For More Sleep With a Newborn Baby Than When Pregnant! (Amby Natures Nest Baby Hammock)

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Product:	Amby Natures Nest Baby Hammock
Date:	27/10/08 (602 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Baby sleeps better, space saving, multi-functional, loads

Disadvantages: A bit awkward for a newborn baby

The Product

Amby Natures Nest Baby Hammock. The hammock itself comes in either a raw cotton colour or blue. It comes complete with matress, spring, metal frame and carry bag.

It comes flat packed and can be assembled very easily within a few minutes.

The natures nest is suitable from birth until around twelve months (29lb) and is suitable for (and extremely beneficial to) premature babies.

The sizes of the hammock once assembled are
Weight - 10.5kg
Height - 60 inch / 152 cm
Depth - 38 inch / 97 cm
Width - 27.5 inch / 67 cm



The Price

The cost of the hammock new is £164.99 and you can pick them up on ebay for around £133 new or slightly lower for second hand.


Ordering

You can order direct from Amby at www.amby.co.uk


What Amby Say

A baby bed trusted by thousands of parents worldwide, the award winning Natures Nest is fast becoming the must have baby bed. Designed to replicate natural movements to give baby optimal reassurance and maximum comfort.

With outstanding design the Natures Nest gives comfort and security to your baby with its snug tactile environment. The Natures Nest holds your baby in a cradled position enabling you to place your baby to bed with ease. Suitable from birth to 12 months and totally portable, creating a relaxed and stress free bedtime wherever you are.

Newborn babies will always search for their lost environment striving to regain the comfort and security they recently left. Within the Natures Nest your baby will continue to benefit from what nature once provided.

The Amby Natures Nest is the only baby bed designed to create a womb like effect, here your baby will still enjoy what nature provided, a snug tactile environment with a gentle vertical and bouncing motion. These motions replicate the movements babies felt within the womb (as mother moves walks or drives in the car). Suspended from a spring the Natures Nest produces a feeling of suspension and floatation.

Your baby will lie with his upper body slightly raised, a position he is in once cradled in your arms. This is the perfect environment for babies and can pacify the most distressed infant. As your baby moves the bed will move with him often lulling him back to sleep, babies sleeping in the Natures Nest will be content and happy whilst awake, having had a restful sleep, and reducing your sleep deprivation enables you to enjoy your new baby.

Simple and Safe, Natures Nest gives your baby the best chance to start life blissfully contented, perfectly well adjusted and predisposed to healthy growth and development

It is the most logical and natural transition from the womb to the outside world during the critical first year of your babies' life!


My Experience

When pregnant with my third child I came across this strange looking contraption during one of my many sleepless nights surfing the internet. We didn't really need anything new for the baby. We already had a girl and a boy so had plenty of everything, however our moses basket was starting to look a little worn and we would have had to buy a new matress anyway, so when I came across the Amby Natures Nest Hammock, I decided I would like to give it a try.

The main attraction for me was that it encouraged a peaceful nights sleep. It mimics the feeling of being inside the womb and because of the spring design it gently sways and bounces with the babies movements often rocking them back to sleep.

When our baby girl finally arrived I couldn't wait to give this a go. The first time we put her in it we really weren't sure if we'd placed her correctly. We tried putting her in the middle of the hammock as shown in all the pictures, but the sides seemed to close in on her and she looked a little squished. We eventually decided we'd go with the general cot rule of feet-to-foot - feet of the baby to the foot of the bed and although it made the hammock look lop-sided, it made our daughter look a lot comfier. Obviously I can't tell you if she slept any better in the hammock, but she certainly slept well, between five and six hours at a time, and more times than not when she stirred the natural gentle movement put her back to sleep. This worked for the first few months of her life and she slept through the night from 4 weeks. However, this was short lived as she only did this until 8 weeks when she became an insomniac. I don't think this had much to do with the hammock though as her routine was disturbed, she'd had her jags and I ended up bringing her in beside us with then formed the habit. She still loved her hammock and would go to sleep in there, however after 4 or 5 hours she would wake up and come in with us.

The hammock is supposed to be suitable up to twelve months, however I felt that at about ten months it became a little unsafe as my daughter could get herself upright and then tip herself forward. She never fell out, but I found her sleeping doubled over her feet a few times.

The hammock was absolutely fantastic for travelling, there was no need for a seperate travel cot. The frame comes to pieces within minutes and the hammock itself can be put in the storage bag in one piece with the matress still inside. The travel bag is long and thin and it's not as heavy as a standard travel cot once it's all packed away. It only takes a minute or two to put back together when you are where you need to be as well. I found this such an advantage as it saved us having to worry too much about how she would sleep in a different bed or a different place, because she always had her own bed, so she always felt very comfortable wherever she had to sleep.

The hammock doesn't take up too much room either, so is fantastic for while baby is still in mummy and daddy's room. We have the smallest room in the house and there is no way we'd have got a cot in and still been able to manouvre.

If using for a newborn/premature/small baby I would recommend getting one of the snugglers that you can buy seperately. This will hold your baby in place. I haven't used one, but I'm sure it would help with the problems we had in positioning our baby in the hammock in the beginning.

My daughter never suffered from colic or reflux so I can't comment on whether the bed is beneficial to the relief of these or not, but while researching the bed prior to purchasing I did read a lot of good feedback about this topic.

Another benefit is that the frame can be multi-functioning. You can also purchase the Amby Jump Jump bouncer, which works in exactly the same way as a normal baby door bouncer, but without the need to damage your walls. I wont go into too much details as I'm going to write a seperate review on the Jump Jump, but it's another great invention from Amby.

If I was to have another baby (which I'm not!!) I would definitely use this again and would highly recommend it to anyone. This allowed me to have more sleep at night with a newborn baby than I had had during the last few months of being pregnant.

Summary: A fantastic invention, wish I'd had it with my first two children