My Latest Mom Hack: Hatch Baby Rest+

A bunch of mom friends recommended a time-to-rise clock to me once Arlo hit the toddler stage. It’s a device that turns a new color to let little ones know it’s ok for them to wake up/get out of bed! I did some quick research and had my eye on the Hatch Baby Rest for awhile, honestly solely because it was the prettiest, cleanest looking one. Ha! I finally bought it for Arlo after we returned from an East Coast trip and he woke us up at 5am a few too many (early) mornings in a row. 😉

Shortly after, I ended up getting in touch with the folks at Hatch and now I’ve gotten to try out their newest Rest+ device, which is honestly such a game changer for toddler life, and so much more than just the time-to-rise clock I had originally bookmarked it for. In short, it’s all your nursery necessities – a voice monitor, sound machine, nightlight and time-to-rise clock — combined into one “mama’s gonna sleep tonight!” device! Haha! And we LOVE ours.

Sharing three reasons below that’ll tell you why.

Time to Rise Clock

Figured I should start with the reason I had my eye on a Rest in the first place. We try to make it a point of not going in to get Arlo out of his crib before 7am. However, sometimes he’ll sleep past that (Victory!), but a lot of the time, he’s up before then… like almost an hour before then some days.

With the “time to rise” feature, you can set a time when the light will turn a different color (Arlo picked green… his current favorite color) indicating that it is time for him to be awake and OK to call for us. Before that, he knows that it’s still “sleep time” and that even if he moans and groans, we won’t be coming in until the light is green!

It has been SUCH a great way to start teaching him a concept of time and boundaries, kind of like a first step into independence. And ideally, a first step towards staying in bed or playing quietly once he moves to a big kid bed.

It’s Totally Customizable

I love options, that’s not news to most of you. 😉 So I love that all the sounds and color combos are customizable with the Rest, and that you can change them based on different times of day, too. You essentially set different “programs” for different uses. So we have one program for bedtime (no light, wind sound), nap time (pink light, wind sound) and wake time (green light, wind sound). This helps Arlo understand the difference between bedtime and nap time, as well as quiet time and… well “scream/sing Do-Re-Mi at the top of your lungs time.” Ha!!

As a kid who LOVES to make his own choices, he was totally thrilled to get to pick out his colors and sounds, and pretty much thought he was a magician when he tapped all the different colors to test them on my phone and magically watched the Rest change.

I’m a firm believer that any time you can involve a kid in the decision making process, it has a positive effect on them (and builds good life skills, too!) because they just LOVE to have tiny bits of control where they can get it. This is a great example of that.

It’s All In One

… which is why I’m getting one for our second nursery, too. There are few products that can really “grow” with your baby and this is one of them! Any time I can take advantage of that, I do, because the amount of baby gear we have is crazyyy!

It has a sound machine, audio monitor and nightlight, all three things we needed from day one, all built into one. I’ll especially note the nightlight aspect because it can be adjusted to be *so dim* that it wouldn’t bother a baby, but would be enough light for you to see to feed them.

We were BIG fans of the dream feed and did so for quite awhile with Arlo, and it would have been so nice to have had this feature then. Since it’s controllable from our phones (and also Alexa compatible!), we could turn it on before we go in the room so we’re totally hands free!

One final note: You can “invite” other people to control the monitor, so if you’re traveling (or even just at work during the day!) and having grandparents or a sitter staying with the babe, you can add them to the device so they can control it from their phone while you’re gone.

Photos by Jeff Mindell

If you’re looking for a great gift to give a new parent or for a device that can grow with your kiddo (less stuff to buy!) and will make your (sleep) life easier, I can’t recommend this enough!

You can learn more or purchase yours right here. And if you have any questions about it, leave ’em below and I’ll answer them!!

p.s. There is also a toddler lock on it, for moments like the above. 😉 Haha!

This post was created in partnership with Hatch Baby. All content and opinions are that of my own! Thank you for supporting the sponsors that keep the Studio DIY party going! Read more about my editorial policies here.