For those of us who have kids, think back to your most difficult child, the one you brought home from the hospital terrified of because from DAY ONE they wouldn’t sleep anywhere else but on your chest. Or in your arms. Or only in the car.
Or they didn’t sleep at all.
If you were told back then that there was a bassinet that would:
- strap your child in safely
- detect when your baby moved and ROCK BABY GENTLY
- “chooses” which motion your baby likes best
- play soothing white noise
- simulate the sensation of a car
how quickly would you throw your screaming baby into one?
Half a second it’d take methinks.
Anything to get some blessed sleep.
Recently, one ultra high-tech bassinet, developed with MIT engineers (that’s what you need to get your baby to sleep people, a team of MIT ENGINEERS) has hit the market and another has been made by Ford. The car company.
Yes.
A car company has made a bassinet that moves your baby from side to side in a motion that mimics a car.
Just so you, I mean, your baby, can sleep. I’m pretty sure those LED lights that simulate the lighting in a car that surround the baby wouldn’t really help the baby go to sleep. It just might be a little distracting.
On the other hand, the MIT engineered Snoo claims to be a self-soothing bassinet, doing everything from rocking the baby slower or faster depending on what it “thinks” your baby needs, to ‘choosing’ which white noise your baby likes best.
Both bassinets sound simultaneously crazy and brilliant, and I’m still trying to figure out which one I ultimately think they are. They sound crazy because it seems like they are interfering with the natural bonding process of a mother rocking her baby to sleep, and the mother figuring out how her baby likes to be rocked, and what “white noise” baby likes best. Like the sound of mama’s voice softly singing, for example. It also seems sort of dangerous- all that rocking and moving up and down, side to side.
But also, it sounds brilliant because I know what it is to be a desperately sleep deprived mother who just needs her baby to go down for more than 20 minutes at a time and if these robo-nannies were around back then I would have convinced my husband to spend $1800 if it meant we could get sleep for the first six months of our baby’s life.
That’s right. The Snoo costs around $1800 and it will only last the first six months of a baby’s life.
Is it really worth it? Can we really put a price on getting sleep and retaining our sanity? Do the makers of the Snoo know this and are therefore maybe exploiting our desperation by selling us this MIT engineered ultra high-tech device that guarantees it will put our child to sleep but is maybe messing with the natural arc of motherhood…
Yeah. Possibly. Totally.
Will robotic bassinets be a thing of the future? Will it only contribute to a detachment between mother and baby? Isn’t it kind of creepy to envision babies strapped in these devices, their needs met by technology, and their parents relying on these robotic bassinets more and more to soothe their children?
What do you think about these high-tech bassinets?
