I created this blog post as a paid ambassador with Philips Avent and PTPA. All opinions expressed are my own.
When it comes to old adages about new parenthood, “Sleep when baby sleeps” is a lovely one in theory but an unrealistic one in practice.
Now, I am a huge advocate of prioritizing sleep in the early days. Get as much help at home as you can so you can recuperate from birth and adjust to life with a newborn. But it won’t be long until, for your sanity, baby’s sleepy time becomes your personal time. And by personal time I literally mean the time you take to feel like an actual person.
If I slept when baby slept, I’d have no
-clean laundry
-clean dishes or
-clean body parts.
I’d also have no
-food in my stomach
-relationship with my husband or
-delineation between my left and right eyebrows.
And I’d have a lot of
-unwritten blog posts
-unplayed turns of Words With Friends and
-undrunk cups of tea.
With four kids 5 and under, my children’s waking hours are very busy (for me). And frankly, their sleeping hours are arguably even busier as I try to reconcile my own biological need for sleep and my psychological and practical need for some semblance of organization, adult conversation, basic hygiene and a reduced but robust professional life.
I use our Avent Digital Video Monitor to give the eyes on the back of my head some much needed respite.
My kindergartner is the best sleeper of the bunch, and I admit that at times I think wistfully of what it would be like to have an only child and be at the stage where I don’t need a baby monitor anymore. (Although he does enjoy using our monitor to play spy games with his dad.)
Miss Cub—winner of the “most annoying to put to bed” award at just shy of 3 years old—sleeps in my room with the twins who are (thank goodness) much better sleepers than their siblings were as newborns. I use our Avent Monitor to see what she’s up to (since, I guarantee, she’s not sleeping when she’s supposed to be) and to make sure she’s not harassing her younger roommates.
I use the talkback feature to tell her to get back into bed ASAP when I see her about to make her escape. (Let’s pretend this actually works.) She often requests music since she knows the monitor plays a selection of lullabies.
The 3.5″ high-resolution colour screen lets me see which twin is crying (just kidding, I can’t tell them apart on a monitor screen no matter how clear the image is), and the 2x digital zoom lets me know exactly whom I’ll be evicting from my bed when I turn in for the night.
Because the video monitor is portable, it can follow me around the house, especially down to the basement where I can’t hear the babies if they stir. The 150′ range is ample for our needs.
With a battery life of about ten hours depending on use, I don’t have to charge it every day either.
My husband is the kind of guy who puts tape over our computer cameras and microphones so he’s reassured that no one’s spying on our heated political debates impromptu singing contests. Thanks to the secure connection provided by Avent Digital Monitor’s adaptive FHSS technology, he’s knows Big Brother isn’t watching.
For those once in a blue moon occasions when I might blow dry my hair, the visual noise indicator on the monitor can alert me to a crying baby before he wakes up his roommates. This is also a great feature if you’re enjoying some Netflix binging and have the monitor on mute so you don’t have to hear every little baby snuffle.
Our Philips Avent Digital Video Monitor helps me with all the things I’m doing besides sleeping when my babies are.
What do you get up to when everyone’s asleep?
Find out more about the Philips Avent Digital Video Monitor
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