Anything that can help with getting Ellie to sleep or soothing her through the night is a must-have for me, so it's no surprise that I headed out as soon as we knew I was pregnant and bought Ollie The Owl. We did um and ah over whether to opt for Ollie or Ewan the sheep but there were features to Ollie that sold it. We've now been using it for the last 3 months and I thought it was finally time to share my thoughts.

Firstly, he's so cute! His muted colours make him gender-neutral and make him fit in easily with any decor. He is also incredibly light, soft and squishy so perfect to sit next to the baby. Ollie has a velcro loop on the back which makes it easy to attach him to the side of the cot, Moses basket or even your car/car seat. It also gives you the peace of mind knowing that it's not going to fall on baby through the night. 

Ollie has a three-stage orange light on his tummy that is activated through the left foot, Ellie loves the light as she can just sit and stare at it without it being too bright in her eyes and I know it will turn off after 30 minutes. His right foot controls the volume, which has 3 levels and the fourth click turns it off altogether. Ollie also has 4 soothing sounds for a baby that can be activated by pressing his wings; the sounds of the heartbeat and rainfall are in the right-wing and the lullaby and white noise are in the left-wing.


What sold us on Ollie the most was the cry sensor, it can only be used on the white noise and lullaby sounds (left-wing activated) but is so useful especially when sleeping training as you don't have to go back and forth to turn the music back on. The sensor can be activated straight away by pressing and holding the left-wing for 30 seconds but this will put the owl into standby mode and only play if a baby cries. However, if you play the lullaby or white noise it starts a loop; it will play for 20 minutes, stop, go into standby mode, reactivate only if baby cries and then play again for 20 minutes. 

We've loved using him over the last 3 months, but we have recently taken a break from using it just because of how many batteries it is using. Ollie requires 4 AA batteries (of good quality) and The Gro Company claim that these should get you 36 hours of use. However, we noticed that we were changing the batteries every 7-10 days...we know they need changing but batteries aren't cheap and if they need changing so often it's going to cost nearly £100 a year on top of the £34.99 he costs. For me, I think if they expected him to be used so much then he should maybe come with an adaptor to attach him to the mains.

Have you used Ollie, I'd love to know your thoughts. Or, if you don't what are your babies favourite bedtime aids?