For any new parent, the most important thing is keeping your child alive.
Whether that means breastfeeding or formula, pacifier or thumb sucker, long car drives or sleep sounders; the only thing that matters is doing what is best for YOUR tiny human being.
Technology plays a major part in that these days, and one family from Philadelphia credits an electronic device for saving their son’s life.
One of the most common causes of death in children under 12 months old is SIDS, or Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. The condition typically happens in seemingly healthy babies, usually during sleep, where the infant inexplicably dies in their crib.
In an effort to combat SIDS in their newborn son, Ryan Golinski and his fiancé, Kate Crawford, invested $300 into something called an Owlet Smart Sock. The device monitors a baby’s oxygen levels and heart-rate while they sleep.
After a “very scary night,” Ryan took to Facebook to urge other parents to make the investment.
“So last night around 3 a.m., the sock started alarming us something was wrong,” Ryan writes. “We thought [it] was a false alarm because it said his heart rate was reading 286.”
The average resting heart rate for children under 11 months old is 70 to 160 beats per minute.
Ryan Nicholas Golinski
That means the couple’s four-week-old son, Bryce, was experiencing twice as many heartbeats per minute than what’s safe for any human, let alone a tiny little baby.
The couple rushed Bryce to the hospital where he was diagnosed with SVT—supraventricular tachycardia. The condition causes an abnormally fast heart rate and can lead to seizures, stroke and even death.
“We caught it before any side effects,” Ryan wrote. “So everything is going well now and his heart is still extremely healthy.”
Ryan says he highly recommends parents make the same investment as they did.
He added that if Bryce had not been wearing the sock, “we could have been dealing with something a lot more serious.”
Owlet does not prevent SIDS, but rather alerts parents if their child is suffocating or choking—among other things.
For Ryan, it saved his son’s life. Now he hopes others will add it to their registry, and spread the word.
