We Tried It: Hatch Grow Smart Changing Pad and Scale
CR's usability specialists and a mom of five used the Hatch and talked to doctors to find out whether it’s a useful device or an anxiety inducer for parents. Spoiler alert: It might be a little of both.
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I remember the first time I learned that my new baby’s weight would go down, not up, in the days after birth. “That’s the wrong direction,” I said to the pediatrician, genuinely confused. Now, five babies later, the initial dip followed by the weight gain seems like a normal occurrence.
Those first few days, weeks, and months can bring lots of questions, including: How much does my baby weigh? Is he gaining weight? Is she getting enough breastmilk (for those who are nursing)? The Hatch Grow Smart Changing Pad and Scale aims to give parents some answers, doubling as both a changing station and a scale, with an accompanying app.
“Hatch was right on target, combining two of the most common needs a parent has with a new baby. Every new parent has to have a changing area, and most parents are curious, to say the least, about the baby’s weight and growth,” says Sheila Dukas-Janakos, a co-founder and CEO of Healthy Horizons in Burlingame, Calif., a corporate lactation program, and a consultant certified by the International Board of Lactation Consultant Examiners. “Hatch uses the same surface to accomplish both tasks.”
But it might not be a necessary or positive experience for all parents. For some, it might even induce more anxiety, just as a bathroom scale can if you step on it a bit too often. For others, it might be an unnecessary tool when visits to a pediatrician will suffice.
Consumer Reports’ consumer experience and usability research team, along with myself, a mom of five—three of whom are still in diapers and one who is breastfeeding—gave the Hatch Grow Smart Changing pad a thorough evaluation. We also spoke to pediatricians and lactation consultants to get their take on the device.
What Is the Hatch Grow Smart Changing Pad?
It’s a simple, easy-to-clean foam and plastic pad with a safety belt to secure the baby during changes and an integrated scale that’s used with the Hatch Baby app. The product comes in two colors, white or gray. It can be wiped clean with a damp cloth, is lightweight at 7.5 pounds, and comes with a one-year full manufacturer’s warranty. The app performs multiple functions:
- It keeps track of feeding times, their length, which breast the parent last fed with, and total ounces consumed (or milliliters if you so choose).
- It tracks diaper changes, allowing parents to input information they can share with their pediatrician via email if they’ve been asked for it.
- It records the baby’s weight and provides growth charts, with an option to export the data.
Who Is the Hatch Best For?
The Hatch isn’t a product that parents would routinely need to register for or purchase when it comes to home health monitoring, according to Chandani DeZure, MD, a board-certified pediatrician in the San Francisco Bay Area. “Home monitoring can be done on a case-by-case basis, and was done during COVID to limit exposure for babies, but routinely I never recommend home monitoring in healthy babies,” she says. Instead, it’s more of a nice-to-have option, not something that all parents will need. In particular, parents whose babies are having growth issues might think they need this product, and for some, it might ease concerns. But for others, it might cause more anxiety because weight alone doesn’t provide a full picture of the baby’s overall health.
“There are times when feeding/weight needs troubleshooting, so there may need to be adjustments made, but speaking to the baby’s doctor about the concerns, the weight, and overall health is the best way to determine what the baby needs,” DeZure says. “We look at a full exam, activity level, wet diapers, and overall trend to understand whether a baby is just being a baby or if there is something else more concerning. There is a lot of variation in what a healthy baby looks like, and it’s more than just pounds and ounces on a scale that determines health, but looking at a number in isolation can lead to unnecessary worry and unnecessary changes in a baby’s feeding regimen.”
How Well Does the Hatch Grow Do What It’s Designed to Do?
It can be confusing for new parents and consumers to determine which products that border on medical devices perform well, especially when the results feel as high-stakes as a new baby’s health. So CR evaluated the Hatch Baby app, focusing on tasks related to using the Hatch Grow, like setting up an account, weighing a baby, and using the scale to calculate feeding amounts, as well as the accuracy of the scale.
Ease of Use
Setting up the Hatch pad is simple, our evaluators found. First, place it on a changing table. The Hatch includes a safety belt for the baby. Then download the app for either iOS or Android. Be sure to download Hatch Baby, not Hatch Sleep, which often appears first after a search. The parts of the app we looked at, those related to using the Hatch Grow, are mostly easy to use, though it could be improved a bit, we concluded, by adding more directions.
Also, it’s not immediately obvious how to record a weight using the Hatch Grow if you skipped or have forgotten the information shown during setup, or that you can conduct a weighted feed (weighing a baby before and after feeding). This can be complicated by the fact that there’s no screen showing the weight on the scale itself, so you have to rely on the app. “Users should expect a brief period of trial and error when it comes to using the Hatch Grow’s weighing and feeding calculation features,” says Paul Ritchey, DrPH, a usability specialist at CR.
Weighing a wiggling baby can take a bit of practice. Our usability specialists and I concluded that movement makes it hard for the scale to lock in a weight; it keeps changing by a few decimal points.
The feet of the Hatch Grow are what the scale uses to calculate the weight of the baby. Hatch says that any damage to the feet renders the scale broken, so care should be taken to avoid damaging them.
There are also a few issues with the app when using the Hatch Grow to measure a feeding. For one thing, it doesn’t notify you that you’re in a feeding session after the initial weigh-in with a weighted feed, the usability specialists reported.
Size and Material
The material is a foam that prevented my baby from sliding around. But in my family’s experience, it isn’t as soft as a typical changing table with a pad. In fact, when I plopped my potty-training-averse 2-year-old on it, he started saying “itchy, itchy!” Not a great start. He also repeated “fall, fall,” anticipating that he would fall off or wasn’t as stable. This gave me a sense that the product is not for larger or longer babies and toddlers who really don’t fit well. The weight capacity is 44 pounds (20 kg), but I have no idea how the product would accommodate a child of that size.
Data Reports
Our evaluators found that the Hatch Grow scale reports accurate weighing, and the app displays feeding amounts in 0.25-ounce increments. Parents purchasing a $150 changing pad presumably want some data from their investment. So we evaluated how easy or difficult it might be for a parent to understand the growth charts and percentiles the weight recordings create for the baby. It was immediately obvious that my 2-month-old is in the 49th percentile, a number shown prominently when I weighed her.
Our evaluators found the growth charts could be confusing for some. For example, the iOS charts have more weight-for-age percentiles, but some share the same color. The Android charts have fewer weight-for-age percentiles, but overall the graph is easier to understand.
The Messy Business of Weighted Feeds
It can be a complicated matter trying to figure out if a breastfed baby is getting enough milk. Even in a medical setting, weighted feeds are often inaccurate and give a false sense of what intake is really looking like, Dukas-Janakos says. And a 2006 small study found this method for assessing milk intake to be “imprecise.”
As a general rule, however, Casares says that in the first few weeks of life, once a milk supply has been established, pediatricians want babies to eat at least an ounce every 3 hours. Breastfeeding parents might note that they’re feeding more than that, but this is simply a minimum for the early days. Then, as babies get older, she adds, it really depends on that individual child. They tend to eat around 3 ounces every 3 hours, but it can vary.
Some lactation consultants can conduct weighted feeds with parents. Those trying to DIY the process might benefit from the Hatch pad. Casares explains that this simply involves weighing the baby before and after feeding, and documenting the difference to determine how much milk they’re getting.
Photo: Alexandra Frost Photo: Alexandra Frost
One issue with weighted feeds and at-home measurements, according to Dukas-Janakos, is that they have to be incredibly accurate. “The Hatch Grow seems very affordable compared to hospital-grade scales, but it does lack accuracy,” she says. “The hospital-grade scales are accurate to 2 grams or 2 milliliters compared to the Hatch, which claims to be accurate to 0.25 ounces,” she says. “If we were weighing a baby in the first several days of life, this lack of accuracy difference could make the difference between a baby needing to receive supplemental milk, as a typical feeding can be between 5 to 15 ml at that stage. I would be hesitant to use this early on when a few grams of milk can be so critical. Even in a medical setting, weighted feeds are often inaccurate and give us a false sense of what intake is really looking like.“
In addition, factors like when a baby poops can complicate weighted feeds. For example, when I tested the weighted feed function with my own 2-month-old baby, it wasn’t as cut and dry as it might seem. She nursed a few minutes, pulled off, wiggled around awhile like babies do, and wasn’t really done. I paused the timer. Then she pooped. Then she ate. Then she pooped more. So really, who knows how much weight she’d lost via poop, offsetting her post-feed weight? It read that she only drank about an ounce, but I know she typically drinks 3 ounces. This type of conundrum is one reason a parent super-concerned with weight gain might end up with more anxiety than assurance through weighted feeds without help.
Weighted feeds “can occur during a pediatric visit, lactation consultation, oral motor evaluation, support group, or at home. They are a snapshot in time of what occurred during a particular feeding,” according to Martha Lasley, a certified lactation consultant and nurse in Orlando, Fla.
DeZure calls it “rare” for her to recommend home monitoring. “Even when I might,” she says, “it wouldn’t be on a $150 changing pad.”
The Takeaway: Should You Buy a Hatch Grow Smart Changing Pad?
As with every baby-related topic, it depends. It’s definitely not a must-have item, but one that might ease your mind in the early days of weight monitoring, or one that might make you more anxious with a bit too much data. Watching percentiles can cause extra issues for parents, Casares says, and pediatricians, unlike the scale, take a more holistic look at a baby’s health. “I care that your baby is following their own individual trajectory,” she says, explaining that it’s not about the percentile, but that a baby continues on that percentile, something that isolated numbers without a full healthcare evaluation won’t show. “This isn’t a grade on a test … 99 percent doesn’t mean you are better than someone at 30 percent,” she says.
Lasley adds that the scale shouldn’t lull parents into a false sense of security. “The weight is just part of the picture of feeding, growth, and development,” she says. “If the parent senses something is not quite right even if the baby is gaining weight, they should voice their concerns to the pediatrician.”
So before you add this changing pad to your cart, consider this: What is the weight of always knowing the weight?