Snap, Crackle, [Baby Monitor] Pop!

Written by Rebekah Cooksey, who blogs at www.MyKindofMom.com.

It’s 2:34 am….pop…..pop……pop…..pop….tat…tat.  The oh too familiar static pop of the baby monitor.  But not just one baby monitor – no, we have stereo!  Two of them – one for our 2 yr old and one for our 10 month old – going off alternatively in some sort of orchestrated, rhythmic pattern that is more disturbing to sleep than my old pet peeve from consulting days:  the strange-hotel-bathroom-sink-drip. 

You think as a parent if you are somehow able to train your children to sleep through the night, you’ve got it made.  You focus every effort in those early months on getting your baby to consolidate their sleep at night, getting them to fall asleep on their own, etc.  But none of the sleep books (believe me on this, I’ve read them all) mention anything about baby monitor positioning techniques.  If someone would write a book called “Getting a Good Night’s Sleep with the Baby Monitor On” it would be an instant hit.

But no one has written such a book (that I know of) for good reason – it is trickier than you would think to set a monitor to be able to catch what you want to hear of your baby’s movements without the accompanying background noise and static.

Take my family’s situation.  We are on our third set of sound monitors, and second set of video monitors.  What?!?  Sound and video monitors?  And what the heck is a video monitor??

OK – first let’s talk about why we’ve tried three different sound monitors.   When we registered pre-baby #1, we went with an average price model — let’s face it, who really understands mHz’s and the need for multiple channel options at that point?  Then, in desperation one night, we broke out a not-yet-returned baby gift of a different monitor type, hoping to get the static interference to go away.  It didn’t.  So that took us back to Babies-R-Us, buying a top of the line Sony model with the best product reviews on Amazon, Target, and every other parent blog we could find.  Improvement, yes…..solution, no.  But it somehow stuck, and so when baby #2 came along we did what every parent does – repeat our same mistakes, I mean, decisions.

Now, the video monitor.  One of the best innovations in baby gear in the past five years, hands down.  Again, with baby #1, at registry time, we saw these on the shelves and thought – who in the world is so neurotic to need to have a video to watch their babies sleep?  Well, in short, we were…..at about six weeks, hormonal Mommy was back at the store, wondering how I could have ever thought just hearing my baby in his room could suffice when I was trying to get him to fall asleep on his own.  We got our own personal TV channel, called Jack TV, which we happily watched for hours, marveling at how cute our baby boy was.  When Luke came along, we got another (of course, the novelty had worn off by then, so he only gets a glance now and then).

But I digress….was talking about baby monitor static, not the maternal surges of oxytocin (or whatever hormone) that allows one to stare at a 3”x5” black & white screen for hours thinking it is the most fascinating video in the world.

In our quest to reduce the static from the monitors, in addition to making the rounds between models, we have come up with our own positioning “system”.  Each monitor receiver has it’s own designated spot on our kitchen counter, the best spot that limits static.  Many hours of trial and error led to this positioning, testing out different possible static-creating variables like distance between receivers, direction receivers were facing, distance from our cell phones and blackberries.  And, oh, yeah, we also needed to be able to actually hear the boys, too.  These monitor positions are well known and revered between my husband, me, Grandma, and all babysitters.

So, for the most part, the daytime monitor issue is solved….unless someone inadvertently puts their cell phone down too close to one of the monitors, or (some people will cringe at this) a cat decides that that particular spot on the counter – kept so cozy and warm by the monitor – is where she needs to sprawl.

The nighttime issue is another story.  The monitors are literally less than 15’ further away from where they stay every day when they are in our bedroom, but the increase in propensity for static is dramatic.  Our current solution – which obviously isn’t working given that it is now 3:26am – has again been a function of trial and error positioning techniques.  On nights where the wind is still, we are generally OK.  Those are few, however, in the Texas spring, so we have had many a night of the static and popping, leading me to these ramblings in the wee hours.

And now, I can hear my baby making sleep noises in his crib, about 20’ from where I sit writing on my laptop.  This is not registering on the monitor at all.  It continues the same pop…..pop…..pop…..pop rhythm, oblivious to the actual reason we have it in the first place – so we can monitor Luke’s sleep.  And then, every so often, Jack’s monitor will throw in its “tat” for good measure.

I’m certain better sleep would come if we just chucked the monitors altogether and kept bedroom doors open.  Or, better still, if we just threw caution to the wind and kept bedroom doors shut, believing we’d hear anything that we needed to (like actual cries) given the proximity of our bedroom to our children.  Well, I’m not quite ready for that yet – but give me a few more nights of this, or possibly baby #3, and I’m sure I’ll be considering it.  Right now, though, think I’ll shut down and go back to bed, counting “pops” instead of sheep.

Rebekah Cooksey blogs at www.mykindofmom.com.  You can reach her at rebekah@momsoutloud.com.