Maybe you are right... but a onesie that "knows that when a baby wakes up, the parents will, too -- so it turns on lights and music and even makes the coffee." ... is of no use to fight infant mortality.
That's not all it does, you just picked out the ridiculous part. If you'd quote the entire piece on that onesie you'd see that it actually has a bunch of features that very well might reduce infant mortality.
The author also invokes 'helicopter parenting' as if it applies to taking care of babies. Helicopter parenting is when parents disrupt other caregivers during the care for their child, it has nothing to do with being sure about whether your baby is dying. I am confident parents themselves can configure and determine when and when not to wake up when their baby is awake.
As a non-parent, do parents really drink coffee in the middle of the night when their baby wakes up? That seems like a terrible idea..
The article addresses this point directly, but because you aren't a parent, it may have gone over your head. The real problem with a smart-onesie isn't simply that it's useless, but that infants are restless, and any signal this device carries will be overwhelmed by the noise. When you're the parent of an infant, your #2 goal (after "keep the baby alive") is "ruthlessly attend to your own rest needs".
I fully understand, that's why I called it 'the ridiculous part'. I recognize that a device that wakes you up whenever your baby is awake would be crazy, but surely that isn't what the device is going to do? I read it more as 'when your baby is crying so hard you will most likely wake up, it will turn on lights and soft music to assist you in calming them'.
As a father of two, my youngest being 4 months old, those features sound unusually stupid. When the baby wakes up at 3am, any device that subsequently turned on lights and music would be taken out back and shot. As for the coffee, my bog-standard Philips coffee maker has a built-in timer already, set for 6:30 am.
My baby doesn't need an app to let me know he's up. Generally the piercing fire trunk level scream does the trick. Now, does this smart baby suit help against SIDS? Nope. If there's science to prove me wrong, I will gladly revise my opinion. Honestly though, that baby suit with a built in coffee maker trigger and light turning on capability.. That's just dumb. Do we really want all the lights coming on every time the baby stirs? Is coffee making really what's needed at that moment? The potential for that technology is cool, but the execution just sounds excessively superficial. as far as infant mortality: what are the causes of infant mortality? Certainly not underlit homes and under caffeinated parents.
There is no evidence I've found that any monitoring device improves SIDS outcomes, and there is evidence that it doesn't. Forget about the smart onesie: it's difficult to justify even classic baby monitors as a medical intervention.
The decline in SIDS over the last 2 decades tracks the education of parents not to put infants to sleep on their stomachs.
Small note, but there are other major factors in the decline of SIDS besides just not putting infants to sleep on their stomach, although they generally all stem from the idea of educating new parents about basic safety procedures that are not always intuitive.
I'm pretty sure I would be the first to put all kinds of sensors onto my baby, it's toys and environment but I'm also pretty sure I would check on that stuff AND on the baby myself. Also considering the security problems.
Looks to me like a hell lot of problems added to what I would already have with the baby alone. My parents had me in their room and I survived. Others died. Maybe that's just the way it is.
I thought that a cot death meant that this remained unexplained. Now a baby monitor reduces cot deaths? I'm really interested to read about that claim.
No, baby monitors have been studied. It's not a big mystery. Monitoring doesn't make a dent in SIDS. Education does. "Don't put infants to sleep on their stomachs".
