Baby Noises

Not the cute little grunts and sighs. I wanna talk about the wonder of white noise and lullabies that won’t make you want to slash the tires on the bus that goes round and fucking round.

I personally believe Landon is such a sound sleeper because the amount of noise we got him used to from infancy. His room is above the garage door. His room literally shakes when we come and go. I remember early on thinking we would never get to leave the house. He was on a super early bedtime of 6pm. What were going to do if we needed to go get dinner or something?! Slowly we got over it. Kevin would leave while I was nursing him in the room and I noticed he didn’t even flinch when it went. JACKPOT! We kept it up and to this day he sleeps through pretty much anything. Dog barks, door bells, fire trucks, thunderstorms, fire alarm chirping madness (cuz you know that shit happens at 3 am EVERY TIME), fireworks, false alarm on the alarm system, music, talking, etc. For all of this, I credit our efforts in desensitizing him to sounds.

We are heavy proponents of white noise for sleeping. We learned early on that Landon loved harsh noises. Vacuum cleaner was the best .99 cent iTunes download I have ever purchased. It has to be the hands-down most played track in the library collectively from every iPod we owned. We would blast it at him in restaurants with a portable iPod dock into his car seat. We would listen to it on loop in the car EVERYWHERE. At night he sported a white noise machine on various sounds…and still has the same machine to go to sleep to now (Dolphin got his own). When we are away from home, we have white noise apps on his iPod that we just stream. Don’t have an iPod? FM radio on static. VOILA! We are never without it…and honestly he doesn’t need it to go to sleep anymore…just helps buffer noises.

The reason this all came up again was our daycare tour for Dolphin. The one and only thing they asked of us before him coming was to make sure he wasn’t used to sleeping in dead silence. We already knew this of course but she said it was kind of a problem when new parents brought in their babes into louder environments. At Landon’s daycare, they actually played music constantly right where they slept. This was to help cancel out the noise of the ones playing in the other part of the room. We even asked for copies of the CDs to use at home. And through those CDs, we discovered our other weapon of parenting infants…Rock a bye Baby!

A collection of albums of modern artists in lullabye form. It ROCKS. If you haven’t heard it, you are kind of missing out. Just last week I was checking out the new albums since Landon was a baby and caught myself listening to them in my office for fun. So soothing! Here are just a few they offer:

Go here to see a full list.

They really make you not hate kids music.  I actually was showing their albums to someone at work the other day and I caught myself still listening to it. It really is super relaxing and makes you smile when you hear a new one. I remember nursing Landon at lunch one day and heard “Livin on A Prayer” and started giggling. I am honestly super excited to listen to the new albums with Dolphin. 🙂

And last minute bonus, they have all the albums on Spotify!!!!  Hooray! So go and find your faves. You might need it for timeout when you wanna strangle them. 🙂

13 thoughts on “Baby Noises

  • July 10, 2012 at 9:26 am
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    What white noise machine do you use/recommend? I’m in the market for one. Thanks!

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      • July 10, 2012 at 9:58 am
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        Thanks. We’ve been running a humidifier every night for 2.5 years now. Great for the white noise aspect, but I’m sick of buying the filters!

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  • July 10, 2012 at 11:39 am
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    So…. of course… being a mom to two kids where we did the same exact thing with both of them, heavy sleeping is DEFINITELY a nature versus nurture thing. We also desensitized both kids to noises to help them deal with day care, used white noise, etc.

    Nate is an effing sleeping CHAMP, he went something like 2 years in a row without a night wake up (except for a 105 fever). Alex…. early bird. Wakes up frequently in the middle of the night. Sensitive to noises. And since they slept in the same room for 3 years, I can guarantee you they were in the same exact environment. Same experience at day care – Nate was a champ napper, Alex was a crap napper, and no day care person was ever able to change it.

    So… I think you can do your best but it is not the magic bullet that is going to work with every kid.

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    • July 10, 2012 at 2:41 pm
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      Laura Case…the voice of reason…and dread.

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  • July 10, 2012 at 12:03 pm
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    We are big white noise/lullaby peeps too! The nursery is right at the top of old creeky stairs that our 8 lb cat even sounds like an elephant walking up. I’ve known some moms that were afraid their baby would become reliant on the noise and only sleep if they had it. That was not the case with our little guy. He also had a easier time napping at daycare. Although he was a “power napper” only sleeping for 20 minutes at a time until he was close to a year old! The first time he actually slept for a whole hour we didn’t know what to do with ourselves!! Hubby had a few ideas… ;0) TMI???

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  • July 10, 2012 at 2:23 pm
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    Part of me wants to laugh and point at the mom with one good sleeper who has no idea what it’s like to have a picky sleeper, but most of me wants you to get lucky again. =)

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    • July 10, 2012 at 2:41 pm
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      Oh let me clarify…there was no easy sleeping early on. I NEVER got him to nap while I was on maternity leave without being attached to me or a carseat. I went batty. He also never slept through the night until 9 months. Then we let him cry it out and never looked back. It wasn’t an easy road…so that is why I give credit to daycare and technology 🙂 At least I was calmer when I was sleep deprived!

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  • July 10, 2012 at 4:22 pm
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    I credit our white noise machine for a lot of things. Everly is also fine to sleep through the noises of dog barks and car alarms, but she too is buffered by the white noise. When we go to my moms and it is DEAD quiet, she doesn’t sleep as soundly. It’s kind of awesome.

    Ours fits an iPod in it, but comes with it’s standard 6 sounds, and is an alarm clock. It might have cost me $85 but I think she will own this thing well into her tween years 😀

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  • July 10, 2012 at 11:14 pm
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    These are great!! Thanks for the tip! We had a baby Einstein cd that I burned for Noah and always had on my iPhone. It was crazy, we always played the tracks in the same order and no matter what after the first few notes of the first song his eyelids would start to get heavy. I could put him down for a nap anywhere, all he needed was his music. Now he just needs white noise. We keep a humidifier running in his bedroom non-stop. Doubt it actually works since we haven’t put water in it in over a year! I will have to download some of this music for when Bryce gets here!

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  • July 11, 2012 at 10:05 am
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    Totally agree about how great noise machines are…and also how it’s a good idea to get kids used to sleeping through anything. They really are adaptable little creatures.

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