Baby Products: What Not To Buy
- Charlotte Evans
- Nov 7
- 3 min read
The market is flooded nowadays with various baby products and pieces of technology, marketed in a way that suggests you must have these things to help your baby sleep well in the early days.
Whilst I agree that some products can be beneficial for a good night’s rest or make your family’s sleep more comfortable, some products are actually in danger of being too helpful - increasing your anxiety of when something might be ‘wrong’, and some products are just not safe for your baby to sleep with.
The Baby Products in Question
Here are some products I would NOT suggest wasting your money on when setting up your new baby’s nursery:
Cot bumpers
Although many of these are marketed as ‘breathable’ and safe to use in your baby’s cot - please note that they are not safe and can still cause suffocation.
Sleep positioners/pods
These are not safe for your baby to be sleeping in unsupervised - even for a moment. They are certainly not designed for overnight sleep or to leave baby in while you go to the loo or make a cuppa.
Monitors with tons of data
What are you going to do with the information that your baby just shifted their weight in their cot? For the first 6 months your baby should be sleeping next to you anyway, but even after that all you need is a basic monitor for sound so you can tell when your baby really needs you to respond to them (remember some will cry out between cycles and not actually need you). Any additional data on these monitors is just designed to target anxious parents who will feel as though something is ‘wrong’ if the data isn’t as they expect.
Wearable sleep technology and “smart cots”
See above! I also believe these cots are being marketed at anxious parents, and there is really no need for so much data. They are really clever products, and personal choice of course, but personally I just don’t get it. One model of cot boasts a blood oxygen monitor and alerts for when baby is lifted from cot - am I expecting someone to steal my baby in the night? I’d like to think i’d be altered in other ways to an intruder….
Summary:
Although I agree that safety standards for sleeping babies has improved dramatically in recent years due to an increase in knowledge and safe sleep practices, I don’t agree that these ‘smart’ technologies, cot gadgets or positioners are improving sleep quality or safety for our babies.
According to the Lullaby Trust, babies should be put down to sleep in their own clear, flat sleep space in a room between 16-20 degrees (Lullaby Trust website for full guidance). As mentioned, your baby should be in the same room as you for sleep in the first 6 months, where you can closely monitor them and their safety. After 6 months when your baby moves into their own bedroom, the risk of SIDS drops dramatically - as long as your baby continues to be in a clear, flat sleep space, so the requirement for these over-complicated and over-priced gadgets is therefore minimal anyway.
If you would like some support from a real person as to how to improve your baby’s sleep, I’d love to help:
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