Why Babies Love White Noise

April 5, 2011  |  0-3 Months, 3-6 Months, 6-9 Months, 9-12 Months, featured, fussy baby, SIDS, sleep environment
Why Babies Love White Noise

White Noise Helps Baby Sleep Flickr@Kekka

Babies love white noise. Let’s start with looking at it from baby’s perspective. They’ve just spent their entire life in the womb. And the womb is deafeningly loud. It is just slightly less loud than a lawnmower. Loud is normal to a baby. Life outside the womb is uncomfortably quiet. White noise sounds like “home” to a baby.

The Volume Inside the Womb

The Noise Level Your Baby is Used To

Why You Should Use White Noise with Babies?

Baby Sleeps Through the Night

White Noise Helps Baby Sleep Flickr@Kekka

All babies, ALL, should have loud white noise when they sleep all the time until they are at least 1. White noise is hands down the most effective, easiest to implement, inexpensive sleep aid for babies. It is also the sleep aid that parents most frequently DON’T use or they don’t use it CORRECTLY. I’ve had parents tell me they don’t want to use white noise because they are afraid their baby will become addicted. Or they don’t want to have to invest in a $70 white noise machine from the Sharper Image catalog. Or they think they are using white noise, but whatever device they are using barely makes enough noise to drown out a library whisper (yes I’m talking about you sleepy sheep – these don’t work, please don’t buy one).

White noise is hands-down the best and easiest thing you can use to help you and your baby sleep better.

1

White noise reduces stress in babies.

What do babies get stressed about? Just about everything. They’re stressed when they’re over-tired, they’re stressed because their world is more stimulating than they’re ready to handle, they’re overwhelmed with lights, faces, and excitement. White noise creates a safe space for them by blocking out that stimulation.

2

White noise helps babies sleep.

They fall asleep more easily and stay asleep longer. Babies have what are called “sleep arousals”, usually about every 20-45 minutes. Ever wonder why your baby only naps for 20 minutes at a time? Well it’s because when she hits her sleep arousal at the ~20 minute mark she is unable to fall back into deeper sleep and thus her nap is over. White noise helps babies gently navigate these arousals to get longer, more restorative naps. It also helps to block out the noise of life (older siblings, doorbells, garbage trucks, etc.) that can interfere with naps and night sleep.

3

White noise helps babies cry less.

Did you know that shushing is a sound that people universally understand and make with babies? Shushing is simply white noise that you make yourself. The key to using white noise (sushing or from a radio) to help calm a crying baby is that it needs to be LOUDER than the crying. Holding a screaming baby while shushing like a gentle librarian is useless. Your baby can’t hear the shushing over his own crying. You need to shush LOUDLY (sounds a bit ridiculous I know) so that the calming noise can penetrate above the crying. Also you may need to continue to shush for a while. Loud sustained shushing can be a challenge. If you’re starting to feel dizzy and/or see stars it’s time to outsource your shushing to an electric white noise device (radio, et al).

4

White noise reduces the risk of SIDS.

A relatively famous study (famous if you read a lot about baby sleep, so honestly you should be a little proud if you haven’t heard of it) showed that babies had a significant reduction in the risk of SIDS if they had a fan in their room. Nobody knows why the fan helps – it could be my moving the air around although many believe it has to do with the white noise the fan makes. We DO know that white noise reduces active sleep (which is the sleep state where SIDS is most likely to occur).

5

White noise will help YOU sleep.

Parents notoriously wake up every time the baby grunts or gurgles (and babies are NOISY CREATURES). Newborn swings can also be quite noisy, especially when they’re banging away mere inches from your bed. White noise will help mask these small noises so you and your partner can sleep better.

6

White noise is easy to wean off of.

When your baby is older (generally after their 1st birthday) you can gradually start to decrease the volume of the white noise. If they continue to sleep well, you’re done. If they wake up more frequently then they used to turn the white noise back on.

How to Use White Noise?

White Noise from Boom Box Radio

Boom Box for Baby Flicker@istopcrappics

You don’t need to buy ANYTHING – no sleepy sheep, no Sharper Image white noise generators, no mystical baby white noise CDs. Any old boom box, stereo, or alarm clock will work. In fact you can probably use the alarm clock in your your bedroom. You have a baby now, you no longer NEED an alarm clock. Simply set it to static (if you have a hard time finding a good static station on the FM dial, try searching on AM), turn up the volume, and you are all set. Put your radio where the baby primarily sleeps (probably your room). When the baby moves into his/her room, the white noise device goes too.

Turn the volume up to roughly 50 db (approximately the volume of somebody taking a shower if you are standing in the bathroom). It should definitely be louder than you think. It shouldn’t be UNCOMFORTABLY loud (if it bothers YOU, it’s probably too loud). Leave the white noise on whenever your baby will be sleeping. Whatever you are using to make white noise should be continuous. Any CD or Sleepy Sheeps (have I mentioned my loathing of these things?) won’t work well because they will TURN OFF at some point.  While this may not cause problems for newborn babies (under 3-6 months) eventually you will find yourself with a child who wakes up crying every 45 minutes when the Sleepy Sheep turns off.

If you have a particularly fussy baby or are looking for ways to survive the dreaded witching hours, you may want to bring your white noise maker out into living room (or wherever you like to grind through the fussy part of the day) to help create a calming environment for your fussy baby. Simply move the radio back to the bedroom when it’s time to sleep.

11 Comments

  1. Callista
    May 12, 2011 at 3:24 pm

    Great article! I agree that white noise is the best. Although when the baby sleeps in your room, it can get annoying. We have a fish tank in our room though and the sounds of that is like a white noise machine. My baby likes the white noise much better than the music.

    My dad and brother have a hard time calming down the baby when he cries. You know why? Because they shush quietly and rock softly. They had loud noise but also constant movement when in the womb. Loud shushing and quicker bouncing/rocking works wonders.

    Reply
  2. Alexis
    May 13, 2011 at 1:52 pm

    I was once a quiet shusher too. I thought that sushing should be done at the volume of the nice old lady at the library.

    Nope.

    Reply
  3. Jen
    November 23, 2011 at 8:50 am

    Thanks for this post! We were given a Sleep Sheep, which works wonders on our 3-week-old girl, but now she’s pretty much guaranteed to wake up every 45 minutes when it shuts off. I do not understand the logic behind the timed shut-off feature! Would it be so hard to have a continuous play option? Now have to go find ourselves a radio.

    (PS – Love your site. We are also setting out to acquire a swing too)

    Reply
  4. Matt
    December 5, 2011 at 10:10 pm

    There’s this book called The Brain That Changes Itself by Norman Doidge — in chapter 3 he talks about an autism researcher who thinks that white noise is an environmental risk factor for infants with a genetic predisposition to autism.

    Of course, even though a friend gave us that book to read, we still use a white noise generator when our baby sleeps. We just don’t play it very loud :)

    (We asked this sleep consultant whether she thought the white noise generator was going to turn our kid autistic and she assured us it won’t. With a mild sneer.)

    Reply
  5. Dominica
    December 13, 2011 at 11:48 am

    Can anyone recommend a white noise machine? I know you said the radio is fine, but our radio gets interference from the baby monitor so it will buzz sometimes. We bought the Marmac 980A machine because it had great reviews, but it’s just not loud enough and we have to use a fan in addition to it. Kind of defeats the purpose. We need something loud that doesn’t shut off after 90 minutes.

    Thanks for any suggestions!

    Reply
    • Alexis
      December 13, 2011 at 3:01 pm

      Dominica,
      You could try a few things:
      1) Break the antenna on your radio (if you can).
      2) The fan may work fine & be sufficient on it’s own.
      3) If you have an ipad/laptop there are tons of free white noise apps you can download that are quite loud and don’t have timers.
      4) While I’m no expert on white noise machines (my goal is to help you NOT spend $$ on them) I know you want to steer clear of anything marketed as a tool for babies or that runs exclusively on batteries. The baby white noise machines tend to be too quiet as do things with batteries (which often have timers also).

      Good luck!

      Reply
      • Dominica
        December 13, 2011 at 4:35 pm

        Thanks for such a quick reply! I will try the antenna thing. The fan will be great in the summer but it gets a little too cold with it running in the winter here in Colorado. I used to have an app on my phone but it would randomly force-quit sometimes. But the radio thing, good idea. :)

        Reply
  6. Mihai
    February 16, 2012 at 9:23 am

    We use this video and it’s quite good for our needs. And it’s also long (12 hours):
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KaOrSuWZeM

    Reply

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