Baby, unplugged: can sleep monitors make me a better parent?

By baby No 2, I just wanted a good night's sleep. But my journey into baby tech taught me something else, writes Sophie Brickman

When my daughter Ella was little, I'd often see various tech products on my Facebook feed purporting to calm parents who were anxious about their baby's sleep. Next to feeding, there's likely no more anxiety-prone part of the day than a child's bedtime - the fear they're not on a schedule, or that once they get on one, it's the wrong one, or that once they're actually asleep, they might never wake up.

I dismissed them out of hand - we were sharing a room with Ella, and I was aware of her every snort and snuffle, though in retrospect, it seems obvious that we could have had her sleeping through the night a little earlier ... if we'd only settled on a sleep training method.