I remember attending a baby expo years ago and seeing the Hatch Rest prototype at the Hatch booth. It wasn’t available for sale yet, but as they showed me the product and I learned about all of its capabilities, I remember thinking how cool and innovative the product was. I also told the Hatch rep that I need it when I have kids. Fast forward to today, I own two of them — one in each of my two kids’ rooms. 🙂
As someone who’s worked with families since 2011 and as a mother of two, I know how important sleep is. We all need good sleep to be able to function optimally. Thankfully, some great tools can help us get better sleep. One of those tools is a good sound machine. Even from the first moment I saw it, one sound machine that I love is the Hatch Rest. It’s the smartest sound machine on the market. Here is how the Hatch Rest works, how to set it up, all of its cool features, and why I recommend it to families with little ones.
Hatch Rest: Better Sleep for Babies and Tots
To better understand how a sound machine can help soothe babies and promote better sleep, let’s first think about what babies are experiencing. When our babies were in the womb, it was pretty loud in there. They are hearing so much going on — your breathing, blood flow, digestion, your voice, and much more. If you remember what it sounded like when your doctor or midwife put the doppler on your pregnant belly to listen to your baby’s heartbeat, you might recall that loud static noise. That’s what your baby heard all day, every day! And when they were born into the world, there were a lot of changes for them. One of those changes is how much quieter it is. This can be startling for a new baby. We do our best as parents to soothe and comfort our newborns. Thankfully one tool that helps us is a sound machine.
What Is a Sound Machine?
A sound machine, also known as a white noise machine, is a small machine placed in a bedroom to help create a more relaxing sleep environment. It plays white noise or a variety of different ambient or natural sounds. A sound machine can promote healthy, high-quality sleep. This is why many parents choose to have one in their baby’s nursery.
Why Do Babies Like Sound Machines?
As mentioned before, babies are used to a loud environment in utero. A sound machine is a helpful tool to soothe your baby as they transition and become familiar with the world. It’s the perfect way to recreate that noise they heard. That’s why you will see many new parents shushing in their baby’s ear to help them calm down. However, every parent or caregiver eventually gets fatigued from continuously shushing. This is where a sound machine steps in, and this is one of the many reasons babies and parents love them.
What Is the Hatch Rest?
Hatch Rest is a smart sound machine that has so far helped more two million families get a good night’s rest. It’s known as being a magical all-in-one device that’s part sound machine, part night light, part time-to-rise alarm. I can attest to this because I’ve used the Hatch Rest over the years with my kids. But let’s take a look at it together and see why it’s loved by many.
As soon as you open the box, you will see the Hatch Rest and the cord and plug at the bottom of the box. When inspecting it, you’ll discover its clean matte design and find that it has a control panel at the bottom of the machine.
How Do You Set Up the Hatch Rest?
To set it up, you’ll first plug in the Hatch Rest and download their app.
The app will then ask you to connect your Hatch Rest via Bluetooth. Synching will allow you to control all of its different settings. The app will also ask you questions like your child’s name. (I found this helpful because I could then distinguish which Hatch Rest was in my daughter’s room and my son’s room.)
Once your Hatch Rest is synced to the app on your phone, it will show you the different ways to customize yours.
What Are the Different Features of the Hatch Rest?
When looking at all of the different customization options on the app, you can truly see how this smart sleep product is in a league of its own.
11 Soothing Sounds
Most sound machines will give you one or a few options to choose from. The Hatch Rest includes 11 different soothing sounds. You have a choice from white noise, crickets, rain, birds, wind, ocean, water stream, dryer, and three classic lullabies.
I’ve used the Hatch Rest since my son was a newborn (he is now four-and-a-half years old), and I’ve been extremely pleased with the quality of the speaker. I prefer the white noise sound, and I make sure to set it not very loud. I like how you can easily adjust the volume to the right setting for your home. So if you live in a noisy apartment in the city or a quiet rambler on a farm, you can find the perfect volume for your family.
Customizable Nightlight
Their app has a light library that features ten preset colors. And if one of those colors isn’t the right one for you, no problem! The app also has a color wheel. You can choose the perfect calming color for you and your baby from an infinite choice of colors.
This nightlight has been helpful from the moment my babies were born to today. The nightlight made nighttime diaper changes easier when they were newborns since I didn’t have to turn on a bright overlight. It also made middle-of-the-night feedings easier. I was able to see what I was doing, but it was still a dimly lit and calming atmosphere for my baby and me. When my daughter drops her pacifier in the middle of the night, the nightlight helps me tremendously. Even for my 4-year-old, the nightlight gives him comfort. He knows that he’s safe with it on since he can see a tiny bit more in his room.
Another perk to this customizable nightlight is that you can also adjust its brightness. You can control the brightness by the app or by the control panel at the bottom of the machine. I’m usually unable to control the brightness of a standard nightlight, so I really like this feature. I don’t like it to be too dark, but I don’t want it to be too bright to distract my children from sleeping. The Hatch Rest gives me that capability.
Sleep Programs
The Hatch Rest not only allows you to select the type of sound, volume level, the color of nightlight, and its brightness, but you’re also able to create sleep programs! That means you can set dream schedules with one-touch programs for nap time, bedtime, and when it’s time to wake up. Creating these sleep schedules on your Hatch Rest makes it easier to get your child on a sleep schedule that they need for healthy development.
As you can see, I have several sleep programs set that I can easily adjust or turn on or off.
Time-to-Rise
This feature is incredibly helpful when your little one starts getting up and out of their crib or bed on their own. We started using the Time-to-Rise feature with our son when he started getting up early from his room. We taught him that when his Hatch Rest is blue, it’s time to sleep, but he can get up and go out of his room when it turns golden yellow. We’ve used this for nap times and quiet times, too, and we still use it to this day!
The Hatch Rest is great because you can choose any colors your child prefers for sleep and time to rise. I recommend introducing this Time-to-Rise feature at around the age of two or when your child is in a big kid bed and starts getting up out of their room. This is the age when your child can learn to recognize visual cues. We found this feature easy and fun to help our son learn when it’s time to sleep or play quietly and when it’s time to rise and shine!
Pro tip: Once your child becomes familiar with the Time-to-Rise feature, you can set the time to rise a little later on the weekends. That’s what we’ve done in our house so that we get an additional 30 minutes of our kids in bed before we need to be up!
What Are the Benefits of Using the Hatch Rest?
This product is incredibly helpful for parents because it has several beneficial sleep tools all in one. Most people initially purchase it or register for the Hatch Rest because they need a good quality sound machine. And that makes sense! Research has confirmed that white noise can be helpful for mothers trying to settle their babies. They studied 40 newborns and found that 80 percent of the babies fell asleep within five minutes of hearing white noise. Only 25 percent of the babies without white noise could fall asleep as quickly.1 We all want our babies to be able to fall asleep faster and stay asleep longer. This product can help!
Some Other Benefits of the Hatch Rest:
- This sound machine can block out other household noises. This could be from loud older siblings or you and your spouse watching a TV show in the other room.
- It has more sound options available than the average sound machine so that you can find the perfect calming sound for your child.
- The sound, volume, color of light, and brightness can all be controlled by their app on your smartphone. You can also use the chrome touch ring that surrounds the speaker or the buttons on the Rest device itself to manually control the volume and brightness, as well as cycle through your favorite preset sound and light settings.
- The nightlight feature makes it incredibly helpful for caregivers to do late-night diaper changes and feedings.
- The sleep programs are so helpful because you don’t have to think about turning the Hatch Rest on or off if you don’t want to. (My daughter actually loves to turn it on and off herself by touching the chrome ring. It’s part of her bedtime and wake-up routine. She feels like such a big girl doing it! And I love how it helps her feel like an active participant in her sleep and wake routines.)
- It creates a good sleep association. When kids see and hear their Hatch Rest is on, they learn it’s time to sleep. Once this association is learned, falling asleep and staying asleep is a lot easier.
What We Love About Hatch Rest
The benefits listed above are definitely reasons why we love the Hatch Rest. We also love its clean, sleek design. Its simplicity matches any nursery decor. It’s also small, measuring six inches tall and four inches wide, and is lightweight, so you can easily move this in different areas of the nursery to another room or take it with you while traveling.
The Hatch Rest and its app are also intuitively designed and easy to use. Within no time, I had our Rest set up and functioning. Even my children (including my one-year-old) know how to turn it on, switch to different light and sound settings, and turn it off using the chrome ring.
I love how it’s one product that combines a sound machine, nightlight, and time-to-rise alarm in one. And I really love that it’s customizable. I can use each of those features individually. If we decide to no longer use the sound machine, we can still use it as a nightlight and/or a time-to-rise alarm. Or, if we don’t want a light or don’t need the time-to-rise feature yet, we can just use the Hatch Rest as only a sound machine. You can use it how you need it. We love how it truly does grow with your child’s sleep needs.
And one more reason why we love it; when you’re a tired parent who’s forgotten to turn on the sound machine at night, the app saves you from having to tip-toe back into the baby’s room to turn it on. Just open the app, set up a sleep program, and you’re done! You can turn up the white noise, turn down the light, and do it all from down the hall or down the stairs, all without waking your child.
Where To Get Yours?
Visit the Hatch website or click on this link to purchase yours today. By exploring their site, you will see that Hatch is on a mission to make sleep easier for everyone. The Hatch Rest was their first sleep product, and it has changed and improved the way many babies and kids sleep. I believe it can do the same for your family as it did for mine!
