Do I need a baby monitor?

You don’t need a baby monitor for a healthy baby. Safe sleep organisations in the UK, the US and Australia agree that no monitor has been shown to prevent sudden infant death, and that a monitor never replaces safe sleep practice or a parent’s supervision. What a monitor does is let you hear your child when you otherwise couldn’t. Whether you need that depends on your home and your evenings, not on a rule.

Are baby monitors necessary?

For safety, no. Three safe sleep bodies say so plainly:

• The Lullaby Trust (UK) says there’s no research showing baby monitors help prevent SIDS, that a monitor can never replace a parent’s or carer’s supervision, and that you should follow all safer sleep advice whether you use one or not.
• Red Nose (Australia) titles its page on the subject “Monitors are not needed for healthy babies and toddlers”. It says there’s no scientific evidence that any type of monitor prevents sudden unexpected death in infancy, and its scientific advisory group does not recommend them for that purpose.
• The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) advises, in its 2022 safe sleep recommendations, against using home cardiorespiratory monitors as a strategy to reduce the risk of SIDS, and against commercial devices that claim to reduce it.

For convenience, sometimes. If your child sleeps somewhere you can’t hear them, a monitor closes that gap. That’s a real need in many homes, but it’s about hearing, not about safety.

Do pediatricians recommend baby monitors?

Not as a safety measure. The AAP’s advice on monitors concerns devices that track heart rate, breathing or blood oxygen. On its parenting site, HealthyChildren.org, it says there’s no evidence that such consumer devices reduce the risk of SIDS, and warns against letting them give you a false sense of security. It’s fine to use one if you want to, the AAP adds, as long as it isn’t a substitute for following the safe sleep guidelines.

For an ordinary sound or video monitor, the question is simpler: does it help you hear your child when you otherwise couldn’t?

Do I need a baby monitor if baby sleeps in my room?

At night, when you’re in the room too, no. You’ll hear your baby without one.

In the first six months, the NHS recommends that your baby sleeps in a separate cot or Moses basket in the same room as you for every sleep, and the AAP recommends sharing a room, not a bed, preferably for at least the first six months. If you follow that, there’s little for a monitor to do in those months: your baby sleeps where you are.

It changes once your baby is older and goes to bed before you do. Your child is asleep in your bedroom or their own room at seven, and you’re in the kitchen or the living room until eleven. That evening stretch is when a monitor is most useful.

The same goes for a one-bedroom flat or apartment. With the bedroom door a few steps away you may hear everything, or you may not, once the TV is on and the extractor fan is running. Try it before you buy anything.

When a baby monitor genuinely helps

Do a simple test on a quiet evening. Put your child to bed, close the doors you would normally close, switch on whatever usually runs in the evening, and ask yourself whether you would reliably hear crying. A monitor tends to earn its place when:

• your child sleeps on a different floor from where you spend the evening;
• there’s a long hallway or a heavy door in between;
• you like to sit on the balcony or in the garden after bedtime;
• you’re staying somewhere unfamiliar, such as with grandparents or on holiday.

You don’t necessarily need to buy a device. A spare smartphone can do the job; see our guide to using an old phone as a baby monitor.

Do I need a baby monitor for a 2-year-old?

Maybe, for the same reason as at any age: can you hear them? A two-year-old can usually call for you, but whether that reaches you depends on where you are. A toddler who has just moved from a cot to a bed, or who has started climbing out, is another reason some parents keep listening for a while. Once your child can come and find you at night and you’d hear them anyway, you can let the monitor go; our guide on when to stop using a baby monitor goes through the signs.

Why are baby monitors discouraged?

When people read that baby monitors are “discouraged”, it usually means one of four things.

1. Monitors sold as a safety device. Most of the warnings concern breathing, movement, heart rate and oxygen monitors – sensor mats, wearables and smart socks – rather than plain sound monitors. The AAP warns that products claiming to make sleep safer can give a false sense of security. Red Nose recommends a monitor only when a health professional advises one for a specific medical condition, and notes that in Australia commercial monitors don’t have to meet mandatory safety standards; monitors with leads may pose a strangulation risk.

2. More anxiety, not less. Red Nose notes that for some families monitors increase anxiety instead of providing reassurance, and that false alarms from breathing and movement sensors are common. A 2025 study in BMJ Paediatrics Open analysed 11,262 Amazon reviews of 48 infant sleep monitoring products. Reviewers whose devices worked well reported better sleep and less anxiety; nearly a third of the reviews the researchers coded described poor performance, which went along with more stress and anxiety and with disrupted sleep for the children. The authors point out that online reviews may over-represent extreme experiences.

3. A monitor instead of being there. The NHS and the Lullaby Trust advise that a young baby sleeps in the same room as you for the first six months. A monitor in the next room isn’t a substitute for that.

4. Privacy. A camera that connects to the internet raises the question of who else could see the picture. Our guide on whether baby monitors can be hacked explains what has gone wrong in the past and what protects against it.

None of this says that listening to your sleeping toddler from the living room is harmful. It says: don’t buy a monitor for safety, don’t let it replace safe sleep, and pick one that calms you down rather than winds you up.

Audio or video?

For knowing that your child needs you, sound is enough. Video can help you see whether your child is settling again before you go in, but it also invites checking a screen that shows a sleeping child. If you choose video, nothing in the room should light up. The differences between a phone-based monitor and a dedicated video monitor are covered in baby monitor app vs. video baby monitor.

If you decide to use one

A few things make a monitor more useful and less stressful:

• An alarm, not just a stream. It should tell you when the sound goes over a level you choose, so you don’t have to listen all evening.
• A warning when the connection drops. Otherwise silence can mean a sleeping child or a flat battery, and you can’t tell which.
• A dark, quiet child’s room. No glowing screen, no beeps on the child’s side.
• Know where the audio and video go. Is it encrypted, and is anything stored on a server?

Babyfino is built around that list. It turns a spare phone into the monitor in your child’s room, sends a noise alarm with adjustable sensitivity, and alarms you about ten seconds after the child’s device stops sending its sign of life. The screen in the child’s room stays off or black, and audio and video are end-to-end encrypted and never stored on a server. It is not a medical device and does not monitor breathing or movement, and it needs an internet connection on both devices. Babyfino is coming soon for iPhone and Android.

Sources

1. The Lullaby Trust: Baby monitors, 2026 (retrieved 21 October 2026)
2. Red Nose Australia: Monitors are not Needed for Healthy Babies and Toddlers, 2025 (retrieved 21 October 2026)
3. American Academy of Pediatrics: American Academy of Pediatrics Updates Safe Sleep Recommendations: Back is Best, 2022 (retrieved 21 October 2026)
4. American Academy of Pediatrics, HealthyChildren.org: How to Keep Your Sleeping Baby Safe: AAP Policy Explained, 2026 (retrieved 21 October 2026)
5. NHS: Sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), 2025 (retrieved 21 October 2026)
6. BMJ Paediatrics Open: Dosso JA, Teng KA, Roy KT, Robillard JM – The quantified baby: real-world use of infant sleep monitoring technologies and its impact on parent mental health and medical decision-making, 2025 (retrieved 21 October 2026)