Have you ever wondered why newborn babies seem to sleep better during the day and wake up at night? Or maybe they fall right to sleep when you get in the car? A study by the Queen Charlotte’s Hospital found that 80% of 40 newborns fell asleep within five minutes of hearing white noise.
What is White Noise?
White noise is a perfect mixture of all sounds or frequencies available to the human ear. Due to this mixture, the ear cannot focus on any specific sound, so white noise is used to drown out all other noises in the surrounding.
Contrary to popular belief, babies love noise, white noise. The womb is a somewhat noisy place where the baby hears the rhythmic sound of your heart, the roaring sound of blood rushing over the uterus, and every breath you take. All these sounds create a harmonious symphony that soothe your baby and helps them sleep.
When the baby is born, they come into a quiet place where people are whispering around them and walking on eggshells. The silence is not only scary for the baby, but it also makes them feel isolated and detached. During the day, however, there are other kids making noise, the TV is on, and you are using the vacuum and the washing machine. The baby hears these noises and gets a familiar feeling of the sounds in the womb, so they calm down and drift to sleep comfortably.
What is Brown Noise
As stated above, white noise happens when all the frequencies are mixed, and they give a very high-pitched tone. To reduce the adverse effects on the child’s ears, sound machine developers try to balance the high-pitched tones by reducing their volume. The sound in your ear will be no different from white noise, but the frequency is quite different. Brown noise is when they take it a notch higher and reduce the volume of high-pitched tones entirely, so what you hear is an intense sound. For example, the sound of rain is brown noise.
Sources of White Noise
So, what happens during the night when you can no longer maintain the same noisy environment you had during the day? Luckily, today you can get a sound machine that is specifically designed to make baby white noise. You have to leave this machine on an entire night because once it goes off, the baby will wake up.
However, if you cannot afford to buy a sound machine, there are many alternatives right in your house. For example, you can use your radio or alarm clock and put it on static the entire night. Static is that channel where the radio is not connected to any specific frequency, so it makes a noise similar to what the baby hears in the womb. You can also use a fan or humidifier because they make the same sound but put it a bit far from the child.
Advantages of White Noise
Helps the baby to sleep
The change of environment from a very noisy womb to silence on earth can be a drastic change for the baby. White noise helps your baby to sleep by calming them down when they hear that familiar sound. The reason why swaddling helps the baby to relax is that they can listen to your soothing heartbeat and your rhythmic breathing. Since you can’t swaddle your baby all the time, white noise plays the same role of soothing and calming your baby to sleep.
Masks other sounds
If you live in a place where there is noisy traffic or construction, white noise will drown out all that external noise. Similarly, if you have an older child who makes a lot of noise, your baby will sleep right through it.
Reduces stress and crying
Unknown to many, babies go through a lot of stress. They get stressed when they are tired, and even when they see many faces and hear so much noise from excited people. They also get overwhelmed by the overstimulation of lights and a new environment, which leads to crying. White noise provides a safe place for them to close their eyes and drift back to the womb. When a baby is crying, you can begin with a shushing sound on their ear and then put for them a lower white noise when they have calmed down.
Helps the baby to sleep longer
White noise helps the baby to fall asleep faster. However, babies naturally have sleep arousals every 20 or so minutes. If the environment is not conducive, they wake up. If your baby seems to sleep for only 20 to 40 minutes at a time, you may need a sound machine to help navigate that sleep arousal. White noise will soothe your baby back to sleep when they wake up temporarily and help them to sleep for longer.
Reduces the risk of SIDS
Sudden infant death syndrome is one of the worst fears parents of newborns have. One study shows that using a fan as white noise reduces the risk of SIDS significantly. Though the study does not explain why the fan helps, it may be because baby white noise reduces active sleep, which causes SIDS.
White noise will help you sleep
While white noise is designed to help babies fall and stay asleep, it can also help you relax as well. New moms get sleep deprived because every time the baby coughs or turns, they wake up to check on them. A sound machine will come in handy to drown out any insignificant noise the baby makes so you can have a restful night’s sleep.
Is White Noise Safe for Babies?
While there are countless benefits of using white noise on your baby, there are also significant drawbacks. One of the disadvantages is that the baby can become overly dependent on the machine to fall and stay asleep. If you are ever away from home and the device, your baby will not fall asleep, and if they do, it will be very short-lived.
Sometimes the baby wakes up at night because they are uncomfortable, wet or hungry. If the white noise soothes them right back to sleep, the problem that caused them to wake up will continue unattended.
Potential developmental issues with Sound Machines
The American Academy of Pediatrics testes 14 sound machines made for infants. All of the devices exceeded 50 decibels, which is the noise limit for the human ear. The consequence of such loudness from such a young age is increased hearing issues. The solution is to reduce the volume and keep the machine at least 7 feet away from the baby.
If you use a sound machine even during the day, the baby will never hear other sounds. For example, the baby needs to hear when the people around them are talking so they can learn speech and listening. They also need to hear other noises around their home, such as airplanes, traffic, construction, bird chime, and more. Extended usage of sound machines or white noise can cause language and speech development issues.
Using Music to Help Baby Sleep
Together with swaddling and playing white noise in the background, music is also known to be of great help in soothing your baby to sleep.
The Great Ormond Street Hospital conducted a study that involved 37 sick infants. A third of them were read to, a third played lullabies, and the other third just left alone. In the meantime, the doctors measured the babies’ heart rates and pain levels during the 10 minutes experiment. What they found out was that the heart rate and pain levels of those kids who were listening to music came down significantly compared to the rest.
According to these researchers, baby bedtime music stimulates the emotional part of the brain and decreases the arousal level. The brain reacts to music by shutting down its stimuli, and that leads to sleep. In other words, the brain starts to shut down some of its alarms and allows the body to relax. For example, babies who deal with colic pain greatly benefit from music therapy to help them sleep because the brain stops registering the pain.
Unlike white sound, music teaches babies patterns, sounds, and problem-solving. The baby can understand their feelings more and bond with their surroundings.
Best Music to Play for Your Baby
Just like white noise, not all music is suitable for bedtime. Lullabies are always the first choice for parents, even if they don’t have a sound machine. You can start by singing the song yourself as you rock the baby to bed and then leave some soothing music on while they sleep in their crib. However, be careful when choosing bedtime lullabies because some of them are meant for fun and playtime.
Classical baby music is another great option for bedtime. It contains gentle instruments and tone without lyrics, which can stimulate the brain. The music that plays in elevators and company phones when you are on hold are perfect examples of classical music for babies.
The kind of music they play in spas is also perfect because it contains nature sounds. Anything from waterfalls, wind, rustling trees, and rain can be very soothing for the baby.
When to start using a Sound Machine?
Ideally, you should start using white/pink noise immediately after birth. The baby needs time to transition from the womb to this world, and white noise will make that transition easier. Since babies sleep so well during the day, you can start using the sound machine at night when both of you need to sleep. Make sure the baby is well fed and changed, so they don’t get uncomfortable. If your baby is suffering from colic, you can use music to help them relax and fall asleep faster.
When Should You Stop using a Sound Machine?
You and your baby can get very accustomed to the sound machine such that you can’t comfortably sleep without it. However, your child needs to realize that they are no longer in the womb by hearing other sounds.
The first step is to stop using the machine during the day and allow your baby to experience other noises like people talking, banging doors, vacuum, doorbell, and so forth. By one-year-old, you can start to reduce the volume of the sound machine to almost zero slowly.
The baby should not depend on the sound machine or any form of noise to sleep by the time they are one and a half years old. Sleep training is an essential part of the growth that you can start when they are one year old.
Best Practices for Using Sound Machine
Whether you are using white noise or baby bedtime music to soothe your baby to sleep, there are some safety practices you need to observe;
- Keep the sound machine at least 7 inches away from your child. You need to protect the baby’s ears from harm and also from any radioactive forces.
- Adjust the volume according to need. When the baby is screaming at the top of their voice, you need to up the volume to their level so they can hear it. As the baby calms down, reduce the volume to match whatever is going on around. Turn down the volume to 40 decibels when the baby is asleep, so it’s not too loud for their ears.
- Start playing the baby bedtime music or the noise 30 minutes before bedtime. This will prepare the baby to know that it’s almost time to sleep, and their brain will adjust accordingly and sends a message to the body. You can then cuddle up with them, rock them, or place them in their crib to self soothe to sleep.
- Use a sound machine that will play continuously until morning.
White noise and baby bedtime music are temporary aids to sleep time. After a while, you have to wean the child off the music and help them to be independent. You can come up with a routine that prepares the baby for bed instead. For example, you can bath them right before bed and make sure they get their last bottle of milk.