Today I want to share with you my opinion on one of the hottest baby products on the market:
The Snoo
If you’re a Snoo devotee — don’t worry, I’m not going to talk trash, I promise!
I don't think a week goes by where I don't have someone ask me my opinion on the Snoo.
If you’re a Snoo fan, don't worry, I'm not going to trash the Snoo! I think most people are surprised to hear that I don't hate it! I think it definitely has some good attributes.
But, like any sleep-assisting mechanism, it's not without its disadvantages. So today, I really want to lay out the pros and cons to this hot baby product.
If you’re unfamiliar with the Snoo, let me give you the DL…
The Snoo is a smart bassinet that was created by Dr. Harvey Karp, a world-renowned pediatrician who wrote the book The Happiest Baby on the Block. This parenting book details the 5 S's, which are used to help calm your baby:
The 5 S’s
Swaddle
Side or Stomach Position
Shush
Swing
Suck
The Snoo works by incorporating some of these 5 S’s; namely Swaddling with built-in swaddle, Shushing with white noise, and Swinging with smart-triggered motion, to help your baby fall asleep — and stay asleep.
The Snoo is a very smart prop.
Let’s face it, the Snoo does it all.
Auto-triggered motion combined with white noise helps to keep baby sleeping, while swaddling keeps baby feeling secure and helps with their Moro reflex. When baby inevitably wakes up in the middle of the night (as all babies do), the Snoo detects crying with microphone sensors and adjusts the intensity of the white noise while gradually increasing motion. After a few minutes, if baby is still crying, the bassinet stops, signaling to mom it’s time to come and feed, as baby's likely hungry if they’re still awake.
The nice thing about this product is that, when baby's not hungry and just wakes up in-between sleep cycles, the Snoo does the dirty work for parents. It rocks baby just like mom would to put baby back to sleep. As a result, parents are going to get more sleep, and hey — we can't argue with that! The newborn phase is very exhausting and every extra hour of uninterrupted sleep that parents can get is a huge benefit for the entire family.
However, it is still a prop.
(Not sure what a sleep prop is? Check out Tip #3 in this blog post to learn more about them!)
By the time baby is 6 months old and it’s time to graduate from the Snoo, they have relied on this sleep prop to fall asleep and stay asleep since birth. It can be a tough association to break.
What about the Snoo’s wean-down feature?
The Snoo does have a wean-down feature, which works by slowly decreasing the intensity and the frequency of the bassinet’s rocking and white noise until the baby is more independent and no longer relies on the device for sleep. However, it isn’t always100% effective and parents find, like with any other sleep prop, sleep training is still needed (check out this blog post to learn more about sleep training).
I recently polled parents using the Snoo on my Instagram about their experience using the wean-down feature. When asked if they were successful using the Snoo’s wean-down feature to transition their baby to the crib, only about 25% of 20 parents said they were successful.
Now, I know this isn’t a scientific research study, but I bring this poll up because I see parents all the time who were unsuccessful using the wean-down feature of the Snoo and still needed to sleep train, and needed to enlist the help of a professional to do so. So I wanted to make sure that my feedback isn’t biased due to the nature of my work.
Let me explain why introducing props in the newborn phase can sometimes lead to issues later…
The way to look at the Snoo is that it’s the same as feeding or rocking your baby to sleep during the newborn phase. The props work well during the newborn phase but once they grow and develop, they can become problematic and lead to issues falling and staying asleep.
Here’s what’s happening: as babies get older, their sleep becomes lighter, and in between those sleep cycles, they become more aware that the prop they fell asleep with is missing — and that's alarming. They think, “Hey! What happened to mom? I was just in her arms and now I'm in my crib by myself… what just happened??” It would be similar to you falling asleep in your bed and waking up on the front lawn — you would wake up in the middle of the night and be concerned that you were no longer in your bed.
That said, if their prop is missing overnight it can cause them to wake up fully and since they don’t know how to fall back to sleep independently, they need their parents to recreate the bedtime routine in order to go back to sleep. This is why teaching a baby to fall asleep without props allows them to sleep through the night. Their environment stays consistent so there is no cause for alarm in between sleep cycles and they can seamlessly connect sleep cycles just like we do.
All that being said, the Snoo can buy you some more sleep in the newborn phase, and the wean-down feature may help your baby to learn to gradually fall asleep independently. But keep in mind this feature doesn’t work for every baby.
From what I've witnessed in my own anecdotal experience and through questioning my clients and Instagram audience, the verdict stands: for most parents, the wean-down feature is hit-or-miss. Sleep training is often still needed.
So… should you buy the Snoo? As a sleep consultant, here’s my answer:
Look, before I was a sleep consultant, would I have bought the Snoo? Yes! Absolutely!!! I was working full-time when my kids were young and if I could buy or rent a device that was going to buy me more sleep, then heck yeah, sign me up! However, now that I'm a sleep consultant and have education on newborn and baby sleep, plus the experience of working with thousands of families, I now know that in the newborn phase you can actually teach your baby to fall asleep — somewhat — independently.
Hold up, Kelly. I thought we couldn’t sleep train before 4 months old?
Correct — proper sleep training really can’t begin before four months of age. However, there are some very important skills you can start teaching your child during the newborn phase that will set you and your little one up for sleep success early on and in the future.
I have helped tons of families teach their newborn babies to fall asleep from a drowsy-but-awake state. And once the families are able to accomplish that successfully, their newborns typically only wake up if they're hungry — just like with the Snoo! It usually only takes a few nights of putting your baby down and giving them a little bit of space to learn how to fall asleep more independently to achieve this.
The newborn phase has an added benefit that I love: you don't have to let your baby protest (cry) like you might have to when they’re over 4 months for proper sleep training. You do have to give them some space to be frustrated when they're over 4 months, but in the newborn phase, you can use a technique called pick-up-put-down, where anytime they're crying, you pick them up, get them nice and calm, and put them back in the bassinet.
So it's a very gentle approach in the newborn phase, it's very effective, and only takes a few days. The nice thing about doing the hard work upfront in the newborn phase is that, as they get older, you can put them down more awake, and then very little (if any) sleep training is needed.
Here are a couple alternative solutions:
I hope that this review of the Snoo has helped you to make a more informed decision on whether or not you're going to pursue it. Like I said, I do not blame parents for wanting this product! However, I don't think it's 100% necessary.
I’d recommend, instead, to either a) buy a sleep course on newborn sleep or b) work with a sleep consultant to set a good, healthy foundation of independent-ish sleep skills upfront (as we know, in the newborn phase they cant be fully independent, hence the term independent-ish). Trust me. It is the way to go! I wish I would’ve done that when I had newborns!
Bought the Snoo and having trouble with the wean-down feature? Or maybe you want to learn more about sleep shaping in the newborn phase? We’d love to be a part of your journey.
If you've already bought the Snoo and you're having difficulties weaning off of it and need assistance, we would love to help you. You can book a 15 minute discovery call or even just go ahead and a buy a private sleep consultation with either me or a member of the sleep squad.
Or, if you're a new mom, or pregnant, and want to learn how to teach your newborn how to fall asleep from a drowsy-but-awake state, we can help you with that, too.
Thanks so much for reading and I hope you have a wonderful day — and a good night's sleep!
All of our Sleep Squad members have completed Sleep Sense Training and the Kelly Murray Sleep mentorship program. Kelly continues to support, guide and oversee the Sleep Squad as they work with each family. This way, all clients experience the same amazing results (and lots and lots of sleep), regardless of who supports them.
Sweet Dreams
Kelly Murray is a certified sleep coach and an award-winning pediatric sleep consultant based in Chicago offering sleep coaching services nationwide.
