Tech for babies is booming. Here’s what one parent found helped the most.

Last spring when my wife and I were preparing to welcome our first child we started a list of baby gear a rite of passage for parents The difference with our list or so I thought was that it would contain only the best stuff because it was vetted by me a tech columnist with years of experience testing products After our baby arrived in the summer I learned I was wrong It turns out there is no best baby gear because what worked for other parents often didn t work for us Even though I had picked a top-rated stroller its wheels were inadequate for our neighborhood s pothole-riddled streets The electronic bottle warmer listed as a must-have by various Redditors was too slow at heating up milk for our vocal newborn The Snoo the robotic bassinet with a cult following did nothing to lull our little one to sleep Now past the sleepless nights of the newborn phase my wife and I wound up with a well-rested content child What helped in part was pivoting to a different approach with baby gear analyzing our particular problems as new parents and looking for tactics to solve them My highs and lows with baby tech may not be every parent s experience But the lessons I learned from my misadventures from internet-controlled night lights to nanny cams should be universally applicable Here s what to know Upgrading knowledge triumphs over fancy gizmos including Snoo When our daughter was first born she snoozed effortlessly in a no-frills bassinet I bought from another parent through Facebook Marketplace But when she turned about months old she began loudly protesting naps That made me consider the Snoo the chicly designed white bassinet that automatically sways and plays sounds to soothe a fussy baby Among parents the Snoo is a polarizing product not just because of its price or a month for rental Several of my friends with the privilege of owning one called the device a godsend that saved them from the brink of insanity Others mentioned their child hated it I had read the book about soothing newborns written by the Snoo s creator Harvey Karp so I requested to give it a shot Fortunately a friend lent me a Snoo I downloaded a companion app and paid a subscription for access to particular of its extra perks including a rocking motion that mimicked the bumps and jostles of riding in a car My baby was initially unfazed when we strapped her in But when she started crying and the bassinet reacted by swaying and playing white noise she cried even louder After a inadequate weeks of experimenting we reverted to her old-school bassinet A spokesperson for Happiest Baby the company behind Snoo announced it was ideal to acclimate babies to the product as soon as they were born because it simulates the movements and sounds a baby experiences inside a mother s womb However the company advertises Snoo as suitable for babies up to months of age and my daughter fit this criterion The tech that eventually helped E-books One late night I downloaded a e-book by a pediatrician about infant psychology and sleep I began to understand why my -month-old was fighting sleep and how to anticipate when she would need a nap We tried the book s methods and within a insufficient weeks my baby began napping regularly and sleeping through the night Knowledge is more powerful and cheaper to access than a fancy bassinet The best tech are those that help parents with broken brains My wife and I exposed the largest part useful baby tech to be smartphone apps that helped us process information in our sleep-deprived state The free app Huckleberry a tool for parents to log bottle feedings diaper changes and sleep durations for their babies was crucial for my wife and me to communicate the baby s demands with each other when we took turns working shifts It also provided useful information for our pediatrician Also helpful was the Centers for Disorder Control and Prevention s free Milestones app which shows a checklist of a child s expected developmental milestones at each age such as learning to roll at months When she was about months old our daughter began to crawl We could no longer take our eyes off her so we shifted to consuming more parenting literature through a different medium audiobooks Single-task baby tech is unnecessary Lots of popular baby tech are gadgets that serve a single purpose The Hatch Rest a night light that plays white noise is a product on countless parents lists of must-haves for helping babies sleep The Nanit Pro a webcam that can alert you to a baby s movements and cries is another So is the Philips Avent electronic bottle warmer which heats up a bottle of refrigerated milk with the press of a button in a limited minutes I received all of those products as gifts through our registry Though I liked using them I ultimately realized other products I already owned could accomplish the same tasks Nanit Webcam Price It had an impressive set of features for monitoring our baby including a tool that automatically detected what time I put her to bed and what time she woke up But that feature required the camera to be mounted on a tall tripod against a wall to get a bird s-eye view of the crib which was unfeasible with the layout of our bedroom We used the Nanit just like any webcam for periodically checking on the video feed of our child in her crib That could also be done with any general-purpose defense camera like the indoor Nest Cam Hatch Rest s Night Light Price Our baby slept better in pitch dark so the Hatch Rest the colors of which can be changed through a smartphone app proved unhelpful Maybe when our daughter is older she will appreciate that the light can be set on a timer so it illuminates when it s time for her to wake up We used only the feature for playing white noise When we traveled we used a tablet or smartphone to play white noise in the hotel room making a dedicated sound machine superfluous Philips Avent Bottle Warmer Price Related Articles New D mechanism could soon bring surgeons closer to patients in Africa s preponderance remote regions Constituents companies in Colorado lost billion in field value on Friday Owner of The North Face Vans among Colorado companies hit with worst one-day shares loss following tariff concerns Vail Resorts cutting human information positions in Broomfield Stem Ciders sells Lafayette property for M Initially it seemed useful but every caregiver for our daughter including relatives my wife myself and now our nanny stopped using it We each independently realized that a metal coffee mug partly filled with hot water from the sink was faster This is not to say that any of the aforementioned products won t work well for another parent But the complication with the premise of the best baby gear is that it requires any two infants to be alike which is rarely the scenario It s best to get to know your baby before starting a list rather than the other way around This article originally appeared in The New York Times Get more business news by signing up 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