AC Powered Baby Swing

In my childhood home, certain otherwise nondescript items were treated as precious commodities (tape, thumbtacks, postage stamps), but none more highly than batteries.  Oh, the coveted battery.  In fact, my dad even charged us for each battery on the order of 50 cents, if my memory serves me.  So it’s only rational that this vaunted view of batteries persisted to my adulthood.  Jeff is equally stingy with batteries, and until we had kids, we never thought a thing about it.

Enter parenthood, and suddenly battery-powered doodads are everywhere.  The cashiers at Babies R Us even seem to be required to ask, “Would you like some batteries with that?” even if you are just there to shell out cash for an overpriced diaper pail refill.  For the most part, we tried to do without.  Mobile with battery-powered lights and spinning toys?  Replaced by a hand-crank mobile.  Bouncy chair with battery-powered vibrating?  Became bouncy chair with manual vibrating (aka jiggle it with your foot while you try to eat breakfast).  Battery-powered bear that says a bedtime prayer?  Well, there was just no salvaging that one.  We celebrated the day that bear ran out of batteries.



However, certain pieces of baby gear were too essential in the early days to go power-free.  Like the baby swing.  But could I really spring for batteries, and not just batteries but multiple D batteries???  I think not.  Time to bust out the trusty soldering iron.  Using a spare AC adapter from an old cell phone, Jeff converted the swing from battery-powered to plug in.

Instructions: (pictures to come soon.  We loaned the swing to our good friends Matt & Brenda, who had a new swing-loving baby on 9-10-11.)

• A 5-volt DC charger replaced four 1.5V D cells (6 volts).


• Cut and remove the phone plug end and strip the two wires found there.


• Temporarily connect the red wire to the positive battery terminal and black wire to the negative.


• Plug in the adapter and see if the swing operates sans batteries.


• If all goes well, solder the connections to make them permanent.