This swing has been a lifesaver!

My husband and I spent a lot of time looking at different swings before we decided on this one. We already owned a matching Graco travel system and were happy to find a matching fabric although this was not the biggest reason for our decision to buy it.

The Bad: This swing was pretty tough to put together. It is the only swing I've ever put together so this may be a problem common to all swings, I'm not sure. The instruction manual was nowhere near as clear as I would like but again this is true of most instruction manuals. For the most part assembly was just tedious but there were a few places where I got caught up:

1. The gray "legs" that attach to the four points where the base touches the ground: The front two legs, once attached, don't touch the ground. This led me to worry I was putting them on backward. After much time spent taking them off and putting them back on, however, I realized this is how they are supposed to be.

2. The mobile: When it came to attaching this I could only get it to go on "backward". This put it in a position where the baby would not even be able to see it. After much frustration I figured it out. The mobile will go in the correct way. You just have to push very very hard to get it in there. I was afraid of pushing too hard and breaking it but after some elbow grease from my husband it was finally in position.

The Good: Everything else! We LOVE this swing. Our baby has never been much of a sleeper so for the first 2 months of her life this swing was the only thing that got her to take naps. Now that she is 5 months old she is more willing to nap but without this swing to rock her she would only sleep for 10 minutes at a time. She was colicy as a newborn and this was one of the few things that would soothe her. We are still using the fully reclined position but love the fact that this swing will grow with her and we will probably raise the seat here soon. We are currently using it without the snack tray but in a few months we will be adding it back so she can eat in her swing. (NOTE: If you don't plan on using the snack tray in the beginning skip this part of assembly. I put it on from the start and everytime my daughter would startle in her sleep she would smack her hands on the bottom of the tray. It was difficult to remove once attached so keep this in mind during assembly!)

It took awhile to get used to the straps but after awhile we developed a system to make getting her into the swing without waking her a cinch: Whenever we take her out of the swing we raise the shoulder straps and tuck them behind the infant head support. Then we take the waist straps and lay them to the side. In this way we can easily get her into the swing for her next nap without her eyes popping open.

There are 6 speeds for this swing. We love this. When she is still slightly awake we use a higher setting to rock her to sleep and once she's asleep we switch it to a lower speed just to keep her moving a bit. At first I thought the higher speeds would be way too fast for an infant but she absolutely loves them. She loves the attached bear mobile as well. When she was younger I hung colorful rattles down from the center of the bear mobile so she would have something bright to look at. Now she loves the bears themselves. The swing also plays classical music and nature sounds. Some of the nature sounds end up sounding more like an annoying noise and static than an actual soothing sound. We usually just stick to the music feature which is very nice. There are different volume settings available. Press two red buttons and you can easily fold this swing and store it in a closet.

I don't know what we would do without this swing!