White Noise
Since we brought the babies home from the hospital they’ve been sleeping with white noise playing. At first we used a little white noise machine with a menu of different sounds: womb, ocean, wind, etc. Each setting has an additional secondary sound that can be added to the main sound. Ocean, which we used most often, could be augmented with “buoy.” Either the buoy button didn’t work or the buoy sound effect was incredibly subtle—Rachel and I now have a running joke that the sound a buoy makes is the sound of silently swaying from side to side.
Eventually we decided that the little noise machine wasn’t loud enough. When we moved them into the cribs in their own room, we needed something that made enough noise to blanket out the normal noises of the house so we didn’t have to tiptoe around starting at 6:30. Rachel found a CD of white noise at Amazon, so we bought an iPod speaker dock, popped in my ancient 40 GB iPod, and put the white noise on repeat.
Of course, each white noise track was only ten minutes long, and the short pause while the track restarted used to wake them up. Luckily, I was able to stretch out the track in GarageBand, and produced an extended remix version that was three hours long.
So now we had our system: when the babies went down for their naps, we’d turn on the speakers and when they woke up, we’d turn them off. It seemed too much hassle to actually stop the iPod playing; sure it kept looping forever even while the speakers were off, but the power draw seemed minimal.
What may be obvious to you, but was obvious to me only in retrospect, is that endlessly playing the same three-hour track on repeat for four months might not be the best way to prolong the life of your iPod hard drive. So, yeah. That died yesterday. We’re trying this cute sheep out for now, but it seems to only work on a timer, and we kind of want something that will go all night. Anyone want to sell me an old iPod cheap? This time we’ll probably push pause every now and then.
Filed under Parenting | Tags: ipod, sleep, white noise | Comments (11)11 Responses to “White Noise”
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Have you tried hooking up your original noise maker to some cheap speakers so you can pump up the volume? That’s what we plan to do, should it ever not be loud enough. I think we have the same one, and it has a headphone jack.
this plus this plus your existing dock?
These are two brilliant suggestions.
Air purifier. Designed to run constantly, loud as a jet engine. Throw in the sleep sheep on ocean for 45 minutes at bedtime–sweet dreams, babies!
We started with a cheapie white noise machine when our first was a baby, but it died within a couple of months. We then coughed up the money for a better white noise machine, and it saved our sanity. Ours has lasted years and we bring it with us when we travel. Look for a “marpac” brand, there are lots of folks selling them new on Ebay.
p.s. our Marpac has several volume settings, and the loudest one is pretty loud. We also use these machines at the mental health clinic where I work, in the hallways, for client privacy.
Oooh, ditto the Marpac. We just got one to replace the fan we’ve been running endlessly (I think it uses less electricity) and it works GREAT. Before that I’ve either used an air purifier or a fan, depending on the temp inside. Good luck!
My techie husband recommends the shuffle solution as a “solid state” device with no moving parts, so theoretically it won’t wear out.
I assume the babies won’t sleep without it? We also started off with the sheep; on the night it ran out of batteries we realized that Raley didn’t actually need it, as she went to sleep (and kept sleeping) just fine. But every baby is different, so whatever works best for you.
I have an old (maybe 2nd gen?) iPod that hasn’t been used in years. If you’re still looking, I can check out whether it functions and send it if it does.
Matt,
I see that the white noise track was only $.99, but given your background I’m surprised that you didn’t come up with this solution:
$ matlab
>> soundsc(wgn(10000,1,2))
>> wavwrite(wgn(10000,1,2),’whitenoise.wav’);
This is the best and geekiest comment ever on this blog.