What a bouncer is actually for, and what it is not

The job it does

A bouncer holds a baby at an angle, close to the floor, where you can see them. That is the whole job. You fasten the harness, put the seat on the floor and cook, eat or answer the door with both hands.

The motion comes from the baby. A kick or a wriggle sets the sling moving, and the frame gives the bounce back. Nudge it with a foot and it rocks for a while. Nothing plugs in and nothing runs on batteries.

That limit is the point. A motor turns a seat into an appliance, and an appliance is one more thing to fail on a Sunday night. It also decides the rhythm for the baby instead of letting the baby decide it.

Bouncer, rocker, swing, chair: the differences that matter

The words get used interchangeably in product names, and they mean different things in practice.

Our range covers the first two columns and the last one. We make no swing, because we make nothing with a motor in it.

The Cotton Bouncer is the only model of ours that carries on afterwards. Lock the frame flat and it becomes a toddler chair to thirty pounds, which buys another year out of the same frame.

The day the seat is finished

There are three endings, and the first one to arrive wins. The baby sits up unaided. The baby rolls over in the seat. The baby reaches the printed weight.

Most parents hit the first ending before the third. A six month old who can push up on their arms is done with a bouncer, even at fifteen pounds.

We print that on the product page as a limit rather than a suggestion. A seat used past it is a seat a baby can tip.

4 out of 5

My babies are obsessed with the bouncer and this one does the job. With that said it will only last 1 baby. The frame sags lower and lower with more use. So the one I borrowed from a friend (same bouncer) my 15lbs baby is practically parallel with the floor, but the new one I bought holds him up nice and high.

How long you actually get out of one

The honest way to compare seats is not the sticker price. It is the price divided by the months you will use it, and those months are shorter than the box suggests.

The table below is built from our own range and the age windows we print on each model. It assumes a baby who starts in the seat at birth and stops on the day they sit up unaided, which for most babies lands somewhere between six and eight months.

Two things fall out of that arithmetic. A seat that carries on as a toddler chair earns its extra dollars back, and a spare pad is cheap enough to buy twice rather than replacing a frame that is still straight.

It also shows why we did not build a fifth bouncer. The gaps between these four are already small, and a fifth would only make the choice harder without making a baby more comfortable.

What we would tell you not to buy

If the problem is night sleep, none of this helps. A cot or a bassinet is the answer, and no seat we make is a substitute for one.

If the problem is mealtimes with a baby who already sits up, that is a high chair. A bouncer at that age is a seat they can climb out of.

If the problem is a back that hurts from carrying, a bouncer will not fix it either. That is the carrier, and it is a different page.

Where it goes in the room

On the floor, every time. Not on a worktop, a table, a bed or a sofa. A bouncer on a raised surface moves when the baby moves, and the fall is onto a hard floor.

Pick a spot where you can see the seat from wherever you are standing. In a small flat that usually means the kitchen doorway rather than the middle of the room.

Keep the cord of a blind, a phone charger or a kettle out of reach of the seat. A baby in a bouncer has a longer reach than the seat suggests once they start grabbing.