041: 7 surprising truths about the SNOO

On attachment & sleep deprivation & feminism & community & so much more

This post was created in partnership with Happiest Baby

Welcome to Two Truths, a bestselling newsletter & media brand exploring the many truths of motherhood from journalists & maternal health advocates Cassie Shortsleeve of Dear Sunday Motherhood & Kelsey Haywood Lucas of Motherspeak. Two Truths is rooted in the healing & affirming principle that two (or more) things can be true. Two Truths is a “best parenting Substack” per Motherly; also seen in The Skimm, Vox, The Bump, Popsugar & more.

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The SNOO. You’ve likely heard of the popular, celeb-loved, much-discussed smart bassinet from sleep-focused company Happiest Baby. If you haven’t, the TL;DR on the SNOO is that it’s a responsive bassinet for babies 0 to 6 months. A clip-in swaddle keeps babies safely positioned on their backs; when babies cry or fuss, the sensors trigger side-to-side rocking motion and white noise to help them settle. Many parents report that the SNOO helps their babies sleep for longer stretches and learn to stay asleep longer over time.

The SNOO isn’t new; it was first released in 2016. But in April, it was granted ‘De Novo authorization’ from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for its ability to keep sleeping babies safely on their backs. Back-sleeping is the number one safe sleep recommendation from major public health authorities in the United States, including the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. According to the National Institutes of Health, placing babies to sleep on their backs is “the single most effective action that parents and caregivers can take to lower a baby’s risk of SIDS.” This news throttled the SNOO into the limelight once again, prompting new questions about the bassinet: Do I need it? How would I use it? Will it ever be covered by insurance?

Ask 100 people about the SNOO, and you may get 100 different responses. Message boards are saturated with a wide spectrum of stances on the bassinet: Some caregivers love it. Some aren’t as sold. Some wonder if their babies will become ‘addicted’ to the movements of the bassinet, creating an irreversible sleep association (more on that later); some seamlessly integrate the bassinet into their bedroom setups, packing it away when their babies have grown. Some say it interferes with attachment-style parenting; others say it coexists with co-sleeping and closeness. Sleep experts on social media stand divided. This isn’t news to the folks behind SNOO; Happiest Baby has happily addressed many of these topics in blog posts themselves.

There are many different truths about the SNOO: You’ll find them in the homes of celebrities, and you’ll find them in neonatal intensive care units (NICUs) and nurseries of some major hospitals, where Happiest Baby conducts research on the impacts of their bassinets on infant and caregiver sleep and health.

We’re SNOO moms ourselves: We both used the SNOO with multiple children and had overwhelmingly positive experiences with it. We used it once, then we used it again. We recommend it to friends and family. We recommend it to our audiences. 

For this issue, we’re excited to partner with Happiest Baby to tell you about our own sleep journeys with the SNOO and answer some of your biggest questions about it. Not everyone will love the smart bassinet, of course...but we certainly did. 

This issue explores all things SNOO — including what it is, how it works, and a few truths that might surprise you.

Want to try the SNOO? Use code TT20 for 20% off sitewide at Happiest Baby.¹

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Cassie captures a peaceful naptime (left). Kelsey enjoys a special moment with her daughter while her son sleeps in the SNOO behind them (right).

1. You could consider the SNOO a part of your village

Bear with us: It’s only recently that caregivers have existed in silos. It wasn’t always on mom to rock a baby to sleep or hold a sleeping baby (often while tending to other children, too). Our ancestors had a community full of caregivers who took turns assisting with babies; that’s not always the case today. Don’t have a whole slew of family or friends around to pitch in? A device, of course, does not replace a human, and we both found that from time to time, the SNOO helped us get a break, and a free pair of hands, while our babies napped to the gentle rocking motion they were accustomed to. 

2. You can use the SNOO and contact nap, co-sleep, or bedshare

“Personally, I love few things more than getting stuck beneath my baby for a contact nap; my memories of snuggling with my babies while they sleep are precious to me. My schedule and obligations don’t always allow me to do that, of course — especially after having my second baby — so I would often switch between SNOO naps and lap naps. (I think this helped make my babies more adaptable when it came to sleep, too; I actually prefer that the sleep environment gets mixed up a bit.) For overnight sleep, we placed the SNOO right next to the bed so I could reach my hand in to touch them whenever I wanted. Keeping my babies close to me and being responsive throughout the night — while knowing they were so safe and secure when in the bassinet — was important for my own sleep and my mental health. They slept better, and I slept better. A high-tech device hardly seems holistic at first glance, but I found that the SNOO really complemented my very high-contact parenting approach (including babywearing, contact sleeping, co-sleeping, and more). After all, if you’re an avid reader of this newsletter, you know that things are rarely either/or; they’re often both/and.” —Kelsey

3. You could view the SNOO as an investment in better sleep and more support

While the cost of a brand-new SNOO makes it one of the most expensive baby sleep products on the market, Happiest Baby offers multiple options at various budget levels: A brand new bassinet is $1,695 to buy. You can get a certified, pre-owned SNOO for $837, or you can rent a SNOO for $159 per month. (All of these options come with SNOO perks like accessories, access to sleep consultants, quality guarantees, and more.) Some families receive the SNOO for free: Workers at companies like JP Morgan or Hulu can use the cribs at no cost through Happiest Baby’s employee benefits program (details here). And now, on the heels of SNOO’s De Novo authorization, the company is working to get SNOOs covered by insurance. For now, unless you’re gifted one (this is where we plug cash funds on baby registries!), the SNOO will always have a cost. It’s also important to remember that costs are not always measured in dollar signs; there are (often great) costs to sleep deprivation, too, particularly when it comes to mental health, wellbeing, and — in a paid work sense — productivity. SNOO research suggests the device can help babies (and, in turn, caregivers) sleep for an extra 1 to 2 hours, or more, per night. Which brings us to…

4. Sleep deprivation is a feminist issue — and the SNOO can help support moms’ sleep

“I am someone who desperately needs my sleep; the sleep deprivation of new parenthood rocked me three times over, and I truly believe in the power of sleep for our babies and their developing brains and bodies. When I came across a piece by Nell Frizzell in Vogue about lessons learned throughout five years of parenthood, this part stopped me: 

“Sleep deprivation is a feminist issue. It is a health issue. It is a sanity issue. It is a safety issue. It is a will-that-person-accidentally-drive-into-a-lamp-post issue. It’s a walking into walls, staring into traffic, burning your hand issue. It’s a putting handbags in the freezer, locking yourself out, hallucinating that your baby has rolled between the floorboards issue. It’s an issue that could be solved by compulsory parental leave, more child-friendly workplace cultures, taking women’s health as seriously as men’s, and recognizing domestic work as work.”
— @nellfrizzell for @voguemagazine

I’m one of those parents who will tell you that the SNOO did help my babies sleep longer stretches and find sleep more easily. It’s developmentally normal, necessary, and helpful for babies to wake frequently overnight for the first few months of life. You always want to respond to your baby’s needs and follow the advice of your pediatrician when it comes to feeds — *and* the SNOO may help you get just a little bit more sleep, and that matters, too.” —Cassie

5. Yes, you can travel with the SNOO

“My third daughter was born at the beginning of May, and our first trip as a family was to Cape Cod about three weeks later over Memorial Day weekend: me, my husband, our daughters, and…the SNOO. It fit well in the back of our three-row vehicle and took many trips with us back and forth. Infant sleep can be precarious, and if you want to stick with what you’re using at home (for us, it was the SNOO) know that the SNOO’s legs come off easily and you can even load it up with some of your travel gear. It’ll fit smoothly into the trunks of many cars and SUVs, and — though we personally haven’t done this — you can check it as oversized luggage.” —Cassie

6. You can make a difference when you’re done with the SNOO

When your baby graduates from the SNOO, you have options with how you’ll use it next. Donate it, gift it, use it as a cozy home for your child’s stuffed animals (Kelsey’s SNOO served in this capacity for about 6 months)—or send it back to Happiest Baby for free, and the SNOO donation program will provide one brand new SNOO to an organization in need. Learn more about the program here.

7. Your baby won’t become ‘addicted’ to the SNOO

Worries about babies becoming “too used to” the rocking motion or the sounds of the SNOO are common and valid concerns: Will you create a sleep association that your baby will need… forever? Not quite. The SNOO is designed for infants, all of whom spent about nine months in a body full of noise and motion. Harvey Karp, M.D., pediatrician and founder of Happiest Baby, explained it to us like this: “Babies have sleep associations to womb sensations nonstop for nine months, so why are we ripping those away the instant they're born and saying, ‘Tough luck, baby, you're in a new world—deal with it’? Babies are learning every second, and if a baby learns that they're going to be rocked and that this is a safe environment, the baby is learning to have these expectations of being cared for. By the time they're six months old, when the brain has doubled in size, they're much better able to learn to self-soothe without motion or without swaddling.” 

FWIW, you can also choose your preferred level of responsiveness on the SNOO. At rest (when baby is sleeping), the bassinet could be set to move very gently or even be set to be still. You can even set the SNOO not to respond and simply use it as a bassinet that will keep your baby secure on their back.

We can both report that our children who used the SNOO — and all of our children who we rocked for hours and hours to sleep — have moved on from the bassinet and into bigger cribs and beds. 

A very snoozy (SNOOzy?) corner.

Some final thoughts

The first few months after having a baby can be anxiety-provoking, joyful, confusing, and (almost always) marred with sleep deprivation. They can feel like forever when you’re in them and then a blur when you’re not — something we like to call a forever blur.

If you’re in the forever part of the blur, we want to remind you that the sleep deprivation of new parenthood — like every stage of parenthood — is temporary. We also want to remind you that while certain products earn a place in your baby’s sleep setup for good reason (they work for your family), babies sleep and have slept in countless different ways in different places all over the globe in all different types of homes for millions of years. 

What is right for your family won’t be right for every family. Only you know what works.

Deep thoughts & sleepy babies

If you’ve been following us on Instagram, you’ve probably seen the SNOO in the background of some of our favorite posts…

» To the postpartum moms

» To the moms who want to remember every special moment

» To the mom who’s not so new

» To moms on the days when nothing gets done

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✨ Thanks for reading! To support this work (done between naps, after bedtimes, and before school pickups), please consider upgrading to a paid subscription (it’s just $5/month or $50/year to get the premium experience — every single issue, exclusive content and giveaways, access to the full archive of content, and more). You can also hit the heart button to tell us you enjoyed this issue, share it on social media (don’t forget to tag @twotruthsmotherhood on IG), or forward it to a friend. We appreciate you. —Cassie and Kelsey

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