Second, the turtle is a hard plastic, bulbous attachment on the baby’s belly, about two inches long and an inch and a half wide. Some children might object to it or just get distracted playing with it. The magnets used to attach the turtle to the bodysuit and the base station are strong, but if they come loose, they are easily lost.

To collect information, parents install a free application for iOS or Android operating systems. But connecting the base station to the app isn’t seamless: It involves plugging an included cable into both your phone and the base station, entering your Wi-Fi password and a six-digit code, and other tapping and navigation.

Once the device is connected, the monitoring is interesting but inconsistent. It uses breathing to determine whether the baby is asleep or awake, and you can set the app to send a notification to your phone’s lock screen if the baby rolls over, breathing changes or other activity occurs.

In my testing, the alerts didn’t initially work; however, the company said it had discovered the problem and fixed it, and I received notifications after that.

In addition, I found that the turtle had trouble staying connected, and sometimes the breathing monitoring would disappear. The app was a little slow to notice changes like rollovers, lagging about 30 seconds to a minute after the event.

You can check in on the baby’s statistics remotely and share them with another person like a partner, nanny or grandparent. The app includes a log of the baby’s sleep behavior and temperature and will eventually offer insights about sleeping and waking times and even compare your baby’s sleep patterns with other children’s.

But at the moment, it’s hard to figure out what parents can do with this data or how it could actually help babies sleep better.