Bouncy Seats and Swings

[jamie]

Hi again! I would like to ask mom's of multiples what bouncy seats and swings you would recommend and which products you would avoid. My husband and I are expecting boy/girl twins in Oct and are first time parents. I would also love for you to share your experiences with both the seats and swings. Thanks!

[mamaoftwins]

Fisher Price for bouncers and swings. We have two of their bouncers, the Rainforest one and the Playful Puppy one (the puppy one I ordered direct from FP). My advice is definitely get 2 bouncers. Our guys slept in those a lot for the first 3 months or so. We still use them - they are great for calming as well as putting the kids in something somewhat entertaining while you're cooking or something like that. Our guys spit-up a lot as well (that has decreased considerably in the last month or so!), so I liked having them in those chairs for a little while after meals, so that they were reclined a bit and didn't have pressure on their bellies that they would with sitting and crawling around, if this makes sense. But *sigh* we are fast approaching the limits of the seats by weight and by the boys attempting to get out of them, so they will have to be retired soon. These bouncers were perhaps the most useful and most used pieces of baby gear we bought, so I'm sad to see them go.

We have 1 swing. They are pretty expensive if you're buying new, so I would advise getting 1 for now and seeing if you can get away with that. You can always get another later. We love our swing. We have the Fisher Price Papasan Cradle Swing. Ours is the 07 version of this one: http://www.toysrus.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2919624. Baby B liked it more than Baby A, and it was the only way I could get him to fall asleep some nights. I can think of only once that I wished we had 2 swings, so we were able to get away with one. We used it mostly up until abt 6 mos of age and have used it only sparingly since then. This one takes batteries, but there may be a swing out there now that plugs in. That would have been a lot better. Although with regular use, I would estimate that we replaced the 4 D batteries in the swing every 6wks or so. Graco also makes nice swings from what I hear.

Hope all this helps!

[gatorsmom]

I agree with the pp about the FP bouncers. They are very handy. We have 4!

As for the swing, I can't say enough wonderful things about the Graco Sweetpeace. It is more than just a swing. It's like a cocoon for a baby. you can do a search of my posts from my frantic time in January when DH went on a business trip leaving me alone with colicky 8 week olds twins. I flipped out and bought 2 of these things. They are seriously wonderful. My colicky babies LOVED them. here's a link to one of my posts:

http://www.windsorpeak.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=292780&highlight=graco+sweetpeace

We have 2 FP Take-along swings (one was new this year and the other is an older model borrowed from a friend) and the babies don't like them much. After about 20 minutes, they start to fuss. The swing seat in both of them is very upright. We also have a 5yo Open Top graco swing which is nice. My first 2 babies loved it but the twins only liked it sometimes. Other times, they just screamed. But the Sweetpeace swing puts them to sleep almost everytime. It's like sleeping pills for babies :).

hth

[novmber]

we had 2 Fisher Price papasan bouncers and that is actually what the girls slept in at first to keep their heads elevated (in our cosleeper)

we also had a Fisher Price bouncer that someone loaned us - Fisher-Price Sensory Selections Bouncer - the girls really really loved that.

and recently I bought a Fisher Price infant to toddler rocker for my toddler - she loves this chair and now I wish I had just had it as one of the bouncers when they were infants.

for swings we had two Fisher Price nature's touch papasan swings (or whatever they are called) (one from our registry and one was a loan) - they were invaluable - the girls napped in these for a long time (probably too long) but they were lifesavers.