Totally Gear-Smitten Mama

I believe that the whole baby-gear phenomenon is outrageously overdone in our country. People are led to believe that they need a room--or a house--full of things in order to properly care for a baby. And as helpful--or not--as this baby gear may be, I believe that there probably already exists enough of it that production of new products could stop today and still future babies of the USA would have plenty of gently used baby gear available to them.

Interestingly enough, my disgust with the majority of the baby gear market has also led me to develop a bit of a baby gear obsession. I enjoy, in a kind of morbid way, flipping through baby gear catalogs and feeling horrified by most of what I see. The whole concept of a "travel system," for instance, drives me insane. Products that--in the name of convenience--enable parents to have fewer and fewer reasons to come into physical contact with their babies infuriate me, especially when the products require that the baby be in an unnatural and unhealthy position for far too many hours per day. Due to the popularity of some of these gadgets, new parents are made to feel as though they, too, need the same gear that "everyone else" is using, and buy their own copies before their babies are even born, before they've necessarily had the chance to awaken to their own parenting instincts.

Along with baby-gear hatred, I have also developed a true appreciation for those few products that don't make me gag: the things that aren't ugly, aren't made of flimsy material, and are as basic as they can possibly be. I love our trusty bouncy chair for the simplicity of the design (any product that mimics what it feels like for a baby to be in a sling gets points with me), for the sturdiness and the lack of plastic or "baby" patterns, and the fact that it's now bouncing it's sixth baby without any signs of wear or tear. I love our twin stroller for many of the same reasons, adding also the fact that I can push it fully-loaded with one hand, and its secret ability to transport FOUR children at a time if bigger kids choose to sit on the footrest. I love our clip-on baby high chair that slips easily into a bag for transport and helps our little babies to join us at the table from early on.

In anticipation of Leo's birth, we really didn't have to prepare much stuff at all. We did get him a car seat, some new cloth diapers, and some tiny short-sleeved t-shirts (all of our other sons having been winter babies), but the rest of our preparation focused on the birth supplies. The only helpful thing--aside from our variety of baby carriers, which is too extensive to discuss in this context--in Leo's first weeks of life was an inflated yoga ball (sitting on one of these balls and bouncing is pretty much a sure fire way to calm a fussy baby).

But once Leo was a few weeks old, and we had gotten to know him a bit and had mostly settled into our new life as a family of six, we did start to wonder if maybe he was the type of baby who could use a particular piece of baby gear. Some babies--Zeben was like this--are so laid back that you can just put them down on the floor (or on a bed or in a crib) and they'll lie there happily until eventually they just fall asleep, while some babies require a bit more continuous attention. Leo is the latter kind of baby. And we began to notice, once Leo was three weeks old or so, that he really only stayed asleep if we were lying with him in bed, or wearing him in a carrier (and moving around, not wearing him in a carrier and sitting on the couch). And as much as we loved--and continue to love--lying with him in bed and wearing him in carriers, we started to wonder if it might be possible to have him do some of his sleeping in such a way that it wouldn't require so much of our physical involvement. I searched through the catalog of baby gear in my brain (where I store memories of all of the baby gear that I've come across in the past couple years), and decided that Leo needed a hammock.

The first baby hammock to enter the US market was the Amby Baby Hammock. It arrived on the scene not long after we survived Luke and Jasper's infancy, and the first time I saw it I remember thinking, "if only we'd had one of those!" Jaz and Luke mostly only napped in slings for their first several months of life, and the Amby appeared to me to be a self-hanging sling, or in other words, a way that I could have succeeded in having a sleeping baby AND some occasional personal space. I ended up purchasing one when I was pregnant with Zeben, figuring that it was nearly a guarantee of an easy-napping babe. It turned out that Zeben was absolutely an easy-napping babe, having nothing to do with the Amby at all. As I said above, he was happy to lie flat on his back all alone in a room and fall asleep, without nursing or anything. He was like an alien compared to our first two babies. Beyond feeling like we didn't need the Amby, I also felt like it was ugly (the large metal frame, the lace), not particularly sturdy, and not entirely straight-forward to use. Adjusting the angle of recline was difficult. Getting the baby in and out was bothersome. And there was only so far that you could swing the hammock before it would crash into the frame. I was not impressed. I think maybe Zeben napped in it once, but we quickly decided to sell it and free up some space in our kitchen.

Over the past year or so, there have been a few new baby hammocks entering the market, all of which have caught my eye and looked like an improvement over the Amby. When Lena and I decided that Leo might be a good candidate for a hammock, I looked into all of the readily-available options (the Miyo, the Happy Hangup, the Kanoe and the Hushamok) before deciding on the Kanoe. First of all, there's the name--Kanoe--and the fact that it looks somewhat like a canoe. Lena and I love to paddle (our whitewater canoe was our first joint-purchase, early on in our relationship), so the canoeish Kanoe had some appeal right off the bat. Plus, it comes in nice, simple colors of organic cotton fabric (no patterns, no lace). There was no frame required, and the hammock seemed especially sling-like (whereas some designs incorporate a mattress, which to me seems like it would kind of negate the point). After a week of debating, we took the plunge and ordered one for Leo.


When it arrived, I quickly set it up (simply by screwing an eye-hook into the ceiling and clipping the hammock on), and put our fussy baby in to try it out. Within minutes he had fallen asleep, and continued to sleep for the next hour-and-a-half.

Leo in the Kanoe
4 weeks old

Lena and I stood around with our jaws dropped open, wondering what to do with our unencumbered bodies. In the weeks since the Kanoe arrived, we have come to see it as a very useful tool indeed, especially since Leo is our fourth baby. Luke and Jaz love to push Leo in the hammock if we need to quickly rush around getting ready to leave the house, and it continues to be a wonderful way to get Leo to nap (though the vast majority of his sleep is still taking place on or next-to our bodies, as we feel it should be).


What's been surprising is that the Kanoe has also proven itself as a helpful tool with our third-born son. Zeben enjoys the hammock just as much as Leo does, and it has helped to snap him out of more than one difficult two-year-old moment. Any piece of "baby gear" that can be useful with a newborn and a 2.75-year-old deserves some recognition. The Kanoe is something that I can see happily hanging from our ceiling for years to come.


It's a little difficult for me to admit just how much of a gear-smitten mama I am. What started out as pure disgust--of any and every type of baby gear--has definitely blossomed into a bit of a love affair with some specific items. Companies like Kanoe give me hope. Maybe there is the potential for a paradigm shift about what stuff babies really need, and how to best care for them in a loving--and, sure, convenient--way. Plus, a product like the Kanoe could replace the traditional crib, the bassinette, the cradle, the bouncy chair, and the swing-o-matic, reducing the number of items an expectant parents feels like they need to buy while still fulfilling that American desire to buy something for their baby.

Kanoe, we love you.