Mothers of the 21st century can be grateful for many of the technological advances of the last 30 – 40 years. Buggies that fold up for the bus or car, bottle warmers that work out and about, cameras on our phones for capturing those precious moments wherever we are, to mention just a few. 

There’s also the baby monitor. Leave one part of the monitor next to your sleeping baby in its cot, clip the other to your belt and you are free to get on with whatever you need to do around the house and garden. 

There’s no doubt it has made it easier for parents to enjoy a barbeque in the evening or just to settle down after bedtime. No need to keep popping back to the nursery to check on the little one – every snore, snuffle and cry can be heard over the monitor. And for anyone who had lost a baby through Sudden Infant Death syndrome, they can be a huge help in giving parents some peace of mind. 

Monitors have become an indispensable part of the modern parenting kit, and not surprisingly, they can now do so much more than just let you hear what’s going on. Some include a camera, so that you can see your baby sleeping, wherever you are. And there are infrared cameras, to see what’s going on in even the darkest nursery. Others monitor the temperature in the room. Some keep a check on the regularity of the baby’s breathing. 

But are they giving us greater freedom, or are they taking control of the nursery? Can we still trust ourselves to judge whether the nursery is too hot or too cold? Can we rely on our hearing to know what is going on in the nursery or do we really need to see every moment? Do we jump up every time we hear a cry? 

Perhaps they now tell us too much. Is there a danger that we are becoming more anxious parents, rather than more relaxed parents as a result of the monitor? Maybe we could try switching it off from time to time, and relying on our child to cry loudly enough if there is a problem. We might actually relax more if we didn’t hear every cough and sneeze.

When a baby sleeps, it can be a welcome break from the demands of that tiny person – a little ‘me’ time in a busy day or a chance to talk to our partners. Tune in too closely to what’s happening in the nursery and you could find that instead of freeing you up to enjoy those moments more fully, the monitor has turned you into its slave.