Sleep trackers for babies? As Unii Sleep Expert Sam Sadighi told Unii Babies podcast host Dr. Saranya, when it comes to actually tracking baby sleep, you should do it yourself! “In fact, when you track it, anyone sleeps; it wants to be subjective. It's basically the only way. For adults, the only way to track sleep categorically is to use polysomnography, which is where you have the electrodes on your head. You can't buy those on Amazon. Lots of devices, you know, watches and rings and things like that for adults claim that they can tell you the different stages that you're in and whatever. And they can make a fairly educated guess, but they're not absolutely guaranteed. So certainly, when it comes to adult sleep, if you are judging the effectiveness of your sleep based on a wearable tech stop, don't do it because it doesn't know what he's talking about when it comes to your child's sleep. It is a really good idea."

Sleep diaries work best for you and for your kids when problems occur. "When I'm working with clients, I ask them to keep a sleep diary so that we can see, you know, how frequently are they waking up, what time of the waking up, and how long are they awake for so that we can look for patterns and see what's going on. I would always say just be generic. I want to know how many times they wake up. Was it once or was it five times? Was it middle of the night? You know, it's that type of thing.

And you can also think about tracking [your baby or toddler’s] sleep, especially if they are starting to have difficulties. By tracking it, you might be able to look for any trends yourself. You know, on Mondays, actually they fall asleep a bit later because they have their, you know, baby sensory class, and then they sleep better on Monday night or they sleep better on a Friday night after. They've been swimming or, you know, so that type of thing can really help. But I wouldn't do it just as a matter of course; I would only do it because maybe there's things that aren't quite right; they're not quite sleeping as much as you would like them to.”

Learn more about managing your baby’s sleep from Sam’s Baby Sleep Journey video course with Unii.

Unii Babies is created and owned by London-based family wellbeing educational platform Unii.com, which offers hundreds of episodes of expert-led video courses and a library of medically reviewed articles devoted to improving both baby and child health and your parenting journey. We can also have your parenting questions expertly answered. Contact us with what you want to know, and you may see one of our experts discuss it on our podcast or Unii.com: Because Family Matters.

This podcast is for reference and entertainment purposes only. It does not constitute medical advice and should not be relied upon as such. Specific medical advice about your specific circumstances should always be sought separately before taking or deciding not to take any action.

Unii's Sleep Expert: "Sleep Trackers Don't Work!"

Unii's Sleep Expert: "Sleep Trackers Don't Work!"