I’ve partnered with Nanit to bring you my top baby safety tips for Baby Safety Month 2021! A huge thank you to Nanit for gifting me this wonderful Nanit Pro Complete Monitoring System. While I did receive this amazing gift from Nanit, please know the opinions in this blog post are my genuine opinions after using the system for a week. This blog post contains affiliate links that help us continue our child injury prevention awareness work. Thank you for your support!
Baby gear selection meltdowns: been there.
As someone who cried multiple times while selecting baby gear for my first, I know how overwhelming choosing baby gear can be. After chatting with other parents who had similar experiences, I started to wonder if it was a rite of passage. If you’ve been there, you know: there’s a lot of baby gear on the market and making a choice can feel impossible. As a detail-oriented person, my pregnancy was riddled with anxiety over what to purchase and if I was making the ‘right’ choice.
When I was pregnant with my first daughter (of two!) in 2015, WiFi baby monitors were becoming all the rage. My husband and I, being total tech nerds, set out to find the coolest one we could. What happened? Ultimately, we were disappointed. We purchased a monitor that quickly lost application support, stopping working on a regular basis (until we unplugged it and plugged it back in) and was just generally unreliable. It’s not even manufactured anymore, and I understand why.
After a week with the Nanit Pro… what I wouldn’t give to have had this camera as an option back in 2015. It does everything our baby monitor had promised to do, except that the Nanit Pro actually delivers and does it WELL. But that’s not the main reason why I love this monitor: not only is the amount of technology in the Nanit Pro impressive, the safety features are next-level.
1. The Nanit Pro camera
we'll start with the nanit pro.
The Nanit Pro is a smart baby monitor with state-of-the-art technology. What you see in my hand is the monitor itself it’s a tiny device!
Basic features:
- 1080p HD video
- Temperature and humidity readings
- Two-way audio (so you can talk to your baby)
- Built in light-night and soothing white noise sound effects
- Works with your smartphone via the Nanit app – no second monitor is required
- It’s reliable. Even if your internet goes down, the stream will still connect to other devices on the same network.
The Nanit Pro is small but mighty!
let's talk about the stand.
The Nanit Pro comes with a stand in the box, and let me just say: wow. As a childproofing professional and childhood injury prevention advocate – I am floored. They’ve considered safety and then some. The stand can be set up in two modes: Wall-leaning, or free-standing. In my pictures below, I have it set up in free-standing mode for the sake of demonstration. This is an ideal position if your baby’s crib is not against a wall; because as the name implies, it’s totally free-standing.
- The included monitor stand has built-in cable management – so your baby isn’t coming into contact with the cord, even if the monitor is directly next to them.
- Nanit Pro protects your security by encrypting the video feed, and the included option to use two-step authentication so only you and other caregivers associated with your Nanit account can log into the camera. Camera hackers are one less thing to worry about.
- It can measure your baby (Seriously. We’ll talk about that in a bit.)
- It can let you know when your baby is asleep, when your baby wakes up, and monitor their breathing motion (you’ll get an alert if something is awry.)
- Did I mention it does all of that without any wires or sensors on the baby?
Did you see how ingenious this stand is? The cord is wired through a tamper-proof channel almost entirely to the outlet. The amount left is needed for flexibility to get to an outlet.
The cover I’m showing there is by Safety Innovations – link here.
What's the video like?
I mentioned earlier in the features that the video feed is 1080p HD. My previous baby monitor was 5 mega pixels. Sharp contrast, and no pun intended!
The camera picks up a great view because it can be mounted *right above* the baby’s crib, so you’ve got full view of them. The top of the camera stand can swing from left to right, and the camera can be tilted upward if needed – you’ll be able to get the picture juuuuust right.
In the app, you can optimize how the camera is set up to ensure the camera picks up other motion activity such as a parent or caregiver entering the room. I was curious to see how it would look in the dark, so, of course I immediately turned off the lights.
And let me say – that is a PITCH black room – I had to use my phone to guide me back to the light switch! The camera’s video is amazing quality even in the dark, so for those of you who have perfected the ultimate black-out room for baby to sleep in, fear not – it’ll work just fine!
This is what the night-vision looks like when activated.
One more thing: when motion or noise is detected, the Nanit Pro also records video clips that you can save directly to your device for safekeeping or sharing with loved ones. After using this with my kids for a few nights, I can say it’s captured some really sweet memories. My daughters (3.5y and 6y, as I write this) ended up sharing a room by choice this summer (“sleep over!”); and as a result, have become inseparable at bedtime, for better or for worse. They asked me to put the camera on a bookshelf in their room when they realized it could be a nightlight, make bird noises (one of the background sounds you can select as a white noise) and optionally be used by them to demand water or snacks at all hours. We’ll see how long this novelty lasts, but for the meantime, we’ve been enjoying the auto-recorded videos of them making each other go into fits of belly laughter.
The breathing band
2. Smart Sheets
Also in the box with the Nanit Pro is a size small Breathing Band. The Breathing Band is just that: it lets you know how your baby is breathing using an AI algorithm. The unique pattern on the band is captured by the camera, which can then process the baby’s movement. It monitors the baby’s movement to determine if normal breathing rhythm is present. If something goes awry, you’ll get notified – an alarm will sound on your smartphone, as well as the Nanit Pro camera itself.
So, here’s the thing: in recent years baby monitors with breathing tracking have become popular. However, in some cases this is done with pulse oximeters. There have been known cases of pulse oximeters causing burns (and this is not unique to babies, it can happen to adults, too!) While for the most part monitoring a baby’s breathing in a safe sleep environment is not necessary, I will say that I’ve worked with a few families in recent years who have unfortunately lost children to SIDS. Through these experiences, I can absolutely understand the reason many families choose to monitor breathing for peace of mind. I very much appreciate that the Nanit Pro does this without using any wires or sensors whatsoever. A good rule of thumb in injury prevention is to not introduce a new hazard while trying to remove another.
When using the Breathing Band it’s important to read the warnings carefully and wrap the baby as recommended. The Breathing Band should not be done up so tight that it could restrict the baby from breathing freely.
The Breathing Band comes in two sizes, each with respective weight ranges as shown above.
What are 'smart sheets'?
Smart Sheets, similarly to the Breathing Band, use Nanit’s AI algorithm to detect the unique pattern on the sheets. In this case, the pattern helps the Nanit Pro measure the child’s height and record it to the Nanit app. It’s wild, let me show you:
When your baby’s crib mattress is fitted with a Smart Sheet, capturing a height measurement for your baby is fairly quick and easy! First, you record a 10-second video clip. The app then prompts you to select a frame of the video where your baby’s head and legs are making contact with the mattress, as seen above on the left. It then takes you to a screen where you tell the Nanit certain points on your baby’s body (see above, middle). Using this data, it then calculates the baby’s height.
I’ll admit, I was skeptical. I’ve seen similar technology on my iPhone in Apple’s ‘Measure’ app, but I still wasn’t totally sure the camera could pull it off. It did. As you can see, it suggested my demo baby was 17″ – and, indeed – it’s exactly 17″
So, that’s pretty cool. I’m a bit of a data nerd and I loved keeping track of my daughter’s measurements over time – but I did it in a phone note, and measured her with a bit of a complicated (and somewhat unreliable) method using a piece of baker’s twine that my doctor showed me… yeah, this would have been much easier, haha!
You can view this data in a graph over time, and you’re able to add in their weight and head circumference manually, to keep it all in one place: think pediatrician visits!
If I may, I’ll give you one piece of unsolicited advice: get more than one Smart Sheet. Get at least two, so when there’s an inevitable bodily fluid mess of some sort (the joy of parenting!) you can switch out for another one.
3. The Multi-Stand
On-the-go?
moving out of a crib and into a toddler bed?
I mentioned earlier that I’ve been testing the Nanit Pro camera and Nanit app functionality with my two daughters. To get a view of the whole room, I’ve been using the Multi-Stand.
This, like the Smart Sheets, can be purchased separately, or bundled together with the Smart Sheets and Nanit Pro in the New to Two bundle. It’s a much smaller stand that has a standard cord and plug. It’s important to note that when using the Multi-Stand, the cord isn’t cable managed – so you need to do your due diligence to ensure the cord isn’t within reach of a baby or toddler: a minimum of 3ft from a baby’s crib, and completely out of reach for a toddler in a toddler bed.
This is perfect for travelling with your Nanit (leave the Wall-Leaning or Free-Standing stand at home, take the Multi-Stand instead!) or for transitioning from a crib to a toddler bed, where you’d prefer to have a view of the whole room.
I love that Nanit has considered this, and the hard work of cable management and mounting the stand doesn’t have to be disturbed just because you’re going on vacation, or monitoring a different room for a short period of time.
Bottom line?
It’s the safety features that really win me over, folks.
The Nanit Pro is undoubtedly an amazing baby monitor on its own.
The ability to track your baby’s measurements over time with surprising accuracy is also down-right impressive.
However, the thoughtful safety features: cable management, baby monitoring without the risks of wires or sensors, and two-step authentication security, are what make this monitor top of my list.
To learn more about the Nanit Pro, visit nanit.com
