Baby buys: the chill-out chair

When you’re a new parent it can be incredibly daunting trying to work out what you need and what you’re just being told you need by companies trying to peddle their baby paraphernalia at you. To make matters even more confusing, what one experienced parent will consider a necessity another will consider a complete waste of time.

For me, one of the trickiest things about the early baby days (and current phase, if I’m honest) is not having enough hands. In those really early days all the baby seems to want to do is feed and sleep and, if your baby is anything like mine, often doesn’t want to be put down. Baby Girl would sleep quite happily for two or three hours – if she was on me or in the sling. However, the length of her naps in her moses basket were hit and miss. For me then, I would consider anything that helps with the lack of hands in those early days a total necessity.

This is where the chill-out chair comes in handy. If you’re not a fan of babywearing or you simply want a few minutes in the day when your baby isn’t physically attached to you, then the chill-out chair is a must-have. And if there’s one thing that I wish I had from day one with Baby Girl it’s the Swoon Motion from Babymoov. 

The Swoon Motion rocks from side to side and has various music settings so it can play lullabies at the same time. I really think that, had we had this chair when Baby Girl was really tiny, I may have had my hands free that little bit more. I loved (and still love) the baby cuddles and the excuse to sit on the sofa and do nothing much more than watch Netflix, but sometimes you need to put a wash on or (heaven forbid) get dressed, and your baby may hate being put in her moses basket. The Swoon Motion is a safe, comfortable place for her to go and it may even have the added bonus of helping your baby get to sleep at the same time.

The thing we really loved about this chair though, is that it’s nice and high. It may not be as tall as the other offering from Babymoov – the Swoon Up – but it’s much higher than the bouncy chair that Baby Girl inherited from her big sister. Her old chair was low on the floor and it meant that, as she got older, she couldn’t get involved and look around as much as she liked (nosy baby). This meant that she wouldn’t happily sit in her chair unless she was really tired, so would spend most of her time on me in the sling. She happily sat in the Swoon Motion for longer than 30 seconds though, and it proved to be a really handy piece of baby kit to have during that busy after-school period when you’re trying to cook tea and get things sorted before bedtime, without jiggling a grumpy baby in one hand.

The Swoon Motion was really easy to put together and, another bonus, you have the choice of using an adapter or batteries to power it. We never seem to have enough batteries in the house so it’s really useful to be able to plug the chair in instead. As with all baby equipment it’s pretty big, so perhaps not the ideal chair if space is at a premium in your house, but we found it fitted perfectly into the corner of the living room and provided a great vantage point for Baby Girl to watch the world around her.

There are two rocking modes, backwards and forwards and sideways – Baby Girl liked the sideways motion best. In fact, she found it so comforting it even lulled her to sleep on several occasions. Unexpected bonus, right there. We also loved that the chair has several different reclining options, so the baby can be laid flat or in various seating positions. Plus – and this is fancy – it has an intuitive motion detector so it can start to rock when the baby cries. Cool, huh?

As with all things baby, there’s not a huge lifespan of this product. Baby Girl is now rapidly approaching eight months old (sob) and she has pretty much outgrown it. It’s not that she’s too heavy for it, but she’s now sitting up unaided and tries to climb out of it when you put her in it. However, if we’d have had this chair from the newborn days I think we’d have used it multiple times every day and it would have been a sound investment. £159.99 might seem like a lot to spend on one piece of baby kit, but if you use it loads then it works out at not much at all.

In fact, I’ve done the sums – say you use the Swoon Motion four times a day for every day of your baby’s first six months, then it equates to around 20p per go. And if you think that for each of those 20p goes you’re able to do a load of laundry / cook tea / answer some emails / stop your baby crying then I think that’s 20p well spent!

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Disclosure: I’m a Babymoov ambassador. This product was sent to me for the purpose of review. All opinions remain my own, as always. For more information about how I work with brands check out my Work With Me page.

You can find out more about the Swoon Motion on the Babymoov website.