Should You Get the Owlet Sock Now That It's FDA-Cleared?

Reducing SIDS risk and gaining peace of mind may not be so simple

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When I was pregnant in the fall of 2019, smart baby monitors were one of the most in-demand items on baby registries. It’s been a few years since my husband and I created our own baby registry, but I think I can safely say that the COVID-19 pandemic only made parents more worried about their baby’s breathing in the middle of the night.

But the reason so many of us stay up in the middle of the night full of anxiety about our newborns is all of the scary things we read about Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS).

I honestly can’t think of anything sadder than losing the baby you just grew for nine months–or the baby you probably fought for years to adopt. Except maybe stillbirth. But let’s not go there or else I’ll start bawling.

Anyway, SIDS is terrifying—and it’s the reason why so many of us invested hundreds of dollars into smart baby monitors and wearable technology for infants. Case in point: The vast popularity of the Owlet Sock—an infant wearable that you wrap around one of your baby’s feet that then tracks their heart rate, blood oxygen level, and movements and waking times at night.

Many parents I know have boasted that the sock is the best purchase they ever made because it kept their sanity intact during those early sleepless newborn nights since they were able to check on their phone and see that their little one was just fine.

Then what seemed like a tragedy struck in 2021 when the FDA forced Owlet Care, Inc., (the creators of the sock) to take it off the market. Uh oh…

But now it’s back! Last month, the $299 Owlet Dream Sock received FDA clearance and is currently making its way back onto store shelves and their online shop.

GREAT NEWS! … or is it?

Photo by Joice Kelly on Unsplash

[Note: My husband—like many male partners—happily took on the technology research for our baby registry, and ultimately settled on the Nanit, a camera we’re still using in our soon-to-be 4-year-old’s room. However, as a journalist, I had the chance to test the Owlet Sock a couple of times and my impression remains, “Meh, it’s fine, but a little bit weird to put something so intense on my newborn.” But plenty of my friends *loved* their Owlet Sock and continue to sing its praises.]

Wearable technology for babies claims to give parents peace of mind. But is that really the case?

For those new to Raising Gen Alpha or who don’t generally pay attention to such things, I’m a career journalist with a B.A. in Journalism from New York University and 18+ years of experience in the field.

And as a journalist, most of my work is editing and writing for national magazines and online publications—which is how I came to write the Yahoo story linked above on wearable technology for babies.

It’s primarily about the Owlet Sock since that’s the most well-known and reputable of the infant wearables on the market. Plus, it’s now the only one with FDA clearance, something that I am sure has fans absolutely thrilled (as they should be).

I spent an intense amount of time on this story, researching, finding data, and basically reading anything I could find about the history of the Owlet and how people have fared with it over the years. For the story, I also interviewed:

• Dr. Jenelle Ferry, a neonatologist at Pediatrix Medical Group

• Dr. Natasha Burgert, a pediatrician and child health expert at Kansas City-based Pediatric Associates

• Dr. Raj Dasgupta, chief medical advisor at Sleepopolis

• and a representative from the American Academy of Pediatrics

So is Owlet Worth the $300 Cost?

The main questions I needed to answer were: Can the Owlet Sock reduce the risk of SIDS? Is the technology going to provide peace of mind for anxious parents? Basically, should you put this pricey device on your baby registry or buy it yourself?

Well… the consensus was that no, Owlet can’t prevent sleep-related deaths like SIDS and they don’t even claim that they can, many anxious parents became more anxious due to the constant monitoring, and an infant who needs monitoring due to a medical condition will already be treated for such by their pediatrician. That last point means that, if your child can truly benefit from a monitor, your pediatrician will tell you and prescribe such a device. And it’ll be temporary.

SORRY, Y’ALL!

That doesn’t necessarily mean that you shouldn’t get the Owlet Sock. The FDA Clearance means that the sock does what it says it does: monitors some of your baby’s biomarkers. And only you can know if something like this will make you more anxious. But I’ll tell you that all the experts I spoke with—and some of the previous reporting out there—point to the high potential of “false alarms” with the sock.

Additionally, they were worried about “alarm fatigue” and how parents can get desensitized due to so many false alarms—or worse, some parents can become complacent due to trust in the infant wearable monitor and therefore decrease their focus on safe sleep standards. That ain’t good, people!

Basically, unless your baby has a chronic medical condition or illness, was in the ICU after birth, or you’ve got a family history of SIDS, a continuous monitoring device like the Owlet sock “offers little value for the cost and stress they commonly bring,” Dr. Burgert told me for the Yahoo Life story.

Want to *actually* reduce the risk of SIDS? Then read this.

Anyway, I’ll leave this here: You can certainly still invest in the Owlet Sock. Nobody is stopping you, and you definitely won’t be the only one. If you have the money and that’s how you want to spend it, then by all means!

But do try to think critically about what the research and experts say. In the long run, your money may be better spent investing in new SIDS research (like this study about a brain abnormality that came out earlier this year) or making sure that your household and sleep environments are as safe as possible to prevent the risk of suffocation—which is the only leading cause of infant death that we have any control over.

And for fuck’s sake, don’t put your baby to sleep laying on their stomach. Safe Sleep Guidelines say ONLY ON THEIR BACKS!

Join me in conversation: Did you get the old-school Owlet Sock before the FDA forced it off the market in 2021? If you did, what was your experience like? If you have never bought into this wearable monitor technology, why not? I’d love to hear from all of you!

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Talk soon,
Irina (she/her) - raising a March 2020 gen alpha kid

P.S. I have to take a minute to rant about how the stock photo tool here in our lovely Substack is racist. I mean, really, pretty much all stock photo collections have a diversity problem—meaning that the imagery is so heavily dominated by white and light-skinned people that you’d think Black and Brown individuals barely exist.

A study from earlier this year found that the vast majority of stock photos are of light skinned people (duh). But the really painful part is that, even though half of the images they found have someone who seems to be from a marginalized group, even most of those folks were light-skinned. Only one stock photo search term (vaccination) had dark skin tones in 20% of its images.

As an editor who also happens to be a bisexual Latina, diversity and inclusion have always been a part of my “brand” so to speak. And diverse representations in online imagery is very important because, as I mentioned above, the default for photos is “white” but that’s not the default for *people*—which is why I was absolutely horrified to discover that there was exactly ONE dark-skinned baby when I searched for “baby feet” in the Substack stock photo database.

To anyone saying that these days there is too much attention being paid to diversity “issues” and that the whole “representation matters” dialogue has gone too far: YOU ARE DELUSIONAL. And also, fuck you very much.