You’re newly pregnant, getting ready to start your baby registry to celebrate the coming of your little one. It’s time to start adding items to your list that you hope friends and family will buy to set you up well for your new addition. You begin to search through the pages upon pages of registry items, baby lists, must-haves, and baby forums that have a dizzying array of things to get.
If you’re anything like me, you might look at some of these lists and wonder how on earth these things were developed. Some baby items sound absolutely barbaric when you get right down to it!
So let’s talk about some of the strangest items you might see on your must-have lists and recommendations:
First up, let’s talk about one of the hottest (and priciest) items on the market right now: the Snoo. For almost $1600, you can get one of the fanciest baby beds available that helps you learn to strap your baby into a vibrating, humming, sleep-inducing wonderland. The Snoo looks a lot like a tiny hospital bed designed to strap babies into safe-sleep positions and convince them to let you get a little rest by using varying settings to soothe them into sleep.
While it sounds crazy to think of strapping your baby down to get a little shut-eye, there are a lot of parents turning to the Snoo for help. And this may be for good reason. The website bills the bassinet as “your virtual babysitter.” When you’re going on 24 hours of no-sleep, it’s easy to imagine that strapping down the baby and turning on a vibrator would perhaps be the best bet to try and convince a tired baby to let you get a little rest.
Next, let’s talk about the sheer volume of sleep sacks out there. Sleep sacks sound a lot like sleeping bags, and essentially that’s what they are. These tiny baby sleeping bags are intended to swaddle baby for sleep and keep him mostly immobile so he can stay safe and not startle awake. Sound familiar? The Snoo isn’t the only item out there promising that throwing baby into a straitjacket will end your sleep deprived woes!
I am a lover of the old-school swaddle blanket when you have a newborn only because all of my children have managed to wriggle their little hands free of the various sleep sacks I’ve used on them. That said, sleep sacks are beloved by parents around the world for being effective at reducing the startle reflex that causes those mid-sleep crying jags.
Moving on down the sleep ladder, when your baby learns to roll over, doctors recommend moving them out of their swaddles, sleep sacks and Snoos. So what’s a parent to do to try and get some sleep then? Well, you might check out the Baby Merlin Magic Sleepsuit.
This contraption is one I used for my two oldest children with varying degrees of success. It is, however, one of the most interesting baby items I got as I tried to convince my children to please sleep through the night. The Magic sleepsuit is a thick, padded outfit that puts your baby into a perpetual savasana yoga pose intended to dampen the effects of the startle reflex as they’re learning to sleep swaddle-free. Now, while I like a good savasana pose, I imagine not being able to move easily to be rather scary in the middle of the night. But these suits have helped countless babies learn to sleep without the swaddle, and anything that gets parents a good night’s sleep is a winner in my books.
You might be thinking I’m only going to pick on sleep-related products. Guess what? I have more. Let’s talk about remedies to common problems parents experience with babies.
A big problem you might experience with your newborn is the common cold. Babies get stuffy noses, too, unfortunately, and what can you do to help someone who doesn’t know how to blow his nose? Well, you might turn to the NoseFrida! If you’ve never seen it, you might be surprised at this contraption.
I’m not going to lie. I’ve never used the NoseFrida on any of my kids. However, I know many, many parents who swear by this “snotsucker” as the company bills it. Just looking at the breakdown of parts on the company’s website is a treasure trove of entertainment. The NoseFrida looks like a syringe attached to tubing, which is described as the “nose hose,” and yes, you are supposed to suck out the snot from your stuffy baby’s nose using this device with its “disposable booger catcher.”
I don’t know about you, but I did not know what I was signing up for when I had kids. Sucking snot straight out of their noses using my mouth was certainly not on my list of things to experience firsthand.
Last but not least on my list of barbaric sounding baby items is another one by the Frida company: the Windi. Babies are susceptible to all sorts of maladies, amongst the worst of which is constipation and struggling to pass gas. When baby’s tummy is upset, you are not getting any quiet and calm in the home. Enter Windi the Gaspasser! This little device is intended to help your baby pass gas or any kind of constipation blockage, and as parent, your job is to insert this little item you-know-where in order to assist your little one.
While I haven’t used the Windi itself, this isn’t actually a totally new concept. For generations, doctors have recommended the use of things like lubricated thermometers to try and help with this issue, and I’ve certainly used those and had the misfortune of needing to use suppositories for my kids as well.
