A sleep-tracking baby sock was one of the best purchases I made as a new parent (and it's on sale)

Maria Diaz/ZDNET

What's the deal?

The Owlet Dream Sock baby sleep tracker is now 24% off during Amazon's Prime Big Deal Days, available for $228 (and it's FSA/HSA eligible!).

Also: Amazon Prime Day deals live: We found 165+ of the best deals for October's Big Deal Days

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ZDNET's key takeaways

The Owlet Dream Sock is an FDA-cleared baby sleep tracker that retails for $299.The Owlet Dream Sock goes beyond your standard baby monitor by tracking your child's heart rate, blood oxygen, and sleep patterns. It has three alarms: a yellow incorrect fit alarm, a purple abnormal reading alarm, and a blue alarm when the sock is out of range or low battery.While false low oxygen and abnormal heart rate alarms are exceedingly rare (I've only had a handful in over seven years using Owlet products), I wish there were a separate low battery alarm instead of the same out-of-range alarm.

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Is it safe to say that all new parents need more sleep? This is partly why baby monitors were invented in the first place. I still remember when video monitors for babies became mainstream, which meant I no longer needed to haul around a walkie-talkie-looking device around my house (I carried a screen instead).

Also: Best Prime Day smartwatch and fitness tracker deals to shop in October 2024

Now, trackers like the Owlet Dream Sock have become so sophisticated that they can measure your baby's blood oxygen levels, heart rate, and sleep cycles, and alert you if anything is unusual.

Such wearables have been a household essential for me, particularly because my family has a history of febrile seizures, which can cause a sense of unease when my children are sleeping. In hopes of helping other new parents who may experience similar discomfort, let me share why a sleep-tracking baby sock is highly recommended.

How the Owlet tracks sleep and other measures

Similar to an Apple Watch or Fitbit, the Dream Sock is worn by your baby while they sleep. It tracks their heart rate and oxygen levels to map their sleep stages. It also alerts your smartphone if your baby is awake or shows any signs of irregularity.

When your box arrives, it should include a sensor, a base station, and four fabric socks in two sizes to fit babies from birth through 18 months. For the years after, Owlet offers a Plus option that includes two additional toddler-sized socks to fit kids from 30 to 55 lbs.

Maria Diaz/ZDNET

The sock holds a photoplethysmography (PPG) sensor that your child wears on their foot, similar to what you wear in the ER to track your heart rate. Through the Dream Sock, the Owlet app tracks heart rate, average oxygen levels, noise, wakings, and movements to learn your baby's baseline behaviors and measurements. 

Also: The 6 best smartwatches for kids

Once that baseline is measured, the base station sends an alert to your phone, suggesting that your baby needs your attention, whenever the sensor on the sock detects a deviation from those numbers.

Sleep regressions and tracking

As a millennial parent, I've sought guidance from educational apps and the occasional forum group to get me through the initial challenges of parenthood. These resources helped me navigate sleep regressions, for example, and the Owlet Dream Sock has been similarly helpful.

Maria Diaz/ZDNET

With enough usage, the Owlet app builds a schedule for when your baby's next sleep or nap should start. Part of this depends on the measured baseline and their age, which you can enter manually. For times when your baby isn't sleeping with the sock -- there are days when I drop my one-year-old off at the daycare, for example -- you can input their sleep cadence into the Owlet app manually.

Also: I wore an Apple Watch and a Fitbit to track my sleep. Here's how the data compared

The app also features historical sleep data, so you can view your baby's sleep patterns and see how they change during sleep regressions, growth spurts, or illnesses.

Why I bought a sleep-tracking baby sock

I first bought a smart baby sock for my firstborn six years ago, hoping it would help me monitor my baby's breathing and give me enough tranquility to sleep without worry. 

As first-time parents, my husband and I were worried about sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), so we had our newborn wear the Owlet more for peace of mind than anything else. We weren't the only ones who thought that. According to a medical study conducted from 2015 to 2017, the Owlet Smart Sock helped 94% of parents sleep better at night.

Owlet Care

Once our firstborn got past six months old, we rarely used the Owlet Smart Sock -- until she started having complex febrile seizures. I don't know if you've ever held a small child during a seizure, but I can tell you it's the scariest thing that has ever happened in my life, especially since I didn't know what was happening to her the first time.

Review: Amazon Halo Rise: A sleep-tracking nearable to replace your clumsy wearable

My family has a significant history of febrile seizures. We were told after the first one that it likely wouldn't be the last, and it wasn't: My daughter had three more before she naturally outgrew them by the time she turned five.

Owlet Care

At that point, the Owlet sleep sock served an even greater purpose for us as parents: It could alert us whenever there were signs of a seizure while our baby slept, like elevated heart rate or low oxygen, helping us rest a little easier at night.

Fortunately, our second child never had any febrile seizures, though she got her own Owlet sock to wear. By the time baby number three arrived, the standard sock had just enough battery left for us to pass it on to her. She wore her Owlet religiously for the first year of her life until we felt that the risk of SIDS was behind us -- but then she started having febrile seizures too.

My third baby's first febrile seizure came on when she was 17 months old, so we sprung for a new Owlet Dream Sock Plus, which Owlet says should last up to five years. This variant comes with an extension pack so it has socks in sizes from birth to five years of age, instead of the standard Dream Sock, which goes up to about 18 months old. With our significant family history of febrile seizures, I felt that buying a new Owlet device made sense, even if she was our last baby.

A note on baby sock monitors

Not all baby socks on the market are FDA-approved. Owlet used to market its sleep sock as a heart rate and oxygen monitor until the FDA forced the company to remove this language from its product descriptions through a warning letter in 2021. After that, Owlet put its baby sock through FDA testing and received FDA approval in 2023.

Also: The best sleep trackers (and are they really accurate?)

While awaiting FDA approval, Owlet shifted its marketing materials from oxygen and heart rate monitoring to sleep tracking. The FDA-approved Dream Sock still tracks your child's heart rate, but blood oxygen monitoring is now available in real-time for 1-18-month-olds, which is more useful than the previous 10-minute average the Dream Sock offered.

The metrics are translated into sleep quality indicators in the Owlet Dream mobile app. When the company's algorithm detects these measures shifting from the regular baseline, you get an alert to check in on the baby. 

Bottom line

The Owlet Dream Sock retails for $299, which is not cheap, but you can purchase it using HSA or FSA funds. Seasonal deals also help. Thankfully, there are no additional monthly fees or subscriptions to track your baby's sleep after you purchase the Dream Sock.

Cost aside, the Owlet Dream Sock is an innovative smart device that has helped me mentally, emotionally, and, to a subtle extent, physically. I've always loved seeing data in black and white, and I often use my Apple Watch and Fitbit to track my sleep. I think extending those capabilities to my kids is a no-brainer.