From self-rocking prams to motorised buggies, baby tech showcases the best of innovation, writes former sceptic Phoebe Arslanagić-Little
My friend’s pram rocked itself back and forth, as if by a ghostly hand. Inside it her baby boy dozed, I assume under the happy impression that it was his mother diligently pushing him backwards and forwards. Instead, she sat comfortably, sipping sparkling wine and looking at me sympathetically while I jiggled my wriggling, irritated baby on my shoulder.
During my pregnancy, I tried hard to be a baby tech sceptic. I raised a cynical eyebrow at motor-powered buggies that rocked their occupants and took themselves up-hill. I laughed aloud at the shiny black steriliser my mother bought (it looks like a mini fridge from the Death Star). I spoke very loudly at parties about the pressure upon parents to buy gimmicky products they do not need.
Then, while reading an article making this very point, I learnt about the Owlet. The Owlet is a type of baby monitor. It straps onto a baby’s foot and monitors their heart rate and oxygen saturation, setting off an alarm if these readings fall out of range. The article argued that the Owlet was utterly unnecessary, preying on the fears of anxious new parents. I nodded vigorously to myself as I finished reading. Upon doing so, I immediately ordered an Owlet. It cost £300.
Unhelpfully, my daughter’s angry kicking means that the monitoring falters when I’m changing her nappy at 3am, causing the alarm to go off. The Owlet is also programmed to alarm if a baby’s oxygen saturation dips below 80 per cent. But a doctor friend informs me that 80 per cent is in fact very dangerously low, and I cannot adjust the setting higher. I have also recently discovered that my husband is able to sleep peacefully through the alarm.
All this serves to make the Owlet a significantly less reassuring device. Yet every evening, I devotedly strap the little blue sock to my daughter’s tiny pink foot and check the app to make sure it is working. I might be unsure about the Owlet, but it has me firmly in its talons.
Despite being burnt by the Owlet, my position on baby tech has become more nuanced in the two months since my daughter was born. Darth Vader’s mini fridge, which uses UV light, is undeniably a simpler way to sterilise dummies and bottles than the second-hand contraption involving boiling water that I bought. Our new white noise machine means we don’t have to hover over our daughter’s cot and go shhhhhhhh for fifteen minutes at a time. I may not own a super-duper buggy like my friend’s, but I do now have a little device that straps to my pram and briskly vibrates the baby, which she seems to like very much. These things are not necessary. But when one is tired, when one wants a minute to make a piece of toast, such time and brain-saving devices are valuable.
This is the key – to successfully differentiate between baby tech that makes parents’ lives easier and that which complicates it; between innovations that relieve pressure, and those which intensify it. We live in an era of intensive parenting. Our sense of the resources, in terms of time and money, that are needed to raise a child have risen. Ultimately, this serves to push parenting beyond the reach of more and more people, and to make parenting itself more stressful.
To fight against this, parents must seize the easier way of doing things when we can and not feel guilty about it. Sometimes that means letting your toddler watch a few videos on your phone while you eat. Or buying a self-rocking pram. Or actually saying yes when a visiting friend offers to do a spot of hoovering.
It might also mean not buying an Owlet.