Here’s what happened when I road-tested the Snoo with my baby

Here’s a loaded sentence that I’m nervous to say out loud: My 12-week-old baby is sleeping through the night and has been doing so for quite a while.

Of course, now that I’ve said that she’ll probably regress and start waking up around the clock. But I’m not sharing this piece of information to show-off. I’m simply trying to spread the word so other new parents can enjoy the priceless gift of a good night’s sleep.

In fact, while I know my daughter is a very good sleeper (touches all of the wood as far as the eye can see) – I don’t think it’s any coincidence that it’s thanks in part to the Snoo, a game-changing bassinet that’s not only saved my sanity but also taught my daughter how to sleep like a champ.

What is the Snoo and how does it work?

Designed by paediatrician to the stars and renowned baby and sleep expert, Dr Harvey Karp, the Snoo claims to be the world’s safest and most effective baby bed on the market.

It features a swaddle that is securely attached to the sleeper to prevent your baby from rolling on its tummy, which can lead to infant sleep death, guaranteeing your bub stays on its back when used correctly.

Not only does it keep baby in the correct sleeping position, but the tech-enabled crib also soothes babies by imitating the sounds and motions of the womb.

The Snoo has been shown to give your baby an extra one to two hours of sleep per night and can calm down most crying bubs in under one minute.

Think of it like your very own night nurse.

Designed in collaboration with MIT-trained engineers, the Snoo has an inbuilt robotic monitor that detects when your baby is crying and can rock it back to sleep with white noise and gentle movements that mimic that of the womb.

You simply swaddle your baby in a Snoo Sack, which is part of the device, before strapping your little one into the Snoo so they can’t roll over. Once bub is strapped in, the Snoo will get to work and rock your baby to sleep.

You can start using the Snoo as soon as you bring baby home and up until about six months old, or when bub weighs around 11-kilos.

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Sleep training made easy

On the very surreal day we brought our newborn daughter Edie home, my bewildered partner and I looked at each other and laughed: ‘So, what do we do with her now?’

Having no idea what the hell we were doing, we popped Edie down for her very first sleep at home in her Snoo and were speechless when we saw it in action, gently rocking our restless baby to sleep within a matter of minutes.

12 weeks into parenthood and the Snoo is still working its magic, sleep training our bub all the while giving us a good night’s rest and preserving our sanity. Most nights now, Edie will sleep for six-hour stretches and I have to wake her for her 10pm and 4am night feeds.

The key is to put your baby into the Snoo awake but drowsy, which means they’ll learn to self-settle on their own.

Once your bub’s Snoo sack is clipped into the sides of the bassinet, the Snoo gets to work and rocks bub to sleep using the in-built white noise and gentle rocking motions.

There are four levels of rocking and as your baby’s cries escalate, so too does the intensity of the rocking.

Sure, there’s times when the Snoo can’t always resettle our girl and we have to pick her up but nine times out of ten there’s a reason why – be it she needs a nappy change or burp. But man, I can’t imagine how different our sleep count and mental state would be if we didn’t have this in our lives.

So what happens when Edie is too big for the Snoo and it’s time for her to graduate into her cot, I hear you ask?

Well, the Snoo has all bases covered thanks to its ingenious weaning feature which prepares your little one for the transition into the cot.

Around the four to six-month mark, you can set the Snoo to the weaning function, which gradually eases up on the around-the-clock rocking motion. Once the weaning setting is on, the Snoo will still respond to bub’s cries and settle her but it won’t rock her all night.

As my partner said the other day, ‘The Happiest Baby deserve a Nobel Peace Prize for inventing the Snoo.’

The other huge win? The Snoo sacks mean you don’t have to waste your time with swaddling as it does it for you! But perhaps the biggest peace of mind is knowing your baby will always be sleeping on their back and there’s no risk of them rolling over onto their tummy because they’re strapped in.

From an aesthetic point of view, the chic Scandi design of the crib looks beautiful in our nursery.

The easy-to-use Snoo app

With a newborn baby, you can often feel like your world is spinning out-of-control.

For me personally, I find having information helps me claw back some power.

That’s why the Snoo app has fast become one of my favourite gadgets.

The easy-to-use app lets you monitor and control what level your baby is at on your phone, while the daily Snoo log breaks down your baby’s sleep stats.

It also lets you drill down on your baby’s sleep trends, providing you with a weekly and monthly overview of your cherub’s progress.

I’m not even embarrassed to say analysing the numbers at the end of every day has become my new favourite activity.

The Snoo is worth its weight in gold when you wake up in the morning and see a red line in the middle of the night and realise it soothed your baby back to sleep without even waking you.

The drawbacks

My main gripe with The Snoo would be that it’s quite cumbersome to travel with.

There’s no way you’d be able to pack it up and take it on a flight and when we went on our first weekend away with the bub, we only just managed to squeeze it into the car. Perhaps in the future they’ll release a travel-friendly, portable version.

While all babies are different, my daughter seems to prefer having her shorter day naps in the pram or on the couch. This is only a recent development but we’ve found she is almost outsmarting The Snoo in the day. Luckily, she loves it at night for her longer sleeps!

Trying to clip Edie back in during her dreamfeed at night can be quite nerve-wracking too as often you’ll have to jiggle around the Snoo sack’s clips to fit into the sides, which can wake her.

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The verdict

Overall, it’s as much as a gift for Edie as it is for us and the one product I’m already preaching to all my expectant friends to get.

The Snoo retails for $1637 which is indeed a fairly hefty sum but when you consider how much money people spend on prams, which are simply for pushing bub around, it makes much more sense to invest in the gift of sleep.