Our oldest son, Jack, slept through the night in his own crib at 3 weeks old. We thought we were CRUSHING it as parents. Then we had our second child, Noah, and were instantly humbled. Noah is the sweetest baby, but he doesn’t sleep unless someone is holding him. We tried everything – swaddled, unswaddled, crib, chest, contact naps, no contact naps – the kid doesn’t need sleep apparently. That said – his father and I definitely DO need the sleep so we ordered this insanely expensive bassinet at 3am one night in desperation – hoping it would give us the longer sleep stretches we needed so badly. So now that we’ve been snoo-ing it up for the last few weeks – did it work? Do we like it? Will we continue using it? and most importantly – was it worth the price tag? Let’s find out below!
SNOO REVIEW: IS THIS FANCY BASSINET WORTH THE $$$?
First of all, I want to start with this: you don’t NEED this to be a good parent. Is it nice to be able to grab all the fancy things for your baby, absolutely. Is it 100% necessary to spend thousands of dollars on your newborn baby? Nope not at all. We are all just doing our best to raise our babies and not be zombies while doing it. Ok. Moving on!
WHAT IS THE SNOO?
Created by Dr. Harvey Karp, SNOO is a responsive bassinet that adds sleep by responding to a baby’s cries with white noise and motion to soothe fussing.
It gently rocks the baby back and forth while they sleep to keep them asleep longer. The bassinet reacts to the baby crying by increasing the motion and the white noise to soothe them back to sleep.
We decided to rent the Snoo vs buy it because 1. you can only use it for the first 5-6 months and 2. it’s almost $1700 to buy. You can, however, rent it for around $159 / month. Keep in mind, however, that the first month will be closer to $370 with cleaning and rental fees attached.
The Snoo sounded WAY too good to be true so we rented it with a grain of salt. We hoped it would help Noah sleep longer through the night and help us get more sleep as a result as well. At the time of our purchase, Noah was only doing 1-2 hour stretches at the most at night and pretty much straight up refuses to sleep anywhere other than in our arms. That wasn’t ideal because we were way too tired at night for that to be safe. Adam and I really need sleep to function so going on virtually none days at a time wasn’t good for us and it wasn’t safe for Noah.
Noah was about 6 weeks old when our Snoo arrived. We were hoping he was still little enough for it to make a difference for him! The instructions that come with the bassinet do say that it can take 3-7 days for it to make a significant difference. At this point, we were truly wishing for a miracle.
The first night, we didn’t see a huge difference – except that we could get Noah down in the bassinet after feeding and changing without too much protect. It would usually take us an hour+ to just do the transition from arms to crib. We didn’t see a big difference in how long he slept until about night 3 when he got his first 4 hour sleep stretch in. That was a big deal for us.
After night 3, he was consistently doing between 2.5-3.5 hours with the occassional 4 hour stretch. All of which was better than he was doing previously. We are a few weeks into it now, and while he is not sleeping totally through the night, he’s also only 8 weeks old. I don’t expect him to do 6-8 hours yet. The goal was to see an improvement, which I believe we did.
The next thing we were looking at were naps in the bassinet. Up until the Snoo arrived we hadn’t been able to do ANY naps in the crib. Noah would wake up immediately or only get 10-15 minutes at a time. I was having to do contact naps the entire time. Now, I love snuggling with my kids and I love holding Noah while he sleeps. But I want him to at least be able to sleep in the bassinet if I need him to. If I choose to hold him while he sleeps – or if he sleeps on the go either in the carrier or the car seat – that’s one thing, but there are times when I need to do things or tend to Jack when Adam isn’t home or he is working and I HAVE to be able to set him down every now and then.
After getting the Snoo, Noah does consistent daily naps in his bassinet anywhere from 30 minutes to 2 hours. It’s been a game changer for him! He is less fussy, he’s happier and there haven’t been any tears involved at all. Just gentle rocking and white noise.
The only potential con I can see besides the price to the Snoo is people DO say that weaning off the rocking can be difficult. I can see that but I think sleep training will help. It (fingers crossed) shouldn’t be much different that going from rocking in a parents arms the whole time to sleeping still in a crib. We sleep trained Jack and it was crucial to his well-being and we will also sleep train Noah when he’s old enough! We haven’t crossed that bridge yet BUT when it is time to wean him off the Snoo, I will make sure to update this post.
So all in all – would I recommend the Snoo? Yes! If you have the extra money and you are willing to shell it out, why not? You can rent it for much cheaper than you can buy it and you can rent it month to month. So if it doesn’t work, you can send it back. You aren’t locked into any amount of time. We don’t regret the purchase at all!
