At many times during a mother’s lifetime, sleepless and being a mom are nearly synonymous.
Whether it’s listening to ensure you newborn baby is still baby, wishing your older baby would just fall asleep rather than cry, encouraging your toddler to stay in their bed for longer in morning, listening for you teenager to come home after a party or date, or just wondering if you made the right decision on something regarding your child, moms often experience sleepless nights.
But even on those nights when you don’t have much worry, do you still have trouble sleeping? They say sleep gives you a picture of your health, but do you know how to measure your sleep?
I’ve tried a number of sleep trackers before, but with all of them I’ve either had to wear a watch or device around my wrist, stomach, or even my forehead. I’d rather track my sleep unencumbered.
There is now a connected way to track your sleep while being, well, unconnected. The Live by EarlySense is a small saucer-like disc that you plug in and put under your mattress. It tracks your sleep and so much more.
Tracking Sleep And Sleepless Nights
Does the EarlySense Live help you sleep better during sleepless nights? Unfortunately no. But it does help you track your health vitals like…
- heart rate
- breathing rate
- REM
- deep sleep
- light sleep
- number of times you awoke
- time to get to sleep
- time out of bed
Why Are These Vitals Important?
Your resting heart rate should beat between 60 and 100 beats per minute. Should your heartbeat beat outside of a normal range, this is important information to share with your doctor. It could be an indication of heart issues. EarlySense Live will alert of you heartbeats outside of a certain range (which is customizable).
An average adult’s resting breathing rate is between 12 to 20 breaths per minute. EarlySense Live tracks breaths anytime you are in your bed. An abrupt change in your resting breathing rate could indicate that you should see a doctor or that you should use an inhaler if you have asthma.
The EarlySense Live app charts your breathing and heart rate. Breaks in your breathing could indicate sleep apnea.
Adults should sleep between 7 and 8 hours a night and 20-25% of this time should be in REM. By reviewing your sleep monitoring data, you can pinpoint your REM time and areas for improvement.
Easy Set-Up
To “install” EarlySense Live…
- Plug in the power cord into an outlet and plug the other end into the EarlySense Live disc. A green light will appear on the disc.
- Place the disc under your upper mattresses, 6 inches away from the side of the bed, and center it just below where your shoulders will be when you sleep.
- Download the EarlySense Live app, sign up, and connect to your sensor. The sensor connects to your phone through Bluetooth.
That’s it, you’re ready to monitor your sleep!
Live Sleep Score
I have struggled with sleepless nights before and still do occasionally. A sleep monitor like EarlySense doesn’t make me sleep better, but in a sense, it does give me more control over a sleepless night. For one, I can see that I actually got more sleep than I thought.
Second, it affirms me – I knew I was up at 1 am, 3:15 am, and 4:45 am and EarlySense Live confirms this. After a number of sleepless nights, family members get bored with your sleepless hourly reporting, but EarlySense Live never does! 🙂
The EarlySense sleep monitor tracks and analyzes my heart rate, breathing rate, and all the sleep vitals mentioned above in real time. In the app, I actually watch my breathing sometimes before I go to bed. It also visibly shows me my stress level – red indicates a high-stress level.
Sometimes the red indicator surprises me, I didn’t even realize it. This is a good time to practice breathing exercises to calm down. Using a sleep and stress reliever like 2Breathe can help me with this.
Every night before you go to sleep, you can indicate in the EarlySense Live app whether you had alcohol, a heavy dinner, a stressful day, etc.. Then simply go to sleep. In the morning, the app will give you your sleep score.
How the Sleep Score is Calculated
Your total sleep score is based on 7 different factors:
- Total time asleep
- Sleep efficiency (the ratio of the total sleep over total time in bed)
- Amount of time to fall asleep
- Number of times you woke up during the night
- Number of times you left your bed
- Amount of time spent in deep sleep
- Percentage of time you spent in REM sleep (dreaming typically)
The higher your sleep score, the better sleep quality you had. In addition, looking at the Sleep Efficiency percentage gives you a good idea of your sleep quality.
Sleep Efficiency is determined by the actual amount of sleep divided by the time in bed. Anything over 85% is considered good and even better if it’s over 90%. You can swipe left in the app a few times to learn more about each of these 7 factors and how they affected your sleep score.
Monitoring Your Elderly Parents’ Sleep
Using the EarlySense Live + service, you can place the disc under the mattress of each of your aging parents’ mattress to monitor their breathing, heart rate, and bed exits.
Why monitor your aging parents sleep?
- monitor heart rates and be alerted when rates exceed custom defined thresholds
- monitor breathing issues
- monitor for falls – be notified when a parent leaves their bed and doesn’t return within a certain time frame
- identify sleep patterns and changes in their quality of sleep
- ensure they are on their regular sleep pattern – find out when they get out of bed each morning
It’s really a brilliant way to keep “watch” over your parent’s health – allowing them to be independent. Cameras are invasive and take away their privacy, but the EarlySense Live sleep monitor gives you much more relevant information.
With remote Live +, you can track up to 5 individuals (with 5 different Live discs).
EarlySense Live
Features:
- A full sleep monitor which visibly shows your breathing rate, heart rate, stress level, and sleep analysis
- Connects to your phone or tablet by Bluetooth
- Does not connect to the body in any way
- Gives personalized tips each morning upon wake up
- Smart alarm can wake you up during light sleep rather than during REM or deep sleep
- Persistent snooze alarm – when used it will not stop ringing until you get out of bed
- Real-time tracking
- A personalized Sleep Score after every sleep
- Proven to be accurate up to 94% in clinical tests
- No bedside unit needed (just your phone/tablet)
- Can track elderly parents sleep, breathing, and full stats with Live + subscription
- Receive alerts if your heart or breathing rate is greater a predetermined rate for at least 15 minutes
Pros:
- No sensors to wear to bed
- Can track one person accurately, even if two are sleeping in the bed
- Tracks your stress level before you fall asleep
- The Sleep Score is helpful in assessing when you were sleepless and when you were sleeping
- Alerts will be sent to your app if the app detects a breathing rate outside of your threshold
- Uses low energy Bluetooth, so it doesn’t drain your battery much
- One of the best sleep trackers we’ve used – very helpful and rich info
- Can help track possible health issues with regards to breathing or heart complications
- Uses factors based on your age group to determine relevant statistics
Cons:
- Doesn’t work with thick mattresses (over 20 inches)
- Is not wireless, needs an outlet nearby
- Sometimes the sensor disconnects and it takes some time to figure out how to get it connected again
- If you roll away (16 inches) from your sensor, your sleep will be counted as “out of bed”
- Your phone or tablet must be turned on (and be charged) in order for sleep tracking to occur
The EarlySense Live is available through the EarlySense website for $199 plus free shipping. The EalrySense Live + for monitoring others is $179 +$9.90/monthly service.
A Mom’s Perspective
I love stats, so waking up each morning to see how well (or not) I slept is fun for me. When I remember waking up too many times during the night, EarlySense Live tracked it and commiserate with me.
Even when my overall score is low, my sleep efficiency score can be encouraging, when it is above 80%. So this number gives me hope that the night was not a waste. This, in turn, changes my thinking for the day, knowing I slept better than I thought.
When I see a pattern of a few days that I am having trouble falling asleep, I can use my 2Breathe exercises to calm down before sleeping. Or recognize other culprits (like caffeine, staying up too late, etc.), that might be affecting sleep.
Looking at the number of times I wake up could be a matter of temperature in the room or our puppies making noise. I can make adjustments as needed, but having clues from the EarlySense Live app gives me the basis to make changes.
One of the main reasons I wanted to review EarlySense Live was for the benefit of watching over aging parents. We’ve all heard stories where a gramma or grandpa passed away and no one knew it for a couple of days. Just think how EarlySense Live +could help adult children keep tabs on their parents, invasively.
With alerts to my phone, I would know if they got out of bed in the middle of the night and didn’t make it back…indicating a fall. I would be able to keep tabs on their heart rate and breathing, with up or downswings possibly pointing to health issues. It’s a fantastic tool to watch over your aging parents without needing to set up a camera.
EarlySense Live is a valuable tool in assessing your sleep and health as well as that of your elderly parents. What other tools do you know of to keep watch over your aging parents?
*I was given an EarlySense Live sleep monitor for sleep evaluation purposes. All opinions are my own.
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