SNOO SMART SLEEPER REVIEW
First of all I want to say I have no affiliation with the Snoo or Happiest Baby brand whatsoever. My parents bought the Snoo for us as a baby gift when Skye was born. Whether sponsored or not, my product reviews are always honest. But unfortunately due to the reputation of influencer marketing these days, I think people are naturally skeptical of anything we say about a product as soon as they know it’s sponsored. So I just want to clarify that this is not.
We’ve now been using the Snoo for 12 weeks so I think it’s a legitimate time for a review. We got the Snoo four weeks after Skye was born. After three weeks of sleepless nights and no luck with her sleeping in the bassinet we currently had, I was starting to feel a little desperate. I do love co-sleeping with her and continued to do so after we got the Snoo but I also wanted the option to just put her down and hopefully get more than a 90 minute stretch of sleep!
A friend suggested we look into the Snoo and showed me a YouTube video of it. I was mesmerized watching the video of the sleeping newborn rocking away in this robot-like bassinet. After reading the reviews and hearing from other people that their newborns were basically sleeping through the night a few weeks after getting the Snoo, I decided we needed it. We were very fortunate that my parents were happy to gift it to us. The day it came, I was all ready for my good night sleep…except that didn’t exactly happen!
Naturally, it took Skye some getting used to for the first few weeks. But in those first few days/nights she just seemed so uncomfortable. She looked and sounded super gassy and wasn’t sleeping more than 2 hours at a time. I’m not going to lie, I was a little disappointed that we were still getting such crappy sleep because I definitely had my hopes up. So I started to do some research and ended up getting deep into reddit threads all about the Snoo.
From what I read, it seemed like most babies that used the Snoo right away had better luck in it. We only started using it at 4 weeks so its possible that is why she didn’t love it as much? Also from my countless hours scrolling reddit in the middle of the night, I was able to snag a few tips and tricks that helped Skye get more comfortable in the Snoo.
Here are three hacks I learned about that helped increase Skye’s stretches in the Snoo:
1/ Tuna Cans:
I propped the back 2 legs of the bassinet up on tuna cans…I know, so random. Apparently, the 1.5 inches of the can height prop the babies up just enough that it’s safe but still helps with their acid reflux? Who knows, but it seemed to help.
2/ Double Swaddle:
We took Skye’s arms out of the Snoo sack (the special sleep sack they have to wear in the bassinet). Instead we put her inside the Love to Dream swaddle where her arms were up beside her head and then put that sleep sack inside the Snoo sack. This also seemed to help with her gas and she seemed a lot more comfortable. If your baby prefers arms in, I also read that some people just double swaddled using something like the halo sleep sack that has a velcro swaddle and then put that inside the Snoo sack. I think the consensus is that the Snoo sack swaddle isn’t strong enough to keep most babies arms in and it wakes them up when they break out.
3/ Level Lock:
The Snoo starts on a baseline level of white noise and rocking. When your baby wakes and cries, it responds by increasing the level of motion and sound. After a few days, I started to notice that anything above a level one was actually waking Skye up more and pissing her off. She seemed to get more upset as it got faster and louder. I also noticed that she slept the best on level one, which is a level up from baseline. So we changed the settings on the Snoo (using the app) to automatically start on a level one and then we locked it so it stayed on level one even when she cried or woke up.
So those are just a few tricks we learned to help her sleep longer. But at the end of the day, Skye never really slept that long in the Snoo. It definitely wasn’t the miracle worker we hoped it would be. On average her longest stretch was 3.5 hours. A couple times she did 4-5 hours. One time she did 7 hours. And that was it.
So, why then, do you hear me saying we love the Snoo and why did we continue to use it? Well despite it not giving her (and us) the sleep we wanted, it was still better than what we were getting before, which was 0 hours in the bassinet we already had. Here are some other great things about it:
Pros:
1/ Safety
The Snoo is known on the market to be one of, if not the safest bassinets. In terms of sleep safety, a baby sleeping on their back is best. The snoo sleep sack clips in to the sides of the bassinet keeping the babies on their back which is why it is so safe. With Lily, I used to be so scared that she would somehow roll over, or roll to the side of the bassinet or that her swaddle would creep up onto her face. The Snoo makes all of these things impossible. So for me personally, I had zero anxiety putting her in the bassinet and didn’t feel the need to check on her 100 times a minute like I did with Lily.
2/ Settling Time
Since the Snoo rocks the baby, it cuts down on the time it takes to settle them after a feed. So even though I still had to feed her a bunch of times in the night, I wasn’t also spending extra time rocking her back to sleep too. It cut down my own wake-up times a lot. It also meant that we could put her down for a proper bed time around 630 pm and go eat dinner without having to run back and forth so many times rocking her, putting the pacifier back in and doing that whole song and dance. Once she was down, she was down, even if it was just for 90 minutes. This is why we were so adamant about bringing it back and forth to the cottage. It gave us enough of a break that it was still worth it to shlep.
3/ Sleep Stats
The app is amazing – super easy to use and provides you with statistics on how your baby slept, including wake up times, sleep times and even the times when they were crying or unsettled. This became really helpful when we started to pay attention to wake windows (around 8 weeks) so I didn’t need to remember when she woke up and was due for her next nap.
4/ Design
Not that this is the most important but the Snoo is actually very nice looking. The white and wood design would go well with any nursery. The assembly is also very simple and makes it easy to transport (minus how heavy it is, which I’ll get to) because the legs snap on and off. This was helpful when we brought it back to the cottage because it fit in the car.
So there is a recap of what we loved about it, despite not getting any long stretches of sleep. Here are some things we don’t love.
Cons:
1/ Wifi
The app is amazing but needs wifi to work. The Snoo will still work but you can’t operate it from the app. I’m not sure if you can lock a level without the app which we found annoying because if the wifi was out I would be stressed about it remaining unlocked and waking her up if the rocking or noise machine increased. It’s very possible that there is a way to level lock without wifi but I never found out how.
2/ Weight
Like I said above, the design is great and the legs snapping off makes it easy to transport. However, it is extremely heavy so you won’t be lugging the Snoo from room to room like you can with most other bassinets.
3/ Reliance
The whole point of the Snoo is that is soothes your baby and is supposed to keep them sleeping by rocking them all night but I found it stressful that we relied on it for sleep. Our only options became sleeping on me, sleeping in the stroller or in the Snoo. We were never able to put her down on any other type of surface for sleep because she would immediately wake up. This is not the Snoo’s fault but rather our fault for using it but I would still say that’s the con of using it – they end up needing it to sleep and are not flexible.
And this last point brings me to weaning mode. Weaning mode is a feature on the Snoo that helps you transition the baby from the Snoo to the crib. When on weaning mode, instead of rocking your baby all night, the bassinet is still and only responds with rocking if your baby cries.
From what I’ve read on the Happiest Baby site, the brand is very adamant that weaning mode really won’t work until they are about 5-6 months old. They suggest keeping the baby in the Snoo for that long and starting weaning mode around month 5.
So, for us, things were going well (enough) until around 16 weeks when Skye started her 4 month sleep regression. 4 months is usually major developmental stage for babies where they learn all sorts of new skills but unfortunately it can sometimes means their sleep is a mess. We went through this with Lily too.
Skye started to do 45 min MAX stretches, was wide a wake in the middle of the night after feeds and just not really settling at all. We were going back in her room 100 times a night and I just knew from experience that this was the 4 month sleep regression. Except this time, I had never experienced it with the Snoo. So back to reddit I went.
After another sleepless night alternating between popping Skye’s pacifier back in and scrolling reddit, it was my understanding that a lot of parents ended up just moving their baby out of the Snoo during the 4 month regression and into the crib. From there it looked like these same families were doing more standard sleep training in the crib like cry it out or Ferber method. To be honest, reading this was some what of a relief as I was so anxious about using weaning mode and trying for a smooth transition to the crib. So it helped to see that a ton of families just pulled the plug (figuratively and literally) on the Snoo and went right to the crib.
We ended up giving weaning mode a try for one night. She cried a lot and was awake a lot but I feel like I can’t give a fair assessment of it because it was smack in the middle of the 4 month regression. And only one night on that setting. So unfortunately no tips on weaning mode for you.
Again, my understanding of the Happiest Baby brand is that they suggest just sticking it out in the Snoo during the 4 month regression which hopefully doesn’t last more than a few days or a few weeks and then going to weaning more around 5-6 months.
But because we weren’t even getting such long stretches in the Snoo to begin with, I decided to just give up on it and go straight to sleep training in the crib.
Which is where we are today – me writing this blog post during a 2 hour crib nap – never thought that day would come!!
Speaking of napping, I didn’t really touch on Snoo napping so I’ll quickly talk about it right now. Like everything with the Snoo, I think the more you use it, the more the baby likes it. We napped Skye in the Snoo about once a day. Otherwise her naps were either on me or on the go. According to reddit (lol) its pretty common for Snoo naps to start at around 20 mins and with practice get longer. That happened for us and eventually we got some decent naps around 45 minutes but we weren’t on any sort of schedule and her best naps were always on me.
So…with all of this information, what is my final verdict? Would I use the Snoo again?
Since we already own it I’m going to say that if we had another baby, I would probably try it out again. But I wouldn’t spend my own money on it or ask for it as a gift now that we’ve had this experience.
If you have a friend’s that you can borrow, it could be worth a try because so many people really do swear by it and say it helped them so much. And at the end of the day, it did help us too. Just not to the extent we hoped for! I’ve heard there are also places where you can rent one so that could be something to look into as well.
We’re grateful it was even an option for us to use in the first place and that we still got a few small stretches of sleep per night because otherwise I don’t know how I would have functioned! But this is definitely not another “Snoo success story” like I heard so much about.
I hope that this is helpful and if you have any other questions find me on Instagram or email me!