Mom Posts Facebook Warning After Owlet Monitor Leaves Blister on Baby’s Foot

Nobody is paranoid like a person with a newborn, so to many new parents the Owlet Monitor seemed like a gift from the gods to all the stressed-out, paranoid, hallucinating-the-sound-of-a-baby-crying-every-time-you-take-a-shower new parents of the world. It’s basically a little electronic sock that you put on the baby’s foot to monitor their heart rate and oxygen level. It even communicates to an app on your phone so you can look at it and see that the baby’s breathing and heart beat are totally fine. The app will send an alarm if any of the numbers fall outside the preset ranges, but even if everything is fine, you can still check in on it to confirm that the baby is breathing.

New parent: “Is the baby still alive?”

Owlet Monitor App: “Yep, baby’s still alive.”

It sounds ridiculous, but it saves a lot of people from having to get up 12 times a night to go peek at the baby and make sure it’s still breathing, and that is a thing that new parents do.

But now one mother is warning other parents that the Owlet Monitor might be dangerous, because she says the Owlet Monitor burned her baby’s foot badly enough to cause a blister.

Mother Whitney Dame was using the Owlet Monitor on her newborn daughter, Lauren. One night, however, she heard the baby screaming and went running in to see what was the matter. At first she thought it was just a stomach ache, but then she said she found the monitor was burning the baby’s foot. The furious mother posted a picture of Lauren’s blistered toe to Facebook to warn other parents about the possibility of monitor burns.

“FYI those of you who use Owlet monitor,” she wrote. “Lauren cried all last night like screamed. I thought she was having a tummy ache. Come to find out her monitor was burning her foot. I have never been so mad and sick to my stomach. I just don’t want this to happen to anyone else. The company will hear from me tomorrow and reimburse me for damages. She will see Dr Penn tomorrow.”

A lot of people love these devices just for peace of mind, though whether they actually do anything to protect against SIDS is a matter of some debate. They do help a lot of nervous parents relax a bit, though, and the Owlet has a ton of very dedicated fans.

The Owlet Monitor website says the risk of the Owlet burning a baby is extremely small, because the sensors are kept in protective layers and fabric to keep it from coming in direct contact with the baby’s skin.

What do you think of the Owlet monitor? Let us know in the comments.

(Image: Facebook / Whitney Dame)

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