7 ms·

How Harvey Karp Turned Baby Sleep into Big Business

86 points by wallflower 8y ago

moultano 8y ago
If there's any gene out there that causes babies to sleep through the night, it's probably under enormous selection pressure. Parents carrying that gene would have twice as many kids.
- arketyp 8y ago
  And if there is any gene the causes babies to cry when they are in an exposed situation, preventing it from being snatched by a predator or bit by a nasty bug, it too would propagate. Not sure if you were making a prediction though. Tightly wrapped, physically sensing a guarding presence. Who wouldn't sleep well.
- wirrbel 8y ago
  having a baby, especially one younger than 6-8 months, is an extraordinarily exhausting time of a parents life. I don't think that the fatigue in that period is a good predictor for couples to get another child. The memories fade as you see the baby grow, you'll have new things to worry about, too, and then each parent has their own tolerance levels for that kind of stress. So in the end, I don't think there is a selection pressure. Furthermore, with families I know, there isn't much of a coincidence between crybabies and easy babies among siblings. Maybe there is on paper, but it probably isn't the strongest effect. Also, there I see families who became more kids after a troublesome first one. I'd like to add: Genetics isn't as easy as we software people think.
  - Pulcinella 8y ago
    My child sleeps through the night now, but those memories come back crystal clear the times when my kid wakes up in the middle up the night sick or with a fever. I have definitely heard about the sibling thing as well from families I know, but in the opposite direction. First kid is very chill and easy going, parents think they are perfect parents. Second kid is fussy and more difficult and parents realize they weren’t necessarily natural experts at parenting.
  - sjg007 8y ago
    Sex is a motivation and kids are the result at least over the long term pre contraception. We are wired for it.
    - toasterlovin 8y ago
      This will change very quickly with the advent of contraceptives. There is huge selection pressure right now in favor of people who have an innate drive to have children.
  - dougmccune 8y ago
    I can at least verify that I had an incredibly bad sleeper for my second child and had she been a good sleeper we would have had a third kid, but after that experience we’re definitely done. Yes, memories fade, but a kid who wakes up every 30-45 minutes for 24 hours a day for 18 months is something that gets implanted in your bones - you never forget that kind of sleep disruption.
  - toasterlovin 8y ago
    Difficulty of raising babies is the number one reason I hear from people about why they’re not having more. Sleep deprivation is probably half of the difficulty of raising babies. You betcha people would have more kids if they would sleep though the night.
karmelapple 8y ago
My friends used a SNOO from the beginning with their child and it has worked wonders. Multiple other friends who are parents don’t believe the results they’re getting out of it, because it sounds too good to be true. This sounds like an advertisement but it’s not. I just plan on using it someday because of the great success my friends have had.
- wirrbel 8y ago
  Keep in mind, that babies come in lots of varieties. Some babies sleep really really well, others don't. Now some of this can probably be attributed to the babies' surroundings and what the parents do, but also, babies handled the very same way may react totally differently. So this may have worked for your friends, it may work for you, or it may not. Just don't freak out because the magic bullet method doesn't work for your kid.
  - analog31 8y ago
    Indeed, something I've learned from having kids is: Nothing prepares you for having a kid, including having a kid.
    - mrexroad 8y ago
      This. Have 4. Each time was completely different. Our first was by far the worst, it actually amazes me we ever had more—guess our reduced retention of memory from sleep deprivation was advantageous?
      - toasterlovin 8y ago
        It’s almost as if we’ve evolved to forget just how brutal raising infants can be...
- treis 8y ago
  Ive never read anyone that has had even a mildly successful experience let alone a bad one with the SNOO. That makes me suspicious. Even more so is the lack of any sort of study backing this stuff up. It all looks like snake oil to me.
bwb 8y ago
A friend told me about the Snoo when we had our first and it was AMAZING. Put him right to sleep, and helped keep him asleep. My wife was able to get a full nights sleep for the first 6 months because of it.
- subpixel 8y ago
  Can you elaborate? Night-weaning often takes more than six months (read: someone is not getting a full night's sleep during that time frame). Even SNOO's own marketing material suggests waking your baby to feed in the middle of the night.
snthd 8y ago
https://www.theguardian.com/news/audio/2018/feb/02/the-diabolical-genius-of-the-baby-advice-industry-podcast https://www.theguardian.com/news/audio/2018/feb/02/the-diabo... > The diabolical genius of the baby advice industry >Every baffled new parent goes searching for answers in baby manuals. But what they really offer is the reassuring fantasy that life’s most difficult questions have one right answer
bhickey 8y ago
I've got a Snoo on order, if it works it's worth every penny.
icebraining 8y ago
So from what I understand, the US doesn't have a swaddling tradition? I thought that was common knowledge.
- hudibras 8y ago
  We do now, thanks to Harvey.
  - snuxoll 8y ago
    Happiest Baby on the Block was the one and only parenting class my wife and I ever took, and I’m glad we did - felt like we had cheat codes when our daughter got fussy as a baby (she slept through the night within a month too, we actually had to wake her for overnight feedings).
  - surfmike 8y ago
    Right, all my friends who have had kids in the last few years swaddle. It took me a while to realize this is a recent trend.
- dfee 8y ago
  Just be prepared for some funny looks when you state that to Americans as a fact. Or, when you state any stereotypical “knowledge” you’ve discerned from reading online comments as a fact.
  - icebraining 8y ago
    What online comments? I was talking about the article. The mother thought swaddling "made no sense", and he himself said "no one knew about swaddling" at a dinner.
    - toasterlovin 8y ago
      The US is not homogenous. Everyone we know knows about swaddling.
- 8y ago
RIMR 8y ago
I am no pediatric expert, but the SNOO has a pretty terrible flaw: It sensory deprives the baby. Sure, it provides reactive swaddling and white noise, which is helpful, but it eliminates a few important stimuli for potentially most of the day. They encourage this to be used for nighttime, but a lot of reviews I have read talk about it's daytime use too. Too much time in this thing isn't good for the baby. 1. It discourages human interaction. If the baby cries, the machine swaddles it. If the baby is awake and idle, the machine will keep it content. 2. It blocks out view of the world. The mesh sides are dense and rise up high enough that a person unfamiliar with the device might be surprised to find a baby lying within. From the baby's POV, all they see is mesh walls, the ceiling, and whatever faces appear above them. Honestly, replacing those tight mesh sides with something easier to see through would make a huge difference for the quality of this product. Also daytime timers forcing parents away from using it as a day nurse as well as a night nurse. I think one of the most unfortunate parts about parenting is that you don't want to give a baby the amount of attention it requests, but that babies really do need that level of human attention in their most formative years.
- 49bc 8y ago
  That is exactly what it’s trying to do, going off the “4th trimester” theory. Make the baby feel as much like it is still in the mother’s womb as possible.
- Alex3917 8y ago
  > It sensory deprives the baby. Infants can't even significantly move their necks, let alone see color for several months. Once they can roll over competently without the risk of SIDS, that's when you move them from the bassinet to a crib. The whole point of the bassinet is to prevent them from moving around. When people are using this during the day, it's usually just so they can take a quick shower or something without worrying about the baby. Having a mobile over the bassinet should be more than enough sensory stimulation for the 20 min or whatever.
  - UtilityDave 8y ago
    Infants can see contrast. Including color contrast. Interpreting color is the bit they don't really have. There is an interesting digression to be had about amblyopia and the difference between optic nerve presence and use here if you are into talking about it.
syntaxing 8y ago
Hmm, now I am super tempted to get one but $1k+ is steep. Has anyone bought any of the other stuff in the store (like the class and bed sheets)?
- chrisgd 8y ago
  It is frequently on sale for 600. It is on Facebook area sales as well. We only bought it because we think we can sell it for pretty close to purchase price
gdubs 8y ago
Every kid is different. Our first, we tried everything to help with sleep. Karp’s Methods, etc. In the end, “Healthy Sleep Habits” was the most important book for us. With our second, she slept, er, like a baby from day one. At eighteen months she’d say, “night night”, and walk to her bedroom. There’s a lot of learning on the job, which surely played into our first child’s sleep issues. Having an extended family nearby seems like it could help immensely. Biggest things for us were learning to anticipate when the baby would be getting tired and wind down before she became overtired. That and a much earlier bedtime than most people seem to do (4:30 - 6:30 depending on naps and wake up time).
- duxup 8y ago
  You nailed it. Every kid is different, and overtired = not going to sleep. Rituals and good scheduling are where it is at + stupid dumb luck. Our first, we didn't sleep for like 16 months. It was horrific. Our second has been great (with a few stretches of waking up (to be expected)). Last week he crawled up the stairs and said "i go sleep" and asked to be put in his crib and laid down and went to sleep immediately. I was just sort of shocked ....
  - drrob 8y ago
    Any tips? We have a 10 month old boy, and everything we've tried thus far has failed; has to be rocked, hummed and boobed to sleep every time.
    - toasterlovin 8y ago
      Sleep training worked great for us. YMMV.
    - lostlogin 8y ago
      Get immunisations done in the afternoon. They will sleep great that night. The other days of the year aren’t so easy.
    - duxup 8y ago
      Dumb luck.... ritual (do the same things before bed like bath, read books, sing same songs, at the same times etc)... Also take a shot at getting them to bed earlier as maybe he's overtired (overtired baby = not gonna sleep). But everyone's mileage varies as there is no magic solution.
UtilityDave 8y ago
Anyone know if this is anything like B.f. Skinner's crib?
gcb0 8y ago
Is this a paid advert? the article has more adjectives and unbased grandeur i care to count. Almost look like a Wired puff piece.
fab1an 8y ago
Cognitive scientist and first time dad with a 2 month old daughter here. 'Electronically' created white noise is indeed extremely effective to calm down a fussy or crying infant. It also often works instantly, making it certainly a welcome and powerful tool in the arsenal of the sleep deprived parent. That said, I found its instant effectiveness to be somewhat concerning, as it almost seems to flip a 'brain switch' in your baby - quite different from the longer and more laborious procedure of shushing it to sleep the old fashioned way (which likely works on the same principle, but involves lower volume, more frequency variation and, last but not least, actual parent-infant interaction). Bit of a no free lunch situation. Driven by concerned temptation, I did some digging, but ultimately couldn't find any large scale studies on the safety of exposure to white noise in human infants - there is one study in the rat model though that suggest delayed auditory cortex development in baby rats that were exposed to white noise 24/7. (http://www.hhmi.org/news/white-noise-delays-auditory-organization-brain http://www.hhmi.org/news/white-noise-delays-auditory-organiz...) - which btw is exactly what sensorimotor contigency theory would predict. (http://nivea.psycho.univ-paris5.fr/Synthese/MyinFinal.html http://nivea.psycho.univ-paris5.fr/Synthese/MyinFinal.html) While I don't think the majority of SNOO users will operate the device this way, I would imagine the effectiveness and convenience of the device may mean that there are quite a few babies who will spend a lot of time in the SNOO, approaching long term exposure to white noise. I am not suggesting that this will cause long term problems to the infant's auditory development as is the case in the animal model, but it is something to be mindful of.
- fouc 8y ago
  I read that white noise can cause more defuse neural maps for sounds. Supposedly it's one reason why people's hearing can get worse when they're older, because of too much white noise exposure.
- ryanobjc 8y ago
  The problem with advice like this, which could be summed as “don’t use the snoo” or “avoid white noise” is the null hypothesis is worse than the mild application of your advice. The result is parents are over tired all the time and are worse parents at all other times.

86 points by wallflower 8y ago

If there's any gene out there that causes babies to sleep through the night, it's probably under enormous selection pressure. Parents carrying that gene would have twice as many kids.

arketyp 8y ago
And if there is any gene the causes babies to cry when they are in an exposed situation, preventing it from being snatched by a predator or bit by a nasty bug, it too would propagate. Not sure if you were making a prediction though. Tightly wrapped, physically sensing a guarding presence. Who wouldn't sleep well.
wirrbel 8y ago
having a baby, especially one younger than 6-8 months, is an extraordinarily exhausting time of a parents life. I don't think that the fatigue in that period is a good predictor for couples to get another child. The memories fade as you see the baby grow, you'll have new things to worry about, too, and then each parent has their own tolerance levels for that kind of stress. So in the end, I don't think there is a selection pressure. Furthermore, with families I know, there isn't much of a coincidence between crybabies and easy babies among siblings. Maybe there is on paper, but it probably isn't the strongest effect. Also, there I see families who became more kids after a troublesome first one. I'd like to add: Genetics isn't as easy as we software people think.
- Pulcinella 8y ago
  My child sleeps through the night now, but those memories come back crystal clear the times when my kid wakes up in the middle up the night sick or with a fever. I have definitely heard about the sibling thing as well from families I know, but in the opposite direction. First kid is very chill and easy going, parents think they are perfect parents. Second kid is fussy and more difficult and parents realize they weren’t necessarily natural experts at parenting.
- sjg007 8y ago
  Sex is a motivation and kids are the result at least over the long term pre contraception. We are wired for it.
  - toasterlovin 8y ago
    This will change very quickly with the advent of contraceptives. There is huge selection pressure right now in favor of people who have an innate drive to have children.
- dougmccune 8y ago
  I can at least verify that I had an incredibly bad sleeper for my second child and had she been a good sleeper we would have had a third kid, but after that experience we’re definitely done. Yes, memories fade, but a kid who wakes up every 30-45 minutes for 24 hours a day for 18 months is something that gets implanted in your bones - you never forget that kind of sleep disruption.
- toasterlovin 8y ago
  Difficulty of raising babies is the number one reason I hear from people about why they’re not having more. Sleep deprivation is probably half of the difficulty of raising babies. You betcha people would have more kids if they would sleep though the night.

karmelapple 8y ago

My friends used a SNOO from the beginning with their child and it has worked wonders. Multiple other friends who are parents don’t believe the results they’re getting out of it, because it sounds too good to be true. This sounds like an advertisement but it’s not. I just plan on using it someday because of the great success my friends have had.

wirrbel 8y ago
Keep in mind, that babies come in lots of varieties. Some babies sleep really really well, others don't. Now some of this can probably be attributed to the babies' surroundings and what the parents do, but also, babies handled the very same way may react totally differently. So this may have worked for your friends, it may work for you, or it may not. Just don't freak out because the magic bullet method doesn't work for your kid.
- analog31 8y ago
  Indeed, something I've learned from having kids is: Nothing prepares you for having a kid, including having a kid.
  - mrexroad 8y ago
    This. Have 4. Each time was completely different. Our first was by far the worst, it actually amazes me we ever had more—guess our reduced retention of memory from sleep deprivation was advantageous?
    - toasterlovin 8y ago
      It’s almost as if we’ve evolved to forget just how brutal raising infants can be...
treis 8y ago
Ive never read anyone that has had even a mildly successful experience let alone a bad one with the SNOO. That makes me suspicious. Even more so is the lack of any sort of study backing this stuff up. It all looks like snake oil to me.

bwb 8y ago

A friend told me about the Snoo when we had our first and it was AMAZING. Put him right to sleep, and helped keep him asleep. My wife was able to get a full nights sleep for the first 6 months because of it.

subpixel 8y ago
Can you elaborate? Night-weaning often takes more than six months (read: someone is not getting a full night's sleep during that time frame). Even SNOO's own marketing material suggests waking your baby to feed in the middle of the night.

snthd 8y ago

https://www.theguardian.com/news/audio/2018/feb/02/the-diabolical-genius-of-the-baby-advice-industry-podcast https://www.theguardian.com/news/audio/2018/feb/02/the-diabo... > The diabolical genius of the baby advice industry >Every baffled new parent goes searching for answers in baby manuals. But what they really offer is the reassuring fantasy that life’s most difficult questions have one right answer

bhickey 8y ago

I've got a Snoo on order, if it works it's worth every penny.

icebraining 8y ago

So from what I understand, the US doesn't have a swaddling tradition? I thought that was common knowledge.

hudibras 8y ago
We do now, thanks to Harvey.
- snuxoll 8y ago
  Happiest Baby on the Block was the one and only parenting class my wife and I ever took, and I’m glad we did - felt like we had cheat codes when our daughter got fussy as a baby (she slept through the night within a month too, we actually had to wake her for overnight feedings).
- surfmike 8y ago
  Right, all my friends who have had kids in the last few years swaddle. It took me a while to realize this is a recent trend.
dfee 8y ago
Just be prepared for some funny looks when you state that to Americans as a fact. Or, when you state any stereotypical “knowledge” you’ve discerned from reading online comments as a fact.
- icebraining 8y ago
  What online comments? I was talking about the article. The mother thought swaddling "made no sense", and he himself said "no one knew about swaddling" at a dinner.
  - toasterlovin 8y ago
    The US is not homogenous. Everyone we know knows about swaddling.
8y ago

RIMR 8y ago

I am no pediatric expert, but the SNOO has a pretty terrible flaw: It sensory deprives the baby. Sure, it provides reactive swaddling and white noise, which is helpful, but it eliminates a few important stimuli for potentially most of the day. They encourage this to be used for nighttime, but a lot of reviews I have read talk about it's daytime use too. Too much time in this thing isn't good for the baby. 1. It discourages human interaction. If the baby cries, the machine swaddles it. If the baby is awake and idle, the machine will keep it content. 2. It blocks out view of the world. The mesh sides are dense and rise up high enough that a person unfamiliar with the device might be surprised to find a baby lying within. From the baby's POV, all they see is mesh walls, the ceiling, and whatever faces appear above them. Honestly, replacing those tight mesh sides with something easier to see through would make a huge difference for the quality of this product. Also daytime timers forcing parents away from using it as a day nurse as well as a night nurse. I think one of the most unfortunate parts about parenting is that you don't want to give a baby the amount of attention it requests, but that babies really do need that level of human attention in their most formative years.

49bc 8y ago
That is exactly what it’s trying to do, going off the “4th trimester” theory. Make the baby feel as much like it is still in the mother’s womb as possible.
Alex3917 8y ago
> It sensory deprives the baby. Infants can't even significantly move their necks, let alone see color for several months. Once they can roll over competently without the risk of SIDS, that's when you move them from the bassinet to a crib. The whole point of the bassinet is to prevent them from moving around. When people are using this during the day, it's usually just so they can take a quick shower or something without worrying about the baby. Having a mobile over the bassinet should be more than enough sensory stimulation for the 20 min or whatever.
- UtilityDave 8y ago
  Infants can see contrast. Including color contrast. Interpreting color is the bit they don't really have. There is an interesting digression to be had about amblyopia and the difference between optic nerve presence and use here if you are into talking about it.

syntaxing 8y ago

Hmm, now I am super tempted to get one but $1k+ is steep. Has anyone bought any of the other stuff in the store (like the class and bed sheets)?

chrisgd 8y ago
It is frequently on sale for 600. It is on Facebook area sales as well. We only bought it because we think we can sell it for pretty close to purchase price

gdubs 8y ago

Every kid is different. Our first, we tried everything to help with sleep. Karp’s Methods, etc. In the end, “Healthy Sleep Habits” was the most important book for us. With our second, she slept, er, like a baby from day one. At eighteen months she’d say, “night night”, and walk to her bedroom. There’s a lot of learning on the job, which surely played into our first child’s sleep issues. Having an extended family nearby seems like it could help immensely. Biggest things for us were learning to anticipate when the baby would be getting tired and wind down before she became overtired. That and a much earlier bedtime than most people seem to do (4:30 - 6:30 depending on naps and wake up time).

duxup 8y ago
You nailed it. Every kid is different, and overtired = not going to sleep. Rituals and good scheduling are where it is at + stupid dumb luck. Our first, we didn't sleep for like 16 months. It was horrific. Our second has been great (with a few stretches of waking up (to be expected)). Last week he crawled up the stairs and said "i go sleep" and asked to be put in his crib and laid down and went to sleep immediately. I was just sort of shocked ....
- drrob 8y ago
  Any tips? We have a 10 month old boy, and everything we've tried thus far has failed; has to be rocked, hummed and boobed to sleep every time.
  - toasterlovin 8y ago
    Sleep training worked great for us. YMMV.
  - lostlogin 8y ago
    Get immunisations done in the afternoon. They will sleep great that night. The other days of the year aren’t so easy.
  - duxup 8y ago
    Dumb luck.... ritual (do the same things before bed like bath, read books, sing same songs, at the same times etc)... Also take a shot at getting them to bed earlier as maybe he's overtired (overtired baby = not gonna sleep). But everyone's mileage varies as there is no magic solution.

UtilityDave 8y ago

Anyone know if this is anything like B.f. Skinner's crib?

gcb0 8y ago

Is this a paid advert? the article has more adjectives and unbased grandeur i care to count. Almost look like a Wired puff piece.

fab1an 8y ago

Cognitive scientist and first time dad with a 2 month old daughter here. 'Electronically' created white noise is indeed extremely effective to calm down a fussy or crying infant. It also often works instantly, making it certainly a welcome and powerful tool in the arsenal of the sleep deprived parent. That said, I found its instant effectiveness to be somewhat concerning, as it almost seems to flip a 'brain switch' in your baby - quite different from the longer and more laborious procedure of shushing it to sleep the old fashioned way (which likely works on the same principle, but involves lower volume, more frequency variation and, last but not least, actual parent-infant interaction). Bit of a no free lunch situation. Driven by concerned temptation, I did some digging, but ultimately couldn't find any large scale studies on the safety of exposure to white noise in human infants - there is one study in the rat model though that suggest delayed auditory cortex development in baby rats that were exposed to white noise 24/7. (http://www.hhmi.org/news/white-noise-delays-auditory-organization-brain http://www.hhmi.org/news/white-noise-delays-auditory-organiz...) - which btw is exactly what sensorimotor contigency theory would predict. (http://nivea.psycho.univ-paris5.fr/Synthese/MyinFinal.html http://nivea.psycho.univ-paris5.fr/Synthese/MyinFinal.html) While I don't think the majority of SNOO users will operate the device this way, I would imagine the effectiveness and convenience of the device may mean that there are quite a few babies who will spend a lot of time in the SNOO, approaching long term exposure to white noise. I am not suggesting that this will cause long term problems to the infant's auditory development as is the case in the animal model, but it is something to be mindful of.

fouc 8y ago
I read that white noise can cause more defuse neural maps for sounds. Supposedly it's one reason why people's hearing can get worse when they're older, because of too much white noise exposure.
ryanobjc 8y ago
The problem with advice like this, which could be summed as “don’t use the snoo” or “avoid white noise” is the null hypothesis is worse than the mild application of your advice. The result is parents are over tired all the time and are worse parents at all other times.