Video monitoring a new born baby.
So you have set up the nursery, most likely the baby is coming quite soon. One of the great new trends in baby monitoring is the video monitor. So the first thing that you do is plug in the camera and grab the monitor or your smart phone video screen so that you can see exactly what you have aimed the camera at. Next, position the camera above the crib so you have a great view of your little one. You are ready to go. You are a high tech, new age, George Jetson type of parent. I did it. My baby wasn’t here yet but I immediately felt a sense of security and confidence know that my guy will be remotely monitored on my handheld from anywhere within the extended range. Life is great. Technology is so awesome.
The first night home with our guy was exciting. Moving from the uncomfortable hospital to our own house was a huge relief. Everything was perfect. The routine was going to take some getting used to for everybody. Waking up every 2 hours to nurse the baby gets rough but it passes. We already saw the effects of co-sleeping in some friends of ours so that was out of the question. I had a sister die of SIDS so I had a legitimate fear of that. I eased that fear with my 2 secret weapons. An angel care SIDS monitor and a Motorola video baby monitor were already mounted in the nursery. The nursery was the safest and best prepped place for him so that’s where he was going to go even on day one.
I’m a Man. It’s in my Source code to provide a safe place for my family. It’s what we do. I mean we were called cave men a long time ago. Something inside the cave man’s brain told him to find a cave make it his home and drag a cave woman in there to live with him. The thing is, technology has been advancing faster than our natural instincts. To keep the cave safe a cave man fortified the entrance to the cave. We have houses with doors and locks to keep us safe. I have cameras and crib sensors to keep my guy safe. For some reason I found myself drawn to the video monitor. Between me and my wife somebody was looking or glancing or even holding the monitor and staring at it. I say all the time I try to stop being my own worst enemy every time I realize that I’m doing it. I am also of the opinion that if I can’t live without something or doing something, then it’s probably unhealthy. I knew I was beginning to develop an obsession. I could see it happening. I could see it happening in me so I could guess that my wife’s maternal instinct would be 100x stronger than mine. Meaning, her obsession would get 100x worse than mine. Especially in the first 3 months of your new baby’s life. Women are super protective of their babies. They are helpless and fragile little newborns. Now this is the time when you might ask me, “what harm can come from looking at a video baby monitor.” That’s a great question. First let’s ask ourselves what exactly you are accomplishing by staring at that screen. That is the question that came to me first. Every time I would glance at the screen my newborn was in the same spot doing the same exact thing. Actually newborns cannot move much. Most babies cannot lift their heads until about 3 months old. They cannot roll over they can’t move. They are little floppy things that eat, poop, sleep, and cry. We all know this to be true but it didn’t stop us from staring at the monitor. We instinctively wanted to make sure he was safe. What were we really doing? Not much. You cannot hear a baby breathe on a video monitor. Actually we had an angel care sensor for that. The baby cannot stand up and walk away. 99% of the time in the first 4 months, the baby will be in the exact same spot that you left it. It will not even move an inch because the physically cannot. We refer to this time as the 4th trimester. They aren’t really a baby yet. They are just a fetus living in the outside world
It’s time to think about that other question “what harm can come from looking at a video baby monitor?” We pulled the plug on ours after the first week. So I cannot say firsthand what harm can come from it. What I can tell you is some observations I have made over the years since pulling the plug on ours during the 4th trimester. I can tell you I have seen the obsession go from 0 to 100 real quick in other mothers that we know. I can tell you it started on the first day home and progressed over the first year. I’m talking about the type of attachment to the monitor where the monitor was being taken in to the nursery while the baby was being put down to sleep. The video monitor would be in the bedroom only 10 ft. away from the nursery on full volume at night. Logic goes out the window when you are obsessed. Everything goes out the window when you obsessed. Your partners opinion, opinions from others, and just plain old common logic are all enemies of an obsession. Obsession has one friend, anxiety. Waves of anxiety come when you can’t have your obsession. Just the thought of going without brings on anxiousness. People that stand in the way or speak of keeping you from your obsession become enemies. The point is, it spirals out of control very quickly. It’s not a great idea to nurture this type of behavior. Like we said before it doesn’t accomplish anything. In the 4th trimester it really isn’t even accurately a video monitor. It might as well be a picture in frame because the baby is not going to move until it starts screaming. So what is there to get obsessed with? A picture of a baby sleeping or screaming? The sound ? The angel care does that. The blinky lights can become an obsession. OMG the lights went from green to yellow, now they are red. Well by now you can hear the baby throughout the house and you have your own personal handheld picture accompanied by surround sound. LMAO. I’ve seen it from at least 5 different newborns now. Including my own (for a week)
There is another benefit that I was able to see firsthand from unplugging the monitor. I didn’t realize this benefit of not staring at my newborn baby on the monitor until observing other parents and asking myself why didn’t they have the same connection that we did with our son. Later on I attributed this with the video monitor also. You see we always knew our guy was alive thanks to the angel care. We had to learn what his different sounds were and whether or not to barge in the room and possibly wake our sleeping child. We had to learn them. We did because no new parent in their right mind would wake a sleeping newborn. We couldn’t rely on glancing at a video screen every time he gurgled or whimpered. We forged a bond. We logged a mental database of all his sounds. We just knew what he needed. Ditching the camera in the beginning gave us this leg up on the competition. I am 100% positive of this. It helps us to this day. I’m not saying that you won’t have this bond if you are glued to a video monitor for the first year of your baby’s life. I’m saying it will take a lot longer because you are evaluating how many lights light up when he whimpers and gurgles instead of determining what the sound was.
In the end we love our video monitor. We plugged it back in after 6 months. That initial maternal instinct has subsided a bit. We confidently left it on the counter on mute and we could glance at it any time our suspicion was raised. We could take it out side. It’s a great tool. We use it still to this day and our boy is almost 3 now. There is a time and a place for everything. The first 3 months of your child’s life it’s your job as the man of the house to talk your wife out nurturing crazy maternal instinct and thoughts. I mean babies have been around for thousands of years. You have to live with your family. Habits get harder to break the longer that they are around. Thanks Dads and good luck.
