When I bought this I knew nothing about swings. I did know was that I had a 4 week old baby that wouldn’t sleep unless she was in my arms. I knew she needed to sleep because I needed to sleep. I knew that it was 8:35 and if I left right then, I could probabally make it to Babies R’ Us and get a swing before they closed. So I loaded Big Picky in the infant carrier and headed to BRU. I was able to get Mrs. Organized’s advice on the phone on the way there. She had the Fisher-Price Rainforest Swing for her daughter and liked it. In this new mommy desperate for sleep last minute swing run, that was enough for me. F-P it would be.
I stole most of my registry from this very trusted friend. Mrs. Organized had her entire registry on an Excel worksheet, complete with comments. Heck, she did the research and had 9 months to use the products before Big Picky was born. Who am I to question her choices? (Well, actually I couldn’t help myself. I used her list as a starting point for my own research.) This is the only item I bought from that list that I regret. This is also one of the few products I bought without researching it at all… unless you count asking Mrs. Organized as research. Oh, and I did look at the little tags on the shelves at BRU as I was running for the swings before they closed. I don’t think that I’d know that it wasn’t the best choice for us if we didn’t borrow a Graco swing for at my parents’ house. It’s not that this is a bad swing, it more that there are ones I like better.
Raves
Now don’t get me wrong, this swing does have some nifty features. Those features sounded good enough to make me buy it.
AC Adapter: It plugs in! Imagine that: a baby product that you don’t have to change batteries in! I don’t think my total lifetime battery consumption comes anywhere near my battery consumption of the past 2 years! So a swing with the option to plug in sounded wonderful! This was the feature that sold me on this swing. ‘Turned out to be highly overrated. Apparently, you really don’t need to change batteries in a swing that often.
Swings Both Ways: The swing seat swivels so your wee one can either swing side to side or front to back. This too sounds better than it is. I’ll add the disclaimer that each baby is different and some may insist on only swinging in one direction, but neither one of mine seemed to have any preference at all. So basically both of the features that sold this swing to me were pretty useless.
Rants
Adjustments: The seat only has 2 adjustments: fully reclined and almost fully reclined. This really limited the useage of this swing to a fairly young age. After about 5 or 6 months, my wee ones were too nosey to be lying reclined. They wanted to be sitting up, seeing what was going on.
No toys: The tray offers no entertainment. Actually, I’m still not sure what you’re supposed to put on the tray. It has compartments to contain something, but whatever you’d put there, the wee one can’t really play with because they’re relined too far.
Speed Controls: While there are several different speeds to choose from, the all seem to be clustered too close together. The slowest is too fast.
Other
I do have to give FP props for their customer service. Our first motor only lasted a couple weeks (and that was for Big Picky, who has always been on the scrawny slender side, consistently riding the 10-15%ile on the weight growth chart) F-P customer service was extremely polite and efficient and very promptly sent a replacement, free of charge. I do have to admit that the evil little Director of Quality voice in my head way whispering “that’s because it’s a known quality issue” but regardless of if that little voice knows what it’s talking about, the service was impressive. While I will not recommend this particular product, that level of service will keep me recommending the Fisher-Price brand!
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