Last spring, when my wife and I were preparing to welcome our first child, we started a list of baby tools – a passer -by for parents. The difference with our catalog, or so I thought, was that it would only contain the best things because he was controlled by me, a technician with 20 years of testing experience.
After our baby arrived in the summer, I learned that I was wrong.
It turns out that there are no better baby tools, because what worked for other parents often didn’t work for us. Although I had chosen a top trolley, its wheels were inadequate for the streets of our neighborhood. The electronic warm bottle referred to as a must-have by many Redditors was very slow in milk heating for our newborn. Snoo, the $ 1,700 robotic bassinet with a cult, did nothing to relax our little one to sleep.
Now beyond the alert nights of the newborn phase, my wife and I were finished with a stylish, content child. What has helped, in part, revolves in a different approach to baby tools, analyzing our particular problems as new parents and looking for ways to resolve them.
My tall and low with baby technology may not be the experience of every parent. But the lessons I learned from my bad adventures, from the nightclubs that control the internet to the nanny should be worldwide.
Here’s what to know.
Knowledge triumphs over fancy gizmos, including snoo
When our daughter was born for the first time, she goes wrong with a bassinet that I didn’t buy from another parent through Facebook Marketplace. But when he returned about 3 months, he began to complain loudly. This made me look at Snoo, the chicly designed white bassinet that automatically turns and plays sounds to soften a strange baby.
Among parents, SNoo is a polarized product not only because of its price ($ 1,700, or $ 160 per month for rent). Many of my friends with the privilege of ownership of one called the device A GodSend that saved them from the brink of insanity. Others said their child hated it. I had read the book about the soothing newborns written by Snoo creator Harvey Karp, so I wanted to give him a shot.
Fortunately, a friend gave me a snoo. I lowered a company application and paid a $ 20 subscription to access some of its extra privileges, including a rocking movement that mimics the hits and jostles of riding in a car.
My baby was initially intact when we expected her. But when he started crying and Bassinet reacted with swing and playing white noise, he shouted even louder. After a few weeks of experimentation, we returned to his old school.
A spokesman for the happiest baby, the company behind Snoo, said it was ideal for baby crime in the product as soon as they were born because it simulates the movements and sounds a baby experiencing a mother’s womb. However, the company advertises SNoo as a 6 -month -old baby suitable, and my daughter fits into this criterion.
The technology that finally helped? E-books.
Late in the evening, I downloaded an e-book $ 14 from a pediatrician for infants’ psychology and sleep. I started to understand why my 3 -month -old was struggling to sleep and how to predict when a nap would need. We tried the methods of the book and within a few weeks my baby started beating regularly and sleeping all night.
Knowledge is more powerful – and cheaper access – than a fancy bassinet.
The best technology helped parents with broken brains
My wife and I found the most useful baby technology to be smartphone applications that helped us process information in the situation that deprived our sleep. The free Huckleberry app, a tool for parents to record bottle supplies, diaper changes and sleeping for their babies, was vital for my wife and I communicated with the needs of the baby when we were shifting. It also provided useful data for our pediatrician.
Also useful were the freedom of the disease control centers and the free milestones of prevention, which shows a control list of a child’s expected development milestones at all ages, such as learning to roll in 6 months.
When she was about 7 months old, our daughter started crawling. We could no longer get our eyes off, so we shifted to consume more parental literature through a different medium: Audiobooks.
Baby technology of a job is unnecessary
Many popular baby technologies are gadgets that serve a single purpose.
Resting $ 60, a night light that plays white noise, is a product in many parents lists that should help babies sleep. The $ 250 Nanit Pro, a camera that can alert you to a baby’s movements and screams, is another. The same is the Electronic Bottle Warmer $ 50, which warms a bottle of milk refrigerator with the touch of a button in a few minutes.
I received all these products as gifts through our registry. Although I liked to use them, I finally realized that other products I already belong to could achieve the same tasks.
-
THE Nanny camera It had an impressive set of features for watching our baby, including a tool that automatically identified what I put in bed and what time it woke up. But this feature required the camera placement on a tall tripod against a wall to take a face of the crib of the crib, which was impossible with the layout of our bedroom.
We used Nanit like any camera for the periodic control of our child’s video flow in her crib. This could also be done with any universal security camera, such as $ 100 Indoor Nest Cam.
-
Our baby slept better on the stadium dark, so the The night light of a hatch restThe colors of which can be changed through a smartphone application have proved to be useless. (Maybe when our daughter is older, she will appreciate that the light can be placed on a timer to illuminate when it was time to wake up.) We only used the feature to play white noise. When we were traveling, we used a tablet or smartphone to play white noise in the hotel room, making a special sound engine unnecessary.
-
THE Philips Avent Bottle Warmer Initially it seemed useful, but every caregiver for our daughter, including relatives, my husband, myself and now nanny, stopped using it. Everyone realized independently that a metal cup of coffee filled with warm water from the sink was faster.
This does not mean that any of the aforementioned products will not work well for another parent. But the problem with the condition of the best baby tools is that it requires the two infants to be similar, which is rarely the case.
It is best to start with your baby’s knowledge before you start a list instead of the reverse.
