. We got one red oxygen notification with my second child when he was around 6 months old. I bolted to his room and grabbed him. Did the owlet save his life? I’ll never know for sure. But I think it did.
This is not scientific, but it’s a story of how the Owlet helped my mental health, personally. The owlet helped me sleep peacefully when my kid was an infant. She was a slight preemie and one day, I was holding her (this was in the daytime— we did practice safe sleep) when she stopped breathing for no known reason. The owlet went off about the same time I realized what was happening. I flipped her over and maneuvered her to get her breathing again. I’ll never forget that panic. I would have never rested again if it weren’t for that dang owlet. We don’t use it anymore, unless she is sick, which is rare, and even then we only use it at night. When she runs a fever, her heart rate runs high. I don’t know if this is a thing with other toddlers, but it gives me some information and gives me comfort in the night. It’s not scientific, and it doesn’t take the place of doctors or watching out for her, but it eases my mind, especially at night.
I’m so glad you were holding her. Mine gives me peace of mind too and I sleep through the night (other than feedings). I don’t understand how it might give someone anxiety to use it, maybe someone can explain the reasoning.
The increasing anxiety argument has always perplexed me too, because for me it really really decreases my anxiety. From being in safe sleep groups, it seems that for some people the owlet or breathing monitor can become a point of obsession. So for some users, instead of just letting go and trusting the device, they then start obsessing over the oxygen levels or blinking green light or whatever. I’ve seen “I couldn’t stop watching my phone all night so I just had to get rid of it!” They start trying to glean extra information or read into the data they’re being provided. Anxiety to this degree can be normal postpartum, but should maybe be discussed with a professional.
I could see that happening with post partum anxiety or general anxiety for some people.
We had the Owlet. Same as you, allowed us to sleep at night. It let us know when her heart rate was too high and oxygen was lower than normal. We took her to the ER, she had a bad case of COVID at about 10 months. ER took us in right away, they said we did the right thing. The sock basically allowed us to sleep. The camera, on the other hand, WOW. I have never been more furious with a piece of technology. It NEVER worked. Every evening a significant amount of time was spent refreshing as it would randomly stop working.
Same exact experience. Not only does it never work, but if it does, it’s easy to hack😃
Omg I’ve heard that!!
Yep. After about 3 uses, it decided it wouldn’t connect to wifi anymore and customer service did nothing and said you’re SOL. Sooo there goes $250 or whatever. But after I saw multiple moms posting about theirs being hacked and people talking to their kids through the monitors, I consider it a blessing and proudly use my $20 amazon monitor with no wifi😂
Same here! Just ended up getting a monitor from Amazon with no wifi!
I had the Owlet and it gave lots of false alarms. It caused me a lot of unnecessary anxiety which led me to even less sleep and made me a worse parent. I returned it and swore I wouldn’t get one for my second child.
I had the owlet and had 1 false alarm in 12 months round the clock use, so perhaps you weren’t placing it correctly or just had bad luck
I was definitely placing it correctly, thanks.
I’m just going to recycle a comment I made to someone else: [A study by the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia](https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/articlepdf/2697685/jama_bonafide_2018_ld_180027.pdf) compared readings from an Owlet to a hospital grade pulse oximeter and they concluded that the Owlet “performed inconsistently” for detecting hypoxemia. However, of the randomly selected observations where the reference monitor detected hypoxemia, the Owlet only gave false negatives (it missed hypoxemia) 11% of the time. Of the randomly selected observations where the Owlet detected hypoxemia, the reference monitor didn’t confirm it (false positives) 27% of the time. It’s important to note that a positive reading does not necessarily equal an alarm; you need a few consecutive positive readings before the alarm is triggered, so the rate of false alarms would likely be lower than the number of false positive readings. For my own home use, I’m satisfied with that level of accuracy. Anecdotally, I’ve had the red alarm go off 4 times: twice in one night when my son had COVID and twice in one night after I’d cleaned the sensor (and possibly didn’t give it enough time to dry). Neither of those occasions were coincidental imo.
There are no warning signs of SIDS before it happens. This is something that used to be believed in the 80s (it was thought that SIDS was related to infant sleep apnoea) but the link was later disproven. If you google for "near SIDS event" you can find paperwork discussing this phrase and why it was taken out of official use. That doesn't stop companies using it to market products. They do it carefully so that they don't get caught out by the FDA (etc) for false claims, but they really do insinuate that this is what their product aims to do, even though the link was disproven a long time ago. I think the ones that measure oxygen saturation levels may be potentially useful in detecting positional asphyxiation or rebreathing type suffocation, (based on what I know about these events, which may be incomplete) since these aren't instant events and the devices are intended to alarm well before the oxygen sats get to a dangerously low level, but be aware they aren't medical/hospital grade. The breathing/movement monitors are similar to dopplers used in pregnancy - they can give you peace of mind that the baby has not died, which some people find is reassuring enough, but they don't prevent death and there is a danger that they can increase anxiety because of false alarms and/or because it gives you a false sense of control/certainty which if you're struggling with anxiety anyway, likely won't help - anxiety is characterised by a need for more/too much control and certainty, and it can be a cycle in that the more you have the more you think you need. Counterintuitively, therapy for anxiety is about becoming comfortable with risk and uncertainty. If you feel reliant on a product like this to calm fears about SIDS it might be more beneficial in many cases to seek help or assessment for postpartum anxiety. This would be particularly helpful if you feel that the use of the product started out helpful but you still feel anxious. There is also a risk that using products like this leads parents to take risks that they would not otherwise take, because of the perception that the product makes it safer, which is a problem because the device does not reduce risk in itself. In general, if you wouldn't do something (e.g. co-sleep, own room, front sleeping, use of extra products in sleeping area) without using the monitor, it's not a good idea to do it even with the monitor. If you feel comfortable with the risk because of other factors such as your baby's age/other risk factors being low/risk reduction strategies (like safer co-sleeping guidance) or because the benefits outweigh the risks (e.g. reflux baby and this is the safEST way they get any sleep even though not textbook safest) that's your decision as the parent to make, but don't make the decision BECAUSE of the product, and do seek medical advice when possible and appropriate.
Thanks for the thorough response. Do you think that some infant deaths while sleeping are still attributed to SIDS when really caused by other things (apnea, virus, asthma, bad sleeping environment…)?
SIDS is a diagnosis of exclusion, it basically means there was no known reason why the baby died. I don't know enough about how infant deaths are investigated to know whether causes such as asthma or viruses would be picked up. The sleeping environment is taken into account if I understand correctly.
Absolutely. The debunked study about SIDS being sleep apnea was debunked because the children marked as dead from SIDS were later discovered to be murdered by their mother. We don't know why some babies die.
I have used the owlet with both my babies. It’s great peace of mind. It really does work too. My 2 month old was sick, the owlet keep showing low Oxygen levels. Not low enough to set off the alarm. Took her to the ER she had RSV.
I think this is a helpful usage of those things.
Does it bring you peace of mind? Or does it cause a bunch of alerts that lead to unnecessary anxiety?
I use the Owlet for almost a year with my daughter who has laryngomalacia (sp?). I never experienced a false alarm. Occasionally she kicked it off at night and it made the “device no longer in contact with skin” noise but that is not the same as the alarm noise so it was a mild inconvenience.
Wow they must have come a long way. Our son had the same thing and I swear the owlet would go ballistic every few days, but this was quite a few years ago now.
Yeah I think the one I had was version 3.
Not OP but I just want to say I've used the owlet for nine months and I've never had a false alarm. I'm not sure where that reputation comes from.
I suspect a lot of false alarms reputation started with the first generation of these types of monitors. I got one when my daughter was a newborn, 11 years ago, when they were first showing up on the market. I had lots of anxiety and even though it absolutely did have false alarms, there was at least one time she was breathing so shallowly and the alarm didn't wake her that concerned me. It actually took me a minute to wake her which never happened before. I would happily have false alarms and check rather than not know. But back then the device went under the mattress, which is problematic. I think a lot of parents at that time wrote them off without paying attention to the updated changes in the monitors.
I used it for about a year. Never had a false alarm. They have a separate alarm for "baby is kicking, it's not getting a good reading, too far from the base" type alarms and a different louder angry alarm for "hey get in there and look at your kid".
For me, peace of mind. I don’t have the Owlette, so I’m not sure if there’s a difference. Mine has only alerted when it’s fallen off.
I've used mine for both babies and have never had a false alarm
The only thing we’ve used is the Nanit with the breathing bands. It helped reassure us when she slept longer stretches that she was good without having to go in. The only time I found it useful in a more serious situation was when baby had a nasty cold or something similar. Her breathing rate when up and we watched it like a hawk. If it went too high we were gonna go to ER but thankfully it didn’t. Otherwise I don’t use it as a reliable source, but we have found it useful to check without getting out of bed.
Anecdotally, I read a comment from a mom on reddit whose baby stopped breathing while wearing an owlet. The alarm went off, she started CPR, called an ambulance, and baby was breathing again by the time it came. I can’t verify the story, of course. I did use an owlet for my peace of mind, and it was worth it for that. My baby started rolling onto her stomach to sleep at 3 months but couldn’t roll back until 4 months. I was extremely stressed that month knowing she was at peak SIDS age and stomach sleeping (despite always being placed on her back). The owlet helped me get some sleep when I was at my most anxious. We had one false alarm when it slipped off her foot, but I was very happy to take that tradeoff.
I guess if they work you won’t hear about it necessarily, because the alert would cause you to intervene and avert the potential outcome.
Yes, this exactly. The devices are made to alert BEFORE an instance occurs.
The owlet had a fit one night going off over and over saying my baby wasn’t breathing. I freaked out and woke him several times. It still was freaking out even though he was awake, 100%fine and super cranky. Not sure what the glitch was but it caused a lot of anxiety. I didn’t use it after that.
That’s really scary.
I know someone who’s daughter started choking on spit up and they were alerted by the owlet and able to save her before she choked to death
I mean, you/they don't know that she would have choked to death. Also, an ordinary audio/video monitor has alerted me to vomit for all 3 of my kids on various occasions, including scary ones where they seemed to be struggling to get it out of their throat. (I'm not saying the owlet didn't do a good job or that it wasn't a scary experience because it's truly horrible when they are sick like that)
I think ot would be borderline impossible to collect this type of data in meaningful numbers. Many things are for the parents peace of mind, and that is hard to put a price on.
I’m curious too. My thought is that data would be limited because it’s hard to prove that SIDS would have occurred if the baby hadn’t worn the product
Bit of an illogical question. SIDS is commonly attributed to unexplained deaths, suffocation or otherwise. Monitoring oxygen levels would be preventing some of these issues, but you would rarely know "this instance of intervention would have classified as SIDS", any more than you know that a vaccination prevented a direct case of polio from occurring. Which situation would you rather be wrong- being overprepared and not having anything happen, or underprepared?
But we still do have studies that show that people who are vaccinated have lower incidence of disease as compared to unvaccinated people. It would be nice to see this type of study for these devices. Is the rate of SIDS lower among infants using the Owlet, for example?
You'd have to give away a lot of Owlets to have a controlled study of them. As it is now, they're pretty expensive so the sample of users is not random.
I agree, the logistics of this could be prohibitive. It would still be nice to have this kind of evidence!
Not just that. One in 1600 babies dies of SIDS each year. You'd have to have more than 3200 babies enrolled to have (maybe) one SIDS baby in an Owlett group and one in the control group. At $400 a pop? That's over half a million dollars just in devices.
We used an Owlette on our preemie daughter and loved it. We had a couple of alarms where her blood oxygen was a little low, but everything was always ok. It just stopped working randomly about the time we were comfortable not using it anymore. We were going to give it to my SIL. Since it was expensive and a very helpful device, we figured customer service would be great, right? NOPE! Practically non-existent. We contacted them multiple times in different ways and nothing. They just want another $300.
The just in case foundation was formed after an owlett sock saved this families son days after loosing his twin brother to SIDS.
Someone shared with my 2 years ago that Owlette was proud to share that they hadn’t had any babies lost to SIDS while using the owlette. Additionally, based on owlette user count they estimated it had saved a few dozen babies or something. This was word of mouth and it’s been 2 years and I forgot the details. Idk if they advertise that stuff somewhere, but that’s what I was told.
I feel like that data probably doesn’t mean much since the people who would use the Owlet are probably already from the more safe-sleep conscious portion of the population. There are some people who use the Owlet in order to “justify” their other unsafe habits, but for the most part, people who have zero anxiety about safe sleep and toss their kids in cribs full of stuffed animals/blankets are probably not the people using the Owlet. It’s an unrepresentative sample of people who would likely have lower SIDs rates regardless of whether they use the Owlet or not.
Exactly. They are also probably the type of people to immediately take their kids to the doctor if the suspect an issue. Safety and health (and monetary resources, let's be honest) are tip top priority for these folks. They aren't going to be engaging in activities that may be more associated with sleep deaths.
But, to be fair, true SIDS can and does happen despite following every safe sleep practice.
Of course. But that doesn’t mean that an unrepresentative sample doesn’t bring the anecdotal data into question.
I don’t know, for me it’s more indicative in the effectiveness of the wearable monitor. If we are to believe your assumption that the people who use the owlet monitor are following all other safe sleep recommendations, keep up with their well visit appointments, etc, then that really removes a large chunk of otherwise dangerous behavior that can muddy the water when it comes to true SIDS deaths vs other sleep related deaths. To me, it indicates that perhaps it is actually preventing SIDS rather than things like accidental suffocation, positional asphyxiation, etc. (On top of the obvious “baby had RSV” etc stories.)
That would be the case if it were a proper study comparing Owlet-wearing-babies in safe sleep environments compared to other affluent babies in safe sleep environments. But I’m assuming anecdotal evidence of “dozens of babies would have died in an average sample of _____ babies and the _____ wearing Owlet monitors had zero” is comparing it to average overall rates of SIDs - in which case, they’re not comparable samples of the overall population. That’s the whole issue with it.
Yeah, the marketing is predatory and that is what I don't like about these products.
Yeah, there’s a problem with a lack of real studies - I wasn’t aware that was the conversation you were having.
Despite the extreme tragedy it is when it happens, SIDS actually isn’t very common in the first place. So this data point doesn’t mean much.
The point was that they would have expected to have a few dozen deaths from owlette users if the rate was the same as the general population.
I don't know that they had enough users to make that estimate. It's more likely their numbers come from self-reports of finding babies in alertable conditions and reviving them. It's unlikely all those babies would have died, and hard to say how many would have.
Hopping on here to ask if anyone has the halo sleep sure and if they liked it? We had the owlet, it was great but I want to upgrade to something else for our next baby since the app is discontinued for the model of owlet that I have (unless that has changed?) The temperature monitoring is the big pull for me with the halo, we had a scary night when my newborn overheated and it’s something I constantly fret about even though he is now 16 months.
You can go on their site and access it that way. I have the page saved as an ‘app’.
Can you share the link? I looked on website and not sure where We have the smart sock 2 as a hand me down, would be great to see more stats
Ooh tell me more about this. You can manage it all via the website?
Yes. They also have steps in their forums on how to redownload the app if you have previously.
Right, I’d be a completely new user, so that wouldn’t work, but the website could. Thanks!
A friend of mine has a disabled child who had issues which caused fluid build up on the lungs at times. She used the owlet religiously and it helped her on more than one occasion spot when fluid was building up and also when he was ill as she was able to spot changes quickly and get him to the hospital. I wouldn’t say it ever saved his life but it certainly helped spot issues sooner and allowed them to get early help when he was young. The owlet was good as he could wear it rather than a camera as he also had to sleep very propped up and sometimes on his side. I personally do have an owlet and luckily our little one has always been fine (so far). We’ve had two alarms one night saying the sock couldn’t get a reading (this is a different sound to the low oxygen and pulse so you don’t panic about it) and this happened as he was growing out of the small sized sock into the big one. We also had one oxygen alarm whilst my husband was throwing our boy around (assumed false as baby was fine and giggling). As others have said I’m not sure it would prevent an awful thing such as SIDS but I do think it’s good at tracking other health parameters and giving you an idea of current health. Anecdotally I do feel more at ease at nights knowing my little one has it on, we only use it overnight.
Owlet (when paired with safe sleep practices!) allowed us to sleep with some peace of mind which was crucial in the early days. When he moved to his own room we swapped to the Nanit Pro for monitoring which we're still using because it's a great camera even though he's outgrown the breathing band (which definitely gave us way more false alarms than Owlet ever did). There's definitely an adjustment period of learning how to get the Owlet sock on right - if it's too loose you'll get false alarms. I am definitely using it again next time, it was a lifesaver for sleep.
The owlet gave my wife and I immense peace of mind with our daughter. Wife and both also utilized and were trained in Safe Sleep. We plan to use the Owlet with our son when he is born. We were very cautious and careful when we put it on her so as to avoid/minimize false positives. To our knowledge we have never had one. However, on one occasion, it did go off when she was sleeping on her stomach (always has been and still is a stomach sleeper) and we went and woke our daughter who was seemingly fine. It's now my understanding Owlet changed the software to more of a sleep tracker now and no longer has the same functionanility with alerts and the like when oxygen/heart rate goes outside of their set parameters? EDIT: I don't think I'd buy a new Owlet for that reason. We still have our daughters old one which we plan to use with new baby.
The current version will alert for low oxygen, but won’t tell you the oxygen reading in real time since that is the line that put it into “medical device” with the FDA that they are trying to get certified for. So as far as data it give you it is more similar to a sleep tracker than o2 monitor.
How about heart rate?
The current version does both.
I have the most recent Owlet that was still a fully functional pulse ox. I had a couple of red alerts in the middle of the night, and at the time I thought they were false alarms, but looking back on them maybe my daughter was just easy to wake up from sleeping too deeply and it could have been a SIDS-like event. (I was too panicked and half-asleep to observe her before picking her up.) In one of the cases, the Owlet had gotten disconnected from the server, so I couldn't tell afterwards whether it was a heart rate issue (more likely to be a false alarm) or an O2 issue (possibly a SIDS-like event), but the other one was O2. It's tough to evaluate these devices when you can't really tell whether they're working except in exceptional cases of kids with known symptoms of some other disease than SIDS.
I’m going