baby monitor suggestions?

[nukuspot]

DD is 9 mo and we've never used a monitor. I have no experience with them. But now that DH will be gone 40+ hours a weeks and DD is crawling, I want to make sure that there will be no bed roll off accidents while napping. (We co-sleep so she naps in our big bed or her sidecar crib. But she wakes silently sometimes and goes straight into a crawl. I want to make sure she doesn't go straight over the side if I am not in the room.

So maybe a video monitor? I don't know where to start! Help....

[gbutterflykissesm]

I love my video monitor. I really like to be able to see what DS is up to instead of trying to guess by his sounds! We have a summer infant video monitor that we mount on the wall, and you can pan and zoom using the receiver (so you can view different parts of the bed from the other room). It wasn't cheap, but worth it, IMO. DS is a light sleeper, so if I leave the door open or go into the room when he's awake, forget it. It actually broke after 4 months of use (the video on/off button stopped working), which upset me since we paid over $200 for it, but they had great customer service. They sent a new one and then we sent back the old one, so we still had a monitor the whole time.

That said, my DS just started crawling, and I can't even leave him on the bed for a nap, even with the video monitor. The child would crawl right off the bed (and has tried several times!) He naps in his crib or swaddled in the arm's reach cocoon now since there is no way I would trust him on a high surface without my arm around him.

[mamaGG]

I have the Summer video monitor that cost $99 and I love it. The tv part of it is a bit bulky and if you need to move from room to room you need to find a place to plug it in. But it's been worth it to me. I can't tell you how many times I would have run because I thought my DD was awake when she wasn't, or missed the fact that she was awake because she was quite, if I didn't have the video. To me, it's worth the investment.