My heart breaks as we pack up our beloved Snoo. This is my number one product recommendation for having a baby! Read on for our sleep experience, more about what the snoo is, and the best ways to get it discounted.
Why do we love this fancy bassinet?
- First and foremost it’s the safest bassinet on the market. It’s so safe it’s the first device ever being evaluated to actually PREVENT sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS). There have been no deaths or injuries from this device and that’s with over 75million hours of logged Snoo sleep. This can not be said about other bassinets! -Second, it has saved us on average 2-3 hours of sleep a night. During her four month regression it saved us over three hours of sleep a night. As a resident mom who was working 80 hour weeks in the ICU — this was a lifesaver.
- Last, but not least, crib transition was a breeze.
What is the Snoo? It’s a revolutionary rocking bassinet that automatically responds to your baby’s wakeups by increasing motion and sound machine noise based on what your baby does or if she cries. You can also adjust these setting manually on your cell phone. You can set it in different modes like “car ride mode”, “motion limiter“, or “wean mode” (before crib transition). It is very helpful lengthening stretches of sleep as baby grows and also helping baby soothe back to sleep during the four month regression.
The bassinet has five levels of increasing motion it cycles through automatically to comfort baby based on intensity of crying. It also has four levels of sounds that range in intensity as well. All sounds and rocking levels have been proven safe and you can read about that on the company website. The loudest most intense sound is a womb sound that is actually amazingly accurate. For example, baby is calm and sleeping then the bassinet gently rocks side to side and has a baseline white noise going. When baby cries it will pick up a level faster rocking and in noise. If baby continues or escalates crying it’ll pick up another level etc. When baby stops crying it stays at the higher level a few minutes then cycles down a level one by one until it gets back to baseline. If baby cries too long it’ll shut off completely and stop soothing because baby needs attention. You can manually cycle levels on your phone app too. Lily soothed herself by singing so we had to “lock” levels on our phone so it wouldn’t cycle up when she was actually just singing!
The bassinet requires baby to be zipped and clicked into place before it can work for safe sleep. There is no way to roll in this bassinet. Parents find that it actually is helpful to put on a sleep sack or swaddle underneath the sack for a cozier fit and baby wakes less. We used Halo but if You like arms up then Love To Dream swaddle was a popular one from the snoo parents.
I’ll also address some major Concerns people have about the Snoo because I did research on this before purchasing.
“The baby will Use it as a crutch and crib transition will be hard”
- I am a part of Snoo parents groups with over 20,000 members and this has not been the case. In fact it has gone much easier than expected for people. There is a wean mode on the bassinet that makes transitioning easier. “Bassinet Soothing the baby is bad because babies need to eat at night and you won’t bond”
-Trust me, hungry babies cry different. The Snoo doesnt soothe that. The Snoo times out of soothing after a few minutes if baby still crying so you will get up and feed the baby. Or when you hear baby crying and know they may be hungry you just go get baby. You will be up still bonding and cuddling your baby , don’t worry, the snoo is not magic and you still get Nighttime cuddles. “Being swaddled restricts hips and causes problems”
- In 2020 the company released a new sack that allows for hip mobility.
“my baby hates being swaddled”
- Ok then just zip them in and out the arms out. It will still work.
What will baby sleep be like with a snoo?
Most parents find that sleep periods become longer faster and they have less wakeups. That was the case with us. It for sure is not magic and baby will still wake up every few hours for sure when they biologically need to! Some babies even hate it and there is a money back guarantee.
Before I tell you our success story, I want to share that. Lily always went in the snoo awake or “sleepy”. This was not on purpose but because it took us a second to zip her in and she always woke up. Because of this though her crib transition was smooth and she doesnt cry being put down. Another bonus. We did the Taking Cara Babies course and used none of it because the snoo does almost all of the steps for us. When the Snoo didn’t work for a wakeup- Lily needed us.
We started Lily in the Snoo day one beside my bed, and she was a typical newborn waking every 2-3 hours to eat. As the weeks progressed the length of her longest stretch got longer. We moved her to her nursery (which was ten steps from us) at 4 weeks because of her excesssive noisy sleeping.
Peak sleep stretches started at 10 weeks, and in the moment it took forever, I even questioned the snoo. Looking back at her sleep logs on the app I can see she was doing 6-8 hr for her longest stretch at 6 weeks (it sure didn’t feel like it, we were still so tired!), and then 7-9 hour stretch by 8 weeks. Some babies have much better luck with it even! For the first three months we did mostly contact naps and have always paid very close attention to her age appropriate wake window times which helped tremendously (And still does).
She continued to have longer stretches until her four month regression and then she woke some nights every couple of hours and some nights every 45 minutes. For her, this lasted three weeks but we only had to get out of bed MAYBE once a night a few times a week (not every night). We would hear her have some cries and then hear the snoo pick up and she would fuss a bit and then fall back asleep.
After the regression she had one week of 10 hour sleeps perfectly and then started waking up a few times a night having to be soothed by snoo. Then it seemed motion made her more mad. After a week of this worsened sleep and even having to add feeds at night (which she hadn’t had since 8 weeks) we thought it was time to try the crib. We did a couple weeks on wean mode and then went to crib. In the crib she went down awake like she always does, fell asleep, and when she woke up she fell asleep on her own. We planned to do a modified cry it out sleep training but she never cried. She’s slept 11 hours no fussing since we put her in crib.
We had a great experience using the snoo. Sure, babies can sleep great in regular bassinets and some do better than Lily in the Snoo, and some worse. I know it saved us 2-3 hours on average a night because it soothed her before she fully woke up ( and the night feedings with her reflux or the rocking soothing sessions with her alert demeanor took at least 30-45 min on a good night!!) In addition, I typically don’t advocate using Facebook groups but the physician snoo group and snoo parents group gave amazing tips to maximize sleep and troubleshoot things!
Don’t purchase without a discount code! You also can rent it month to month. Black Friday I think is the best deal for a Snoo the last few years it was 30-40% off. We had a 30% physician’s discount but that discount is lower now 20% for nurses and doctors. Military also has a discount code. If you purchase used, call Happiest Baby Company with the serial number because there is a major scam right now of people renting snood then selling on Facebook groups and then the Happiest Baby company deactivates that Snoo because the renters never returned them.
If you have any other questions send me a message!
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