The Snoo is a $1,500 bassinet — and a touchstone for parental judgment, anxiety and privilege

Seven weeks after Jessica Scalia gave birth to her son James, the situation was both extremely common and completely dire. Her son was not sleeping, which meant she and her husband weren’t, either.

“I was desperate,” she says. “I was willing to try anything.”

So, at an ungodly hour on one particularly bad night, she made an impulse decision to rent a Snoo — a nearly $1,500 robotic bassinet that automatically soothes fussy babies with motion and white noise.