Baby Monitor

When I was pregnant, I got lots of ultrasounds. I would come home from each appointment with a stack of black and white pictures that were supposedly my babies. I never could tell what I was supposed to be seeing in the pictures.  I figured the ultrasound techs only knew because they had years of experience looking at these things.

Sometimes I feel like an ultrasound tech when I use the video baby monitor.  Now that I have almost 5 years of experience in looking at images on the video baby monitor, I can actually tell what I am seeing.  We have a monitor with two cameras - one pointing at Maisey's crib and one at Gardner's.  They are mounted high up on the wall, so we get an aerial view of the entire crib.  When we hear a noise and see the lights go from green to red on the monitor, we turn on the screen to see what's going on in there.  The other night I was taking a peak at the babies and felt like the ultrasound tech.  I can tell what's going on here, but the untrained eye might be confused.

This one is Maisey.  Her head is the darkish spot at the bottom center of the screen.  She is lying on her back with the back of her head resting against her crib bumper.  Her body is to the left of her head.  One arm is outstretched to the side (the dark spot in the middle).  When Maisey was first learning to roll over, the video monitor came in very handy.  I would hear her crying and when I flipped on the screen, I could see that see her wiggling around on her tummy trying to flip back onto her back.  Not wanting to get out of bed myself, I was cheering her on - hoping that she would turn herself back over and fall asleep again.

The image below is of Gardner.  It is pretty easy to tell from the big "G" on his helmet!  You can see he is laying on his left side with his head in the lower left corner.  Now that he is standing, the monitor is super helpful.  When I hear fussing from his bed, I look to see if he is standing up.  That is usually not a good sign! If he is sitting, or just tossing and turning, he usually settles himself down and goes back to sleep.  Last night he was very restless and when I looked on the monitor, I could tell that his blanket was in one corner of the crib.  Kyle swooped in, gave him the blanket and a quick pat on the back, and he fell back asleep.  What would we ever do without this technology?!