UK Edition
Mechanical cots, smart monitors and sleep consultants: the new parent's thousand-pound search for a decent night's kip
With the sleep economy worth an estimated £333 billion, some parents are going to extreme lengths - and expense - to avoid sleepless nights
It’s 2am and the baby is crying. Again. I know I shouldn’t rush to him – I know many reasons why this innocuous-seeming act would be a very bad, a horrible idea. I know that rushing to the cot will only reinforce his grave misconception that this is a legitimate hour for a cuddle.
I know that he has to learn to dissociate those cuddles from the act of falling back to sleep. I know that if I don’t teach him these skills now, it could be years before I enjoy a night of uninterrupted slumber myself (although I also know that if I do go into the nursery, I’ll be asleep again sooner – tonight, at least).
But ooh, if it doesn’t sound like he’s about to vomit… Or wake the rest of the household…
I know I shouldn’t go in. But his wails convert to cries of "Mummy! Mummy!" – and with that, my resolve crumbles. One point baby, zero points me.
So runs the nightly drama playing out in darkened houses near you every night. Or in your own home. Because one of the many constants of baby-and child-rearing is sleeplessness, for both parents and children.
According to product developers and experts, the fact that this misery is universal suggests not that we should accept it, but rather that the sleep sector is ripe for disruption. Because wouldn’t it be lovely – no, luxurious – no, bankable – for someone to solve sleepless nights?
"We’ve known for years that there are very serious consequences to sleep deprivation: post-partum depression, marital stress, breastfeeding failure, even death from unsafe sleeping practices," says Dr Harvey Karp. The superstar American paediatrician and baby whisperer is a hero to parents who have followed his Five Ss technique for soothing newborns.
"It was obvious to me that we needed a tool to reduce those consequences, something that would imitate womb-like sensations through the 'fourth trimester' [his term for the 12 weeks following birth], all through the night."
So he developed one answer: the Snoo. A smart cot with a design that wouldn’t look out of place in many mid-century modern bedrooms, it promises to respond to babies’ cries by rocking, shushing and mechanically soothing them back to sleep.
It’s become a baby-rearing status symbol in America, where New York mummy message boards ping with questions about whether it can really be worth the price (the consensus: hell, yes).
Karp’s cot replicates the soporific effects of driving a baby around the neighbourhood in the small hours. His studies show that the Snoo gives parents up to two more hours of sleep a night.
"You can put your head on the pillow and trust that when the baby fusses, the bed is going to respond," he says. It has just arrived in Britain, where it costs £995 – unless you’re an employee at Snapchat or any number of companies that have made a Snoo the latest perk for new parents.
Maybe you’re a parent-to-be who already has a darling nursery set-up – heirloom cot, bespoke Tess Newall mural (from £600) – but you’d still like tech to help you be extra-prepared. Then perhaps you’d like a Bluebell Smart Baby Monitor, which tracks a baby’s breathing, skin temperature, crying, movement and asleep/awake status, alerting a linked-up adult if the infant has rolled on to her tummy or has any breathing issues.
The parents’ wristband also tracks the wearer’s sleep, steps and mood, meaning it’s a parental well-being monitor, too. Its creators are fathers and healthcare professionals: "I struggled a lot as a first-time parent," says Romi Mathew.
"Being a data analyst [formerly with the NHS], I wanted to use technology to make the whole experience a little easier." Despite costing £299, the device has sold at a respectable clip since its summer 2019 debut. (Rumours that Meghan and Harry acquired one for Archie no doubt helped.)
But isn’t that cynical, you may ask. Selling technology to preempt the unknowns of new parenthood can, to some, smack of capitalising on new parents’ insecurities. After all, no one outside a neonatal intensive care unit needs to know a baby’s heart rate at all times.
But for a certain type of first-time parent, not buying into the latest, greatest baby-care innovations may seem like letting Junior down before he’s even arrived.
"Adults now have much less experience of babies before they have their own, and limited support from family and friends," Mathew says. "So new parents are much more anxious about whether they’re doing the right thing or not, and we go to Google for advice, which just adds to the anxiety. Why not have more control over our own and our babies’ well-being?"
Dr Karp, meanwhile, describes the Snoo as more than a neat gadget: "It’s not just a bed. It’s a caregiver. It’s as if your older sister moved in with you and said, 'You go to sleep. I’ll take care of the baby and rock her to sleep all night. If I need you, I’ll get you.'"
Let’s say you’re over-apped as it is and prefer a more human solution. Andrea Grace is one of the leaders in the growing sleep-consultancy sector.
From her Harley Street clinic, she counsels more than 400 families a year, equipping them with tools and techniques to overcome sleep-onset association disorders (aka: get the little bugger to sleep).
Clients seek her out when they’re "desperate" with fatigue. "People warn you how tired you’re going to feel with a baby," she says. "But I don’t think anything prepares you."
Grace offers a range of packages, the most popular of which is a three-hour evening consultation at home, but she’s firm that it’s the parents, not the consultant, who carry out her programme. "Children have different associations with different people," she explains. "Our job is to support clients and give them the confidence to make changes."
Her general advice is to establish a bedtime routine and limit sleep-onset associations, such as rocking a baby to sleep or relying on a dummy. In fact she disdains most props and gadgets, suggesting they only create new, potentially problematic associations.
"The sleep market is flooded with products that tell you they’ll get your child to sleep – bubbles and lights and teddies and musical things – and none of it really works." (Dr Karp counters that the Snoo has a weaning function specifically so that parents can prepare babies to transition to an old-fangled cot.)
Relaying personal advice near the end of our conversation, Grace has exactly the sort of gentle, sympathetic presence you’d wish for in the small hours in a run of broken nights. I can’t imagine getting that kind of support from a machine (though I still wish I’d had a Snoo).
Of course, the ultra-luxury option is to have someone else take on the misery of the sleepless nights. At the elite nanny school Norland College, Mary Poppinses-in-training revisit sleep multiple times over their three-year course.
"It’s a topic that we’re aware all parents will want support with at some point," says Elspeth Pitman, Norland’s resident sleep expert.
International families of means may opt to hire multiple nannies to work on a rota pattern: one or two weeks on, then one or two weeks off, working 24 hours straight through when on – which means that they can be the ones to rush to the cotside when their littlest charge cries at 3am.
Experienced Norland nannies can earn as much as £100,000 a year for rota jobs. It sounds like a lot. Then again: "When you’re tired and desperate, anything that promises to help you get some sleep can seem very appealing," Grace says. No price too high.
The sleep economy – embracing mattresses, gadgets, baby gear and expert support – has been estimated by one enthusiastic start-up as £333 billion globally. So it’s no wonder that innovators are rising to meet parents’ money-no-object demand for solutions to sleepless nights. All worth it, surely, for the sight of your little angel sweetly dreaming.
Napping by numbers
by Precious Adesina
1 million - copies sold to date of The New Contented Little Baby Book by Gina Ford. Ford guarantees her strict regime will settle babies into a routine in record time.
Some parents claim that her methods, which include leaving your baby to cry for up to an hour, have helped with better sleep. Others, such as former Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg, find her methods too draconian.
16 hours - a newborn baby sleeps each day. Although it doesn’t feel like that as they are likely to wake every two to three hours for feeding, winding and changing…
4,000 - years we’ve been swaddling infants. Wrapping up a baby like an Egyptian mummy so it can’t move its arms and legs is said to help it sleep. Well, four millennia of habit and the Virgin Mary can’t be wrong.
6 years - a parent’s sleep is disrupted after giving birth to a first child. Women sleep one hour less per night for the three months after their first child’s birth, losing a total of almost 12 nights’ sleep. Fathers, meanwhile, lose on average 15 minutes a night, equal to a mere three nights’ sleep in the first three months.
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