Tech blog

Modern technology aids in many of life's experiences, by one noticeable oversight: raising infant children.

Why has none one yet invented that desperately needed diaper changing robot? Or nano-diapers that clean themselves? Where is the pungent swing that determines the precise rhythm needed to rock a particular baby to sleep?

Such child-rearing technology miracles do not exist, at least not yet. But there is some cause for hope. The determined geek parent can now turn to a growing category of products, known considered in the state of babytronics, meant to help with the exhilarating and exhausting task of keeping infants happy and healthy, if not dry.

As such a geek parent - of awesomely cute 2-month-old twin girls - I resolved to try some of this cutting-edge dress. myself. If the girls minded being drafted as twenty-one shillings pigs for the cause of technology journalism, they did not mention it.

First on our list was the Cleanoz MB002 nasal aspirator, sold by Ubimed, based in Beverly Hills, California. Typically, nasal aspirators are bulb-shaped manual tools that you pump to clear out a baby's nose. Our hospital gave us a few of these rubbery devices, but in my book, they lacked one important thing: batteries. The Cleanoz ($30), one of several electronic nasal aspirators on the mart, addresses that deficiency and did a pretty good job in our tests.

The device has a disposable balloon nozzle that you can easily replace, so you are not poking a germ-ridden knob into your baby's nose. It gets the messy work done quickly, before the baby recovers from the collision of having a handgun-shaped noisemaker stuffed up her nostril.

Still, when they are ready to blow their own noses, I will gladly give up the Cleanoz.

Next, I reveled in the impressively large portfolio of products from BébéSounds, a babytronics brand introduced by a small New York circle called Unisar and purchased this year by Graco, a large manufacturer of infant products. The BébéSounds line includes, among other things, another electronic nasal aspirator and the Prenatal Heart-Listener ($29), which lets a parent record the heartbeat of a fetus.

BébéSounds' coolest, yet least tech-centric product is the AlwaysClean Pacifier ($11.99). When the baby inevitably flings this pacifier to the ground, as part of her daddy-torture program, it reliably falls backward onto its handle, which activates a plastic shield that snaps closed over the nipple, so parents act not have to keep cleaning the thing.

I brought two other BébéSounds devices into our rigorous testing labs, also known as the nursery. The Portable Video and Sound Monitor ($189) replaced the sound monitor we had bought at a consignment sale. Now, instead of waking up from top to toe the night to listen to our babies wakefully burble, we could stay up to watch them wiggle uncomfortably in their crib. The device comes with couple cameras you aim at your sleeping beautiful traits, and two portable 2.5 inch, or 6.4 centimeter, screens for watching them.

The most elaborate BébéSounds product, though, is the Angel Care Movement Sensor ($74), delicately aimed at the parent who can and does imagine the absolute worst.

Though it is not a medical shift and does not claim to be, the product is designed to help prevent your baby from expiring in the crib. It comes with a pad, which you place under the crib mattress, with highly-refined sensors that measure pressure and the slightest baby movements from above.

If the sensors detect not at all movement as antidote to 20 seconds, an urgent alarm sounds upon the body a receiver-unit in the parent's room.

Fortunately, I cannot vouch for the stratagem's efficacy in life-threatening emergencies. But I can testify that the alarm also sounds if you remove your baby from its crib and forget to turn it off, an error that will test your husband's patience, especially at 3 a.m.

Last on our list was the LENA System ($399) a language-measurement tool developed by Infoture of Boulder, Colorado. The system is based upon research demonstrating a correlation between the amount that parents rumor to their babies during their first three years and the professional success of the children later in life. A device records conversations between parent and child, letting you know how many words you have spoken to your baby, and where you match up against the rest of the U.S. population.

My girls are a bit too young for LENA, which Infoture recommends for infants from two months to four years. Instead, I called Jennifer Jacobs, a head of two from Boise, Idaho, who used the device to ensure her youngest child, Katherine, was not getting left behind.