If you have read my review of the Baby Bjorn bouncer or seen my video review (seen below!) about it, you know that I am a bit obsessed. But just because I love the Baby Bjorn bouncer, doesn’t mean that there aren’t other good options out there as well. The Fisher Price Sweet Dreams Deluxe Bouncer is another great option.
If you are someone like me who is planning on using the bouncer as much as possible, you might want to invest in a bouncer that is high quality. However, if your budget is much lower, then the Fisher Price Deluxe Bouncer might be the one for you.
Features I Love
Here are some of the features about it that I love the most.
Removable Mobile
I love a good mobile. I also love a good mobile that I can get rid of if I want to.
This might seem a bit weird. If you like a mobile, why would you want to get rid of it? Well let me tell you, I used to have a bouncer that had a halo toy gym that would go over it and it was an absolute nightmare! It was difficult to remove the gym, but it was possible. Because it was a pain, I would try to put my baby into the bouncer with the toys on it already.
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It didn’t go great.
The toys would almost always hit my baby on the head as I was putting her in and then I’d have to redo the whole process of soothing and cooing to sleep.
I know, I probably could have figured it out if I had been a little more spatially aware. However, it was surprisingly challenging to bend over and put my baby in the bouncer seat without hitting it against the dangling toys with my little to no abs on my postpartum belly.
Just saying, I love the mobile option, because dang, babies love it. And I love that it can be removed.
Deep Seat
I do talk about the deep seat in my video about the Baby Bjorn. In that video, I talk about how the Bjorn doesn’t have a deep seat and I love it for the design that it is.
However, because of the material that most brands use for the bouncer, they need a deeper seat. I get that the design needs to be that way and I get why a baby should be sitting deeply in the seat with a bouncer that is designed that way.
The deep seat helps the baby be more secure so he or she will not fall to the side and slump over. It supports the baby’s head and makes sure the neck doesn’t fall to the side.
Vibration Feature
I do love a good vibration feature in a baby product, and the Fisher Price Deluxe Bouncer has one. My babies in the past have gone through some pretty picky phases where it seemed like they couldn’t sleep unless we were in the car physically driving.
There were other times where they were going through an “I hate my car seat” phase, so you never really know with babies.
However, for the time that my babies loved sleeping in the car, I absolutely loved the vibration feature on the bouncer.
There are no bouncers that bounce themselves, though babies can learn to bounce themselves as they get older and kick around in the bouncer. Their own movements will cause the momentum to bounce them up and down. But when they are newborns, you have to physically bounce them yourself until they are asleep. This is no big deal, except that if they wake up between REM cycles or are startled by a noise, it can be difficult to soothe them back to sleep, especially if you are unaware that they are starting to wake.
The vibration feature is there when you are not. If you aren’t bouncing them, they can still feel soothed by the soft vibrations that mimic a car ride. It is a very useful tool!
Songs
As with most Fisher Price soothing products, the Fisher Price Sweet Snugapuppy Dreams Deluxe Bouncer comes with up to 20 minutes of song or nature sounds. This should probably be enough to lull your baby to sleep.
The songs are similar to the ones in the Fisher Price Cradle N’ Swing that I reviewed here. It’s your standard lullabies and nature sounds that are in many toys. The sound quality isn’t amazing, but it does the trick. It is just interesting enough to not drive you to insanity and not so stimulating that it would keep your baby awake. In fact, you might find yourself having a hard time staying awake.
Timer
One nice thing about the Fisher Price Deluxe Bouncer is that it does shut off after 20 minutes. I can see why that might be annoying to some–it could shut off right when your baby is finally falling asleep, which could be problematic. However, the great thing about that is that if you accidentally leave it on or on purpose, it will shut off automatically at the end of 20 minutes and not burn through all your batteries.
It really is a very useful feature.
Portability
One other great thing about the deluxe bouncer is that it is made to be very portable. It weighs only 3 pounds, which after carrying around a growing baby, will feel like absolutely nothing. Unlike many swing products that I review on this site, you can take this into any room easily and it will fit through any standard doorway.
It doesn’t take up a lot of floor space, so there is literally no room I could think of that it wouldn’t fit into. You could even likely place it under a desk so you could bounce it while working from home or in your office.
Portability really is an ideal aspect of any baby product, because most parents are constantly worried that their baby is going to somehow aspirate or stop breathing while they are away or not watching. With this product, you can bring your baby into whatever room you are going to. You don’t have that much flexibility with the swings. You don’t even have to worry about being next to an outlet because they are all battery-powered.
No-Slip
Another thing that I mention in my video is how important it is to me to have a gripping surface on the bottom of a bouncer. When you constantly have this product in motion, it can be easy for it to scoot across slick floors like laminate, tile, or wood. I have a lot of wood in my house and it is a huge pain, and frankly not safe, to have a product that has no grips on the bottom. The Fisher Price Deluxe Bouncer does have the necessary grips on the bottom. It’s not as grippy as the Baby Bjorn, but it gets the job done.
Weight Limit
The Fisher Price Deluxe Bouncer will hold babies up to 25 pounds. The average babies weigh about 19-21 pounds at their first-year mark. So you can count on using this product until your baby is after a year old.
In all honesty, you probably won’t need to use the bouncer that long. Many babies will learn to self soothe or will prefer to be in their cribs for naps. When they are awake at that age, they are old enough to crawl, sit up, and many can even walk. So sitting strapped to a bouncer might not be something they would even want to do.
This is why 25 pounds is really a perfect weight limit for babies to use the bouncer. It gives the baby a pretty large window of weight gain that they could get before the first year of life.
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One Feature I Don’t Love
Honestly, there is not much to be unhappy with when it comes to this product. Most babies love the deluxe bouncer, especially newborns. And anything that makes baby happy, makes the parent happy.
Batteries
But there is one point that does make me a little annoyed and that is that it requires batteries. The bouncer requires 3 C batteries to use the vibration and song feature. Now, you don’t need to even use these features necessary to use the bouncer. You can just use it without these features. But if you buy a product with the option to use vibration and songs, wouldn’t you want to be able to use it?
When you are purchasing your batteries, consider going for the rechargeable ones and save yourself a lot of money. Otherwise, you might end up either buying a lot of batteries or you will end up just not using the feature altogether, which is not ideal.
Baby Bjorn
For those people who have been with me since the beginning, you might wonder, what about the Baby Bjorn that you did a video about? That was my very first post and video and it really was the inspiration for starting this website. I loved that baby product so much and wanted to share it with the world.
However, the Baby Bjorn is a bit more expensive than some other bouncers, among them the Fisher Price Snugapuppy Deluxe Bouncer. I get that money can be tight and it can be hard to justify this purchase.
While I stand by the Bjorn being worth every penny, the Fisher Price Deluxe bouncer will do as well! There are just a few things that are not as nice as the Bjorn. You can read my review of it here.
Fabric Choice
If you watched my video, you know I bought basically every kind of Bjorn bouncer out there. They have some great fabric choices that you can buy depending on where you live. The mesh is great if you live in a hot climate. If you don’t the other fabrics are so nice and cozy.
Versatility
I absolutely love that my kids can use the Bjorn when they are older. The bouncer does not have a deep seat, but rather it fits to your child’s size and weight. A toddler can use this bouncer as a cozy seat with a few adjustments.
Bouncing
As I demonstrated in my video, you can bounce the Bjorn with one finger, literally. It does not take much effort at all to get your baby bouncing. This feature is so nice, especially when you are trying to get something done and are already exhausted from holding your baby all day. The last thing you want to do is sit in an uncomfortable position and wear your arms or legs out from bouncing. The Fisher Price bouncer bounces easily as well, but nothing near this effortlessly.
Why Do Babies Want to Be Bounced?
If you’re anything like me, you may have wondered on the long, long nights “why, oh why does my baby need to constantly be bounced?” Life would be so much easier if I could just change the diaper, feed, and put her back down.
But no.
My babies love to be bounced.
While I was researching bouncers, I decided to research why babies wanted to be bounced as well. I have heard several times that babies like to be bounced because they are used to being carried all the time in the womb and the constant movement makes them at ease.
That, of course, makes a lot of sense. But I wondered if there was anything more, and it turns out that there is!
Here is what I learned about why babies like to be bounced from an article on Psychology Today by Christopher Bergland.
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Calming Response
Kumi Kuroda from the RIKEN Brain Science Institute in Saitama, Japan, explained that human babies and even mice pups (and possibly all mammals) have a calming response when held securely by their caregiver. She noticed that when mice mothers would carry their pups by the fold of skin on their back, they would instantly relax.
Of course, human mothers don’t carry babies by the nape of their necks, and this probably wouldn’t produce a calming response. But when mothers cradle, carry, swaddle, and bounce their babies, they do produce a calming effect that comes from the cerebellum. The cerebellum is the part of the brain that controls the fight or flight instinct, and it is constantly on guard. The only time that your brain can relax is when you are deep in the REM cycle when your body is paralyzed. Your brain paralyzes your body so you don’t act out your dreams. However, to get to this point of relaxation can be difficult.
Grounding
Mothers can help their babies get to that REM cycle and relax through bouncing and swaddling. According to Bergland, “the researchers found that the calming response was dependent on tactile inputs and proprioception. Proprioception is the ability to sense and understand body movements and keep track of your body’s position in space.”
So basically, the researchers found that the babies could calm down when they could feel their mother and motions. This is because these sounds and motions calmed them and helped them know where their body was in relation to the space around them.
Deluxe Bouncer Impact On Child Abuse
Before we left the hospital, the nurses gave us several pamphlets on purple crying. Basically, these pamphlets all came down to the one basic point that they wanted to get across: Don’t beat your child.
Obviously, I politely took the pamphlets, mentally rolling my eyes because who would get so frustrated that they would hurt their baby?
Well a few weeks later, and my baby was crying for what seemed like forever! I would rock him and swaddle him and get him to sleep just for him to wake up right when I put him down. It was so frustrating!
I’m not going to say that it was so frustrating that I wanted to hurt him, but it was so frustrating that I did have to put him down for about 10 minutes and leave the room to reset because I was tired and felt like I was starting to lose my ever-loving mind.
So I now understand how some parents, especially parents who may not have great anger management skills, lose their cool and need to step back. Kuroda addresses this as well. She states, “A scientific understanding of this infant response will save parents from misreading the restart of crying as the intention of the infant to control the parents.”
This brings me to my next point–can you spoil a baby?
Can You Spoil A Baby?
I heard many times as I was a new mom the following:
“You don’t want to hold your baby too much because they will get spoiled.”
“If you hold your baby too much and don’t introduce it to strangers, it will have anxiety.”
“If you respond too quickly, your baby will never learn to soothe themselves.”
I’m not here to argue the cry it out method or whatever, but I do think that you can’t spoil a baby by holding it. This article helped me understand why babies need to feel that bouncing motion and help me realize that the baby isn’t spoiled and just wants to be held. It wants to feel some spatial awareness and doesn’t get that in a standard crib.
How Does The Deluxe Bouncer Help?
Because babies need to feel the spatial awareness in their bodies, the bouncer can help in a few different ways.
Snug Seat
The deep, snug seat will support your baby as it drifts off to sleep. It will feel well confined in the space and not feel as though it is falling, or could fall. The baby can feel the edges around it. It is held securely in place with the deep seat and sides. It has more pressure under its bum than it would on a flat crib mattress.
All these aspects help the baby realize that it is being held and it is not in a free fall. This will help the baby not startle awake.
Deluxe Bouncer
The bouncer features of the bouncer will help the baby have continuous motion and feel the movements under him or her. This will give your baby spatial awareness as well and will mimic being held by the mother.
Your baby may love being held by you, but they might be just as satisfied by a bouncer if they get used to it early enough in life. These small, rhythmic motions will help your baby feel safe and secure like they do in their mother’s arms.
Vibrations
As I mentioned earlier, the vibrations mimic the same feeling that some babies love when they are in a car for a drive. These vibrations likely add to spatial awareness. If they feel something moving underneath them, it mimics the motions that they were used to hearing and feeling while in the womb.
They may feel safe and secure feeling as though they are connected to their mother even when they are not.
Songs
The songs can even help with spatial awareness! If they are constantly hearing music they know they are not moving anywhere. They are not only connected to a physical seat but are also connected by sound. They feel secure in their space where they are grounded and not moving. Their cerebellum can relax and they can concentrate on just sleeping.
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Conclusion
Before researching bouncers, I had no idea how important spatial awareness was to a baby. I understood that they wanted to feel the same feelings that they do when they were in the womb, but even that idea kind of eluded me. At what point to babies not care about being in the womb anymore?
After researching it more, I understand that it is less about mimicking the womb and more about mimicking the spatial awareness that they felt in the womb. When they were in there, they felt safe and secure–never straying away from their mother. They were held in place on all sides and never felt as though they were falling or dropping.
In a bouncer, a baby can also feel safe and secure through the soft surroundings and sounds. The Fisher Price Snugapuppy Deluxe Bouncer has all the necessary features to put your baby at ease and give a tired parent a break here and there.