Honest 3 Month SNOO Review
Our honest thoughts after using the SNOO for the first 3 months with Benji.
The SNOO smart sleeper is a smart bassinet that rocks and plays white noise for your baby. The Happiest Baby website touts that it “Adds 1-2 hours of sleep”, “Naturally sleep trains”, and is “Only bed that is able to prevent risky rolling”.
On top of these benefits, it is beautifully designed and fits right in with our decor.
Before jumping into my review here are some factors that may influence my experience with the SNOO:
We are room sharing with the SNOO right next to our bed
We exclusively breastfeed
Our baby is not a big crier, but does wimper and grunt (more on this later)
I’ll also preface by saying we are renting the SNOO Bassinet instead of purchasing. I love nice baby gear as much as the next mom, but I just couldn’t justify $1300 on something that would be outgrown in 4-6 months. The rental program actually is pretty reasonable at around $120/month. So you can save a lot of money depending on when your baby outgrows the SNOO.
Sleep Length: We have been using the SNOO from the first night we brought Benji home and are still using it now that he is 3 months old. For the first 4 weeks he was up every 2 hours to nurse, which spread to every 3 hours from 4-8 weeks.
He is a small baby (always hovering around the 10th percentile for weight), so we weren’t surprised with the frequent wakeups since I think he really needed the calories!
After 8 weeks, he started consistently sleeping 4-5 hour stretches and just recently at 12 weeks did his first 6 hour stretch!
I cannot honestly say if the SNOO is helping him sleep longer or not since we have only/always used the SNOO, but I am thrilled with the progress he is making in sleeping longer.
How well does it work: This is where my opinion of the SNOO gets a bit questionable. The SNOO is supposed to recognize crying and respond by ramping up the rocking motion and white noise to a higher level. However as mentioned above, our baby is not a crier. So this is where the SNOO falls flat for us.
If Benji wakes up and starts fussing I have to MANUALLY adjust the SNOO level in order for it to soothe him back to sleep. His fussing is usually a long period of sort of wimpering/grunting before it turns into full fledged crying. By the time he is actually crying it’s too late for the SNOO to help and he needs us to intervene.
And yes, we did already turn up the responsiveness to high responsiveness (very high responsiveness was shaking him with every single noise).
We also still have the motion limiter on which means the SNOO will only increase to motion level 2. In my mind I know the higher levels are safe, but any rocking over level 2 just looks so intense to me.
One big positive here is the peace of mind knowing that the SNOO design prevents rolling, so Benji will always be on his back. It does this by attaching the sleep sack to the sides of the bassinet so that the baby cannot roll over. Straight jacket-esq, but effective.
Naps: We just cannot get Benji to nap for longer than 20-30 minutes in the SNOO. He’ll happily nap for 1-2 hrs in a lounger pillow, but there’s something about the SNOO he only likes for nighttime sleep. He’ll contentedly lay in the SNOO awake for as long as we’ll let him, but actual daytime sleep in the SNOO are a no go. Ha maybe he is just laying awake for most of the night in the SNOO too… I sure hope not!
I did reach out to the Happiest Baby sleep consultants and tried their suggestions (i.e. go cold turkey on the lounger pillow), but this only got his SNOO naps to around 45 min.
You’re supposed to be napping bud!
So that’s about it for my thoughts on the SNOO! Do you have one? How does it work for your baby?