A High-Tech Nursery Is a Boon for Both Newborns and New Parents

The birth of a child is usuallyworld-shattering for everyone involved—the newborn who must learn to adjust to life outside the womb, and the parents tasked with keeping a helpless being alive while dealing with a very limited schedule of sleep.

Fortunately, the smart home industry has recognized the havoc this happy event can bring to households and developed devices to aid and optimize early infancy.

Nanit

Offering a bird’s eye view of your baby’s slumberous state, the Wi-Fi-enabled Nanit streams live HD video to the smartphone or tablet of your choice, allowing you to keep watch over your little wonder from anywhere in the world. And while your animal instinct, or undying affection, may push you to keep constant vigilance over your new addition, Nanit renders such concerns moot. The device’s automated intelligence allows it to learn your baby’s developing sleep patterns and provides daily reports on progress and pitfalls, enabling parents to adjust sleep patterns accordingly. Bonus: The Nanit app makes it incredibly easy to share video with photo-hungry family and friends.

The Nanit is currently available for $279 to $494, depending on features and add-ons.

SNOO Smart Sleeper

Promising "the smartest baby bed ever made," the SNOO is less of a bassinet and more of a womb simulator. The clever crib sets itself a-rockin’ and amps up white noise akin to what your child heard on the inside as soon as it registers crying, helping your little one fall asleep, and comforting them as they awake throughout the night. The SNOO is no slouch when it comes to safety either. The bed’s built-in swaddle ensures your child is securely positioned on their back—the preferred position for preventing SIDS.

The SNOO costs $1,160 and is temporarily sold out. However, SNOO-maker Happiest Baby is still taking orders and expects to start shipping again on Sept. 11.

Willow

As much as it may impact a parent's life, the world, unfortunately, does not pause when a child is born. Nowhere are the competing pressures between professional and parental obligations more acutely felt than on new mothers, who are strongly encouraged by medical professionals to breastfeed for the first year of life, yet, more often than not, find themselves in occupational arrangements that don’t accommodate such long leaves of absence. Willow looks to ease the burden. The wearable breast pump works quietly inside your bra, collecting milk in its built-in, disposable bag, allowing new mothers a natural range and freedom of movement while they pump. Paired with the accompanying app, mothers can keep track of milk volume, pumping time and sessions. Better still, the Willow is intuitive and can automatically distinguish between the different phases of expression and adjust pumping strength and speed accordingly.

The Willow costs $479 and is currently in Beta, with the initial run of pumps ready. Interested users should head to willowpump.com to join the Beta program.

Hatch Baby Grow Smart Changing Pad and Scale

Tracking your baby’s weight gain (or loss) is of great importance during the first few weeks of life. The Hatch Baby Grow doubles as a changing pad and scale, allowing you to keep tabs on your newborn’s weight while you perform your most repetitive of daily tasks. But a scale is just the start for the Baby Grow. The smart pad, which pairs with an accompanying app to display insights, will also let you track feeding amounts and diaper changes—other important data for the early life of your infant.

The Hatch Baby Grow Smart Changing Pad and Scale is available for $129.

mamaRoo 4

If you thought the unique comfort provided by a parent to a child was one of the few activities safe from robotic replacement—we have some bad news. The mamaRoo 4 infant seat offers newborns five different relaxing motions designed to emulate the natural movements of mom or dad, offering solace to little ones while liberating parents to focus on something else in their life (for once). The mamaRoo 4 isn’t entirely free from human intervention, however. Users can alternate motions and control sound on the Bluetooth-enabled seat via an app, or sing their child to sleep with a custom playlist by using the auxiliary cord plug-in.

The mamaRoo 4 is available for $219 to $249, depending on style.