Talk to your baby at home with Google Hangouts
Yesterday while waiting on A&E Factory Services to call and tell me they would be late again, I had little that I could do as I had a very needy baby on my hands. Something about being sick a couple of days ago has turned her into the skin-contact monster. We were laying on the couch and I was about to send ITMama a note that Baby M had consumed yet another 4 oz bottle when I decided to go to the future and do a video call with Google Hangouts.
While Baby M was a bit confused as to why her mom was on the screen and not there to hug her, it was appreciated by the baby quite a bit.
Hangouts is the free Skype-like messenger that’s integrated into every Google product these days and can notify and let you video conference from pretty much any system with a keyboard (virtual or no,) a microphone, and a camera or any combo thereof.
Hangouts replaces Google Talk, but carries over the same functionality and expands on it. Basically a name change and a face lift.
Baby M got to see and hear ITmama, which left me with a little less needy of a baby, and a much happier baby in a bit. One thing I did notice is that phones and devices need to be a lot further away than you would think from baby as they will take a baby pounding.
It’s nice that anywhere you can have a data connection you can see your baby in real time… may be a little bit blocky, but it’s her. If you’re not in the mood for a full on baby conversation, or the data connection is wonky, you can also just shoot pictures back and forth.
Sadly I don’t have a picture due to holding the phone and baby and not having enough hands to deal with everything, but when I do I’ll slap it here and replace the one we’ve got here.
Google Hangouts is free and available on Android, iOS, Mac and PC although you may need to download a plugin depending on your browser.