Helping Your Baby Sleep With Soothing Sounds: All You Need To Know

Does your baby wake up several times at night crying? Do they toss and turn with their eyes wide open? Know that you aren’t alone. Navigating a baby’s sleeping patterns is a challenge most parents face. Conventional wisdom suggests establishing sleeping routines, singing lullabies, and rocking your baby to sleep. Yet, specially designed sound programs and relaxing playlists have become popular alternatives. If you are considering these options to ensure a good night’s sleep for you and your kiddo, find out more about the science behind it and how it can benefit your growing family.

According to the National Sleep Foundation, by the age of two, most children will have spent more time asleep than awake throughout their short lives. Typically, breastfed babies feed every 2 or 3 hours, and bottle-fed babies tend to feed every 3 or 4 hours. It’s no wonder why so many parents are seriously sleep-deprived. Of course, just like adults, each baby is unique. Some may be heavy sleepers, while others may be light sleepers, and some may sleep longer than others. There may not even be a set pattern for their sleeping habits at all!

How to help your baby sleep better at night?

You’ll want your baby to get a good sleep he or she needs. After all, during this early life stage, your little one is experiencing tremendous development that impacts their brain and body. This sets the stage for continued growth throughout childhood and adolescence. Sleep supports these changes and development and some studies suggest that it even plays a crucial role in learning. While asleep, newborns learn and process external stimuli, which is key for their rapid adaptation and survival.

Naturally, as a parent, you’ll want to make sure that your baby is getting plenty of sleep. But you shouldn’t forget about your own well-being! Experts discovered that sleep-deprived parents are more likely to feel stressed, anxious, or depressed. With a newborn at home, getting high-quality sleep can be quite challenging, and this can heighten stress and anxiety.

Even after the initial phase of waking up at irregular hours for feedings, your baby may struggle to fall and stay asleep. While you can’t make your baby fall asleep at your command, there are certain things you can do to make this process easier for the whole family. Pediatricians recommend the following:

• Warm baths;
• Singing lullabies;
• Dimming the lights;
• Massaging to relieve gas;
• Listening to white noise and relaxing sounds.

While there are many reasons why your baby is awake, most of them are temporary causes and nothing to stress about. Babies who are under 6 months of age wake up because of some internal or external discomfort. They could be hungry or they have a leaky diaper, for example. Yet, if your baby is seriously struggling to fall asleep and this persists with age, or if there are other symptoms, voice your concerns to your pediatrician as soon as possible.

The power of sound

You may have considered playing relaxing sounds to lull your baby to sleep. In many cases, sounds can help babies and adults alike to relax and sleep faster. The Sleep Foundation recommends relying on sounds that cover other noises and that maintain an even tone and volume. White noise, sounds of nature, and calming music are among the top options you’ll find useful for you and your baby.

White Noise

This method has gained so much popularity that you might have seen machines specially designed to play these sounds. Broadly speaking, white noise refers to sounds that mask other sounds. Think for a second about the sounds that you find disrupting, like a door suddenly slamming shut or outdoor construction sounds. Something like this doesn’t startle or wake you up because it’s loud, but rather because there’s a change in sound consistency. White noise is like a “sound blanket”. It is produced when every frequency our ears perceive is played randomly at the same amplitude. This results in a sound that many people associate with TV or radio static.

As you probably already guessed, white noise can help a newborn fall asleep faster because it masks all these noises in their environment. This could be particularly helpful if you have had other kids and have a generally noisy household. Scientists also noted that certain sounds “infiltrate” the womb, and your baby is simply not used to complete silence. That’s why having a bit of background noise can be very comforting.

A study published in Archives of Disease in Childhood found that white noise could be helpful for newborns. To prove this, a group of forty newborns were studied. Researchers observed that 80% were able to fall asleep within five minutes of hearing white noise. Nowadays, it’s common to mix white noise with lullabies, heartbeat noise, or natural sounds such as flowing water.

Natural sounds

So now that you know about white noise and its benefits, what about sounds of nature? Research has concluded that relaxing music and sounds of nature can generally improve sleep quality. Researchers at Brighton and Sussex Medical School in England found that nature sounds are related to a decrease in the body’s sympathetic response. This is the response responsible for triggering “fight-or-flight” mode. These sounds increase the parasympathetic response, which helps the body relax and function in normal mode (also known as the “rest-digest” response).

You may find that the sound of flowing water can produce an immense sense of mental tranquility. Water is, in essence, a non-threatening sound, which can drown out these noises that often raise red flags in your brain (traffic, slamming doors, loud voices, etc). Water sounds that are constants, such as crashing waves, vary considerably in volume. You hear quiet intervals followed by crescendos as the waves rise and fall. This is a clear contrast to an alarm clock or ambulance siren abruptly piercing silence.

Recommendations

If you have decided to help your baby fall asleep with soothing sounds, there are some things to bear in mind. While these kinds of aids can be beneficial, there are also some “cons” you should analyze first. For example:

• Not all babies are the same. Your child may or may not respond well to white noise, relaxing music, or nature sounds. Of course, you can’t really anticipate that, so it all comes down to a “trial and error process”.
• Loud sounds can be harmful. Newborns and babies should not be exposed to loud sounds. The recommended maximum limit is 50 decibels. You should keep the volume well below the maximum setting and place any sound device away from your baby’s crib.
• Overdependence. Babies can become too dependent on these sleeping aids. This may pose a problem if you aren’t sleeping at home and the sound device is not available. Try to alternate the sleeping methods, opting for a more traditional approach such as massaging or singing lullabies every now and then.

Need an extra hand? We’ve got you covered! Lull your little one to sleep with BABY SLEEP; a series of beautiful and natural melodies created by sound experts. And, if you would like even more helpful tips, watch our masterclasses. Only here, on Beginning.com!