When you become a mum interpreting baby cries becomes second nature. Your hearing seems to become super sonic, being able to identify nearly every sob and wail.
But some parents aren't as fortunate, like the Whetter family. Both parents are deaf and relay on cameras and monitoring systems around the house to keep their two toddlers safe.
However, these systems aren't as accurate as they could be, often deaf parents are left worried that they might be misinterpreting their baby's cries.
"The very first question a parent has when a baby is crying is, is the baby hurt or not." father Delbert Whetter told Inside Edition.
Luckily, Dr. Ariana Anderson at the UCLA Medical Center invented an app to help hard of hearing parents with that.
Dr Anderson, who is a mother of four realised that she had steadily learned to recognise different types of crying. So she thought that there had to be something out there that could help parents who could not.
She developed the Chatter Baby app, which identifies not only when a baby is crying, but why it's crying. Anderson complied a database of over 2,000 baby cries and can interpret the babies cries with 90% accuracy.
For example, if there are long periods of silence between cries, it usually means that the baby is just a bit fussy. However if the infant is uttering long, sustained, high-pitched wails, they're probably in pain.
For families like the Whetters the app could be a life-saver.
"It would help the children be safe if right away it's not a struggle to figure out what's going on," deaf mother Sanaz Whetter explained.
Peace of mind of parents- something that is always welcomed.
