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Comment by blowski | Hacker News Reader

I can see this being useful in the case of extremely premature babies, or those significantly more vulnerable than usual. But for the average new parent this is just another way of increasing anxiety. In my humble non-medical-expert opinion, you really shouldn't get one unless you're told to by someone qualified.

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Technology always leads to new norms and standards of living. We have medicine that cures infections that would have absolutely killed us a hundred years ago. We have machines that can route blood around your heart while doctors replace it with another one. Here we have a technology that has the potential to reduce the occurrence of SIDS(sudden infant death syndrome) at a cheap cost once the tech is commoditized.

I understand your hesitance in promoting anything that can exacerbate the anxieties of people unnecessarily(our society is already bad enough at this), but as a parent, that anxiety was already there for me, and I think it's there for most other parents too. I used to wake up and check my daughter in the middle of the night because she hadn't cried in a while. This would have brought me peace of mind.

Same here. As new parents, we followed all guidelines for preventing SIDS but still were always checking on our son all the time.

I highly doubt we would have trusted any device 100%. But it would have brought a little bit of peace of mind which new parents desperately need.

New parent here - there's a learning curve and once you are over it (ie have balanced your anxieties with the realities that your child is probably ok seeping at night) you will have traded off your privacy for a device that to your own language you wouldn't trust 100%. It feels like this is just a push for positive stories on privacy infringement to make it easier to buy the products. I.e. "We got these spy devices in our house, but for the first 3-6 months of our new child being in the house, it monitored them for breathing"

The 'trust' in the post wasn't about privacy but about the breathing monitoring I'm pretty sure. I.e. they would have still worried about their kid some even with the device.

...your child is probably ok seeping at night

"probably ok" is exactly the level of confidence that left me with anxiety around this issue. It's not exactly a convincing statement to make for people worried about whether their child is still breathing or not. Regardless of the rationality of the concern.

...as a parent, that anxiety was already there for me, and I think it's there for most other parents too. I used to wake up and check my daughter in the middle of the night because she hadn't cried in a while. This would have brought me peace of mind.

This echoes my own experience in this area.

And what would you do should this device mislead you? Sue the company making the nonmedical device?

Might as well just attach a sensor directly to the kid instead. Something tiny, like wireless EMG electrode or MEMS accelerometer. Much less likely to get a false positive. (The problem is batteries, as usual.) Heck, a pulseoximeter.

If you tell people to do what "someone qualified" says, you're not offerring an opinion, humble or otherwise.

It's a nice to think there are qualified people who can advise parents on this, but they don't exist. SIDS strikes even healthy infants. It's caused by a weakness in an osciallator network in the infant's cardiovascular system (modulo some percentage of infanticide). There's no known test for it but there is a simple solution: allow it to entrain to the mother's breathing by placing the infant near the mother.

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