Making Sure The Baby Is Breathing

Parents have long been known to sneak a peak at their sleeping infant just to make sure he's still breathing. For those especially anxious parents, you can now buy a baby monitor that actually tracks their vital signs.  For just $249, this Sproutling baby monitor will measure your baby's vitals through an ankle monitor attached to the baby, and then send them to your smart phone.  The device will also "learn" the baby's behaviors (such as nap time) with the idea that it will help parents plan.

An interesting gismo, but I fear this is the perfect example of technology increasing anxiety rather than diminishing it.  When considering that false positives are common even among hospital devices, or that common conditions such as the occasional infant sleep apnea could set off an alarm, chances are this device will merely insure a lot more panicked runs to the nursery, only to find out that baby is breathing after all.

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