There are few things a parent obsesses over more than sleep. How do I get my child to sleep easier? How long should she nap? Should she be waking up this much at night? Will I ever sleep in again?
It makes sense. If your family isn't getting quality sleep, your kids are irritable, and you can't be productive. How the heck is a sleep-deprived mom supposed to keep her cool when junior insists on another glass of water instead of going to bed? No sleep = no peace.
But while you can lead a child to bed, you can't make her sleep. Once she does drift off, however, hugOne from Sevenhugs can help you monitor her slumber.
The hugOne system consists of a base and sleep sensors. The sleep sensors are small squares you place on the mattress of the person whose sleep you'd like to track. I popped the blue sensor under my son's fitted sheet next to his pillow.
Since my daughter is only a toddler, I used the adhesive Bed Strip that comes with the package to make her pink sensor more sensitive to her movements. The strip—about 2 inches wide and 18 inches long—sticks to the mattress on one end, holds the sensor in place, and extends under the body of the sleeping little one, so her movements are amplified.
Getting the sensors in place and synced with the app (iOS, Android) was easy. Keeping them in place? Not so much. If you have kids who jump on their beds occasionally (*cough* not that I know anyone like that *cough*), you will find that the sensors frequently migrate to other parts of the mattress. It's not a huge deal, but a frequent annoyance.
When the device stays put, however, it collects some interesting data. I recently learned that flu viruses have a harder time surviving at higher humidity levels, for example, so I am loving the fact that the sensors tell me the humidity level in the kids' room. A light on the hugOne base also glows/pulses pink when the air quality could be improved. You can also check the temperature, whether bedtimes have been consistent, and how your kids' sleep patterns have been affected by these variables.
The hugOne can also connect to smart bulbs and thermostats to ease you into or out of sleep using changes in light or temperature. I don't have those gadgets in my home, so I wasn't able to try that out, but the sleep tracking, humidity, and air quality features have been enough for me to keep using the hugOne for months. You can also set that base to glow when it's time to go to sleep, so you can let the hugOne be the bedtime bad guy.
The sleep sensors collect data overnight but do not transmit until the one being tracked has gotten out of bed. It sends that data over Wi-Fi; hugOne was designed not to send wireless signals all night, an important feature, to be sure.
I can't say for certain that my kids' sleep quality or quantity has changed all that much since we started using the hugOne, but for those who are interested in tracking and manipulating the variables that might be decreasing the quality of their family's sleep, I wouldn't hesitate to recommend the hugOne.
The hugOne is available on the SevenHugs website and Amazon; one base and two sleep sensors are $179; extra sensors can be purchased for $49 each.