Both my kids are horrible sleepers as infants. There’s no such thing as them just falling asleep in cars as infants – they both screamed to no end unless we were moving 50 mph or more. And I am pretty sure they both were colicky, or at least my older son was.
I knew of the Snoo Smart Baby Sleeper when it first launched, but at that time the sticker price of $1,700 was enough that I made fun of it.
Flush with more wealth by the time we had our second kid, they’d added a rental business, and I thought, might as well try a rental. I love sleep. I hate being sleep deprived. And in those early days, I felt that any amount of sleep aid would be helpful.
So let’s back up a little bit and go through my older child’s sleep history, because it gives more context for the second child:
Month 1: Impossible to get to sleep unless he was in a stroller and pushed constantly back and forth. Fought the swaddle Did not take a pacifier
Month 2: Settled into a swaddle. Did not take a pacifier.
Month 3: Began sleep training during the day. At night, he was also able to put himself to sleep, but woke up frequently.
Month 4: Took a pacifier. Was able to put himself to sleep during the day. Night wakes were reduced to about 2 feeds a night.
Month 5: Night wakes reduced to just one feed a night
Month 6: Slept through the night – 12 hours of continuous sleep. I also stopped breastfeeding.
Now, here comes the second child:
Month 1: We did not have the Snoo. And well, everything was the same as the first kid. He would nap 15 – 30 minutes at a time during the day, never got up to 1 hour naps. To get him to sleep at night, could be up to 4 hours of rocking, feeding, changing diaper, praying, and lots of tears. While he did stay swaddled and a white noise machine blasted, he did not take a pacifier. Sometimes he would nap on top of me from 7AM to 9AM, but that was out of pure exhaustion.
We realized about one month in… perhaps the room was too bright! and we put in black out curtains.
Month 2: I caved and got the Snoo. The first time we put him in the Snoo it was like magic! After it went to level 4 movement and shushing, my boy fell instantly asleep! I was elated….
…and that elation lasted about 2 days. After that, it didn’t seem like things got significantly better. He was difficult to get to sleep, except now it wasn’t me rocking him, it was the Snoo. I was at least thankful my arms got a break. During the day, I did slowly notice towards the end of the month that his day naps began to lengthen towards 1 hour. As I’d eventually learn during this month, stroller walks were the best thing that worked to calm my baby down. On a typical day, he went out for anywhere from 2 – 4 stroller walks.
Month 3: I depended on the Snoo for better or for worse. Occasionally, my child would have naps up to 2 hours, usually this was the first nap of the day, the rocking motion of the Snoo helped. I felt my sanity come back. I could run out to the gym while my husband worked at home, and have the app notify me when my child was waking so I’d come back and minimize the time my husband had to watch our kid while I was out.
During the day, it took about 5-10 minutes of fussing in the Snoo and he’d fall asleep, but I often had to reset the Snoo (it stops after about 3 minutes of crying at level 4).
At night, I would have good and bad nights. I was still waking up 3 – 5 times a night with the baby. I’d studied other people’s sleep arches on Reddit, and my experience seemed to be on the worse end. Once he woke at night, the Snoo could not put him back to sleep. I had to feed him. By the end of month 3, my son went down to 3 feeds a night and occasionally, 2 feeds.
Month 4: The 4 month sleep regression began 1 week before the baby turned 4 months old and lasted a whole month. My son got stronger and constantly broke out of the zipper of the Snoo swaddle. I tried to unswaddle his arms but it didn’t make the sleep better. We were going back up to waking nearly every hour at night. I decided it was time to stop using the Snoo. In addition, I realized even the smallest amount of light bothered my child – including the power light from the Snoo and a power light from my breast pump.
During the day he took to the new bassinet quickly while wearing the Snoo swaddle, but nights felt impossible. I continued waking and feeding my kid at 11PM, 1AM, 3AM, 5AM, before getting up around 6:30 – 7:30AM.
One night I’d had enough and I spent the entire night holding the pacifier in his mouth until he fell asleep. After 2 days of doing this, he finally took to the pacifier! I returned the Snoo, sold the swaddles, and moved to the Halo velcro swaddles. After a week, I stopped swaddling his arms, especially once he stuck with the pacifier, and moved to wearable blankets.
Around 4 months 3 weeks I began using the Ferber cry it out method to sleep train at night. I did this with my oldest around 3 months and it worked. Well, it was met with mixed results. While it worked to get my child to fall asleep initially, he would still wake up at 9PM, 10PM, 11PM, do a feed at midnight, then possibly wake up at either 2AM, I’d feed at 3AM, and then he’d wake at 5AM.
At this point we moved the baby to a different bedroom in the house where the blackout curtains worked better. Nothing changed at first. So I decided to forego the Ferber method, and usually, after 5 minutes of crying I’d come and pat my child to sleep (patting usually means, put in the pacifier, tell him it’s still night time, move my hand to his chest to provide a weighted feeling, then tuck in his flailing arms, then let him fall asleep).
I did notice that he seemed to have even deeper sleep than before. He was alo less fussy when I placed him down for his daytime naps, and did not immediately cry when he sensed the bed – this was not the case with the Snoo, where my baby cried every. single. time. he realized it was nap time.
Month 5: Right around the time my baby turned 5 months something seemed to start clicking. He went down to just whimpering cry around 10PM, that was very quick to pat him back down. Then a feed at midnight, a feed at 3AM, and a wake at 5AM. Then one night I thought, I had enough, let’s go to one feed, and at the 3AM wake I put in the pacifier and we both went back to bed. And somehow that did the trick.
A week later, we are now at just the midnight feed, a pacifier and patting gets him down to sleep when he wakes up (which is usually 10PM).
So this is all in how much the rental cost:
4 months of rental, $159 each (they don’t pro-rate the last month if you return early)
Reconditioning fee, $99.50
Return shipping fee, $59.50
4 months of taxes, $12.32 each
2 Snoo swaddles and 1 mattress cover included
= $884.28
6 more Snoo swaddles and 2 mattress covers: $90, which I sold for $90 exactly to someone else
Given that I now see lots of used Snoos on Facebook Marketplace for as low as $500, I probably was better off buying it used or doing the 6 month rental – I probably would have recuperated nearly all of the cost of paying for the bassinet, or maybe not pay nearly $900 for a rental. For all the work and money involved, I think that it was an okay experience. I probably set too high expectations for it, or maybe my baby was a bad sleeper.
Either way, I hope that this review can help someone else!
