Like every mom, I worry about my baby when he’s sleeping. Is he too cold? too hot? is he comfortable? And nagging at the back of every mom’s mind is the worry of SIDS, or crib death.

The latest AAP recommendations of how to keep your baby safe while sleeping have dramatically reduced the number of deaths from SIDS, and following them will make it extremely unlikely your baby will be one of them.

The Angelcare BebeSounds nursery monitor is a movement-sensing pad that goes underneath a crib or bassinet mattress. The pad detects baby’s movements, and every breath they take, and if no movement (i.e. breaths) are detected for 20 seconds, a warning chirp beeps, then an alarm sounds.

It’s also a regular baby monitor, and available with one parent receiver, or two.

I bought one of these monitors to use with my newborn son. We had the occasional false alarm, when he rolled right to the edge of the crib, and when he woke up in the middle of the night and I forgot to turn it off after picking him up out of his crib.

Then one night, when he was about 4 months old, I woke up to the warning chirp. Half asleep, I was wondering what it was. Then the alarm went off. I ran to my son’s crib, and put my hand on his back. He wasn’t breathing. I rubbed his back. Nothing. I shook his arms. No response. I shook him and shouted his name. He took the most enormous inhale. I spent the rest of the night sitting up with him asleep in my arms. I’ve never been so terrified, and so relieved.

This device is not marketed as an anti-SIDS product, or a safety device, and they make no claims that it will prevent SIDS. Always follow all the recommendations from the AAP and use the monitor as a little extra peace-of-mind.

It retails for $80 for the dual monitor set and $66 for the single monitor receiver. Expensive for a baby monitor, but I truly believe this monitor it saved my son’s life, and I don’t believe I’ve ever spent a better $80.

Baby sleeping bags have been popular in Europe for many years. It’s only recently they have started to catch on here too and once you try them, you’ll wonder why we went so long without them.

Baby sleeping bags, or sleep sacks, if you are not familiar with them, are like a wearable blanket that baby’s arms and head stick out of, and baby is zippered in snug, safe and sound.

They regulate a baby’s body temperature better than blankets, they can’t be kicked off, and best of all, babies can’t wiggle their faces underneath them and get trapped, or worse.

Grobag is a European import. They come in chic euro designs, three different thicknesses for different seasons, and three different sizes – Small (0-6 months) Medium (6-18 months) and Large (18 months-3 years). Grobags are expensive, running around $50 a bag, but they are excellent quality, and the bigger sizes are good value when you consider your baby will be able to use it for a year or longer. My son wore a Medium size for over a year, and it still looks as good as new after all that washing and wearing. A bonus is that every Grobag comes with a free nursery thermometer.

Lullabag is a US company, making sweet pastel sleeping bags for boys and girls, decorated with sleeping animals, and for my money, the most stylish sleeping bags around. Their bags fasten with an ingenious double-way zipper which is very useful for accessing diapers in the middle of the night, without totally undressing the baby.

Kiddopotamus & Co Beddiebye fleece sleeping bags have a fantastic feature which is that they zip around the outside of the bag, instead of up the front, so you can put a sleeping baby in one without waking them up. Trust me – you’ll appreciate that! They make two sizes to fit babies up to six months.

Halo Sleepsacks come in lots of cute patterns, and either summer-weight cotton or winter-weight fleece. The newborn size has removable swaddle “wings” that make the best, snuggest, swaddle you’ll find for a wiggly newborn.

Baby blankets are a thing of the past. Your newborn is going to wake you up a lot but with a sleeping bag, waking you up because she’s tangled up in her blankets or kicked her blankets off, shouldn’t happen.

Sleeping bags – an essential for every baby registry!