Rock n Play: A Cult Classic

It didn’t matter if he’d been asleep five minutes or an hour. It didn’t matter that I could raise his arm, let it drop immediately and he didn’t move a muscle. It didn’t matter if he was swaddled in the finest material, looking like the perfect little Glo Worm. The very SECOND that I laid my son down anywhere he’d wake up screaming. He’d sleep on me for hours. But laying down, I couldn’t get more than ten minutes.

My son, Jack... well, I have nothing to compare him to, he’s my first. Even so I can say he’s been very strong-willed since Day 1. He’s never liked to sleep on his back. Swaddling didn’t help. He would wriggle his arms out of being swaddled within a few minutes. Everyone said let him cry it out. I tried. But when it got to the point that he was red, hoarse, sweating, congested and choking I would give in and pick him up, hoping to battle it out another time. Yet, day after day, he remained undefeated.

Transition to flashback…

About a month before Jack was born, one of my good friends came over to help me take the tags off all his clothes and get them washed. While we were organizing them by size, she glanced over at a box and shrieked. “You got a Rock n Play?!!” Puzzled by her excitement, I casually responded “Yea, it was one of our shower gifts.”

“OMG, can I put it together for you? This thing SAVED MY LIFE!!!”

Fisher Price Rock n Play

There was nothing to debate. I was huge, tired, and certainly not going to turn down any type of assistance. So I told her to go for it. While she worked she told me about how her daughter slept in it, when she would sleep in nothing else. While I realize that’s an impressive thing to say, when you’ve never yourself experienced absolute sleep-deprivation, I suppose you don’t truly comprehend the full weight of a statement like that. She put it together. It was a bit… unassuming, kind of weird looking. I didn't give it much attention. We went back to the clothes.

Transition back to a week or so after the birth…

At that point I was basically holding Jack every night while we slept. No, while he slept. I was too afraid to sleep, thinking I might drop him or roll over on him. I had a bassinet that fit in our bed, and we tried over and over to transition him to that to no avail. Finally we said, let’s try the Rock n Play. The first two times, he woke up just as he had on anything else. The third time, my husband said let’s put batteries in and try the vibrations.

We turned it on. We laid him ever so gently in the Rock n Play and he slept. He continued to sleep. He slept for a couple hours. I wish I could say I used the opportunity to get myself some sleep but I was so shocked I couldn’t. This strange, little apparatus was exactly what my baby needed. It kept him in an incline, so he wasn't flat on his back. It swaddled him, but still gave him freedom. I’m not sure what the vibrations did for him, because soon after we stopped turning it on and he slept just the same.

The next few months went so much better. He was sleeping in 3-hour chunks, but it was so much better than nothing. Then after a while, four hours and then sometimes five. Just as those chunks started consistently getting longer and longer, the unthinkable happened: he outgrew it. Right around the time he hit four months, it went back to him waking up after about 20 minutes. I didn’t realize at first because he was still well under the weight limit and Google was blaming it on “sleep regression”. But he was too long. It scrunched his legs up and he was at a point where he wanted to stretch out.

So now I’m back trying to find the next great wave. Not too long after that he started rolling, so we let him sleep on his belly (sue me) but he’s now too long for our bed bassinet. We’ve been trying his Pack n Play but he just wrestles with himself until he ends up on his back and all hell breaks loose. So here I sit, sleep deprived once again, reminiscing about this amazing piece of equipment that took me from the walking dead to the walking somewhat conscious. One day when I was mourning my beloved Rock n Play, I decided to Google it, for old times sake. No matter what site I was on, there were hundreds of reviews praising this thing. They all basically went the same… “I was at my wit's end” “To my surprise” “I spent so much money on swings and bassinets” “Wish I’d known about this sooner”. It was then that I realized the Rock n Play was truly the dark horse of infant slumber.

So salute to the Rock n Play, forever cemented as a must-have in my book for newborns. It’s relatively inexpensive in comparison to other crib-alternate/co-sleeping options. It’s easy to carry around, and folds up when it’s not in use. It’s a great height to keep bedside. I could care less about a baby being able to “rock” or “play” in that thing. They SLEEP, amen?

Fisher Price, you da real MVP

Update: Fisher Price recently issued a recall for all Rock n Plays. Please visit https://service.mattel.com/us/recall/BJD57_ivr.asp for more information.