When I was pregnant we knew we'd have to get a baby monitor, this one peaked my interest with the sensor pad for added peace of mind, however, the price put me off. My husband then said 'if we don't get this and something does happen you'll wish you'd have spent the extra money' and, as it happened I got £70 from work as a leaving gift and I managed to get it on offer on boots.com at £85. I have to say this is the best £85 I have spent on my little boy to date (he's 18 months now and I still use it).

At first we had an issue, like a lot of others, of it going off constantly, however, we realised that you can adjust the sensitivity of the pad and ours wasn't set high enough thus it couldn't monitor his breathing unless he was deep breathing. After we changed the setting the only 'false' alarms we have now are if he's crawled to the top/bottom of his cot away from the pad.

The 'alarm' is a high pitched continuous beep which doesn't stop going off until it registers a 'breath' and then the light on the parent monitor will flash red just so you know that at some point it has gone off, it wont stop flashing until you go to the baby unit and turn it on and off again.

I do find the wires annoying but we just altered his bedroom round so that his cot is against a wall one side and at one end we have a unit to stand the baby unit on, the wires then tuck behind the cot so they don't dangle.

Our little boy had a febrile fit just before he turned one, quite common apparently, whilst he wasn't in his cot at the time, after we brought him home from hospital I found knowing the breathing pad was there laid my mind at ease no end thus no sleepless nights (apart from having to get up every 4 hours to check his temperature just in case!). It was also handy having the temperature gauge as it's an easy way to see if your baby perhaps needs an extra sheet or not. The unit also has a night light but we've never utilised this so can't comment on it.

You can turn the sound up so that every breath makes a pulsing noise on the monitor, but I chose not to do this, just being able to see the flashing green light is reassurance enough for me when I wake up in the middle of the night. We've never had an issue with interference and I'll continue to use the monitor and the sensor pad until such a time as either he moves in to a big boy bed or he disturbs us by setting the alarm off by moving off the pad.

All in all it works out that it's cost me £4.72 a month since he was born (£85 / 18months) which I think is a bargain.