So I have a baby that doesn't sleep. I don't know why I'm so surprised. When I first started dating my husband he slept 4 hours a day, working crazy long days then having 'me' time into the early hours. This worked well for me. He was on the other side of the planet so it meant for a year of long distant relationship we would Skype (I know retro... this was before iPhones and FaceTime!) in his evenings and my mornings.
I was even proud of my non sleep requiring boyfriend. What possessed me to ever decide having children with this guy was a good idea. His whirlwind brain and energy for life has appeared loud and proud in our gorgeous daughter.
I knew / know nothing about babies so when she was born it took me a while to click that it wasn't 'normal' for new borns to be wired quite like her. She wouldn't peacefully drop off like I saw other NCT babies with cuddles or boob or in the push chair. I read about catching the signs for sleepy-ness, long gazes, eye rubbing, yawns. My daughter never got that memo there are no clues, she is ON, full volume until BANG she hits over tired and just can not calm herself down. One evening as she flipped out in my arms my husband starting brushing his teeth for bed and suddenly. Quiet. I held my breathe as the penny dropped, the electric tooth brush. I shouted to my husband to come see what had happened, he stopped brushing to hear me and the wails return, 'do that again' I shouted, 'what' he replied, 'brush your teeth!' I manically yelped. And so began my journey into becoming an all round white noise connoisseur, or to be more accurate white noise, pink noise, or our gorgeous girl's buzz of choice 'brown noise' connoisseur. (Learn more about the difference between white, pink and Brown noise here.)
This is not a skill set I envisaged acquiring whilst on maternity leave. We started with baby sleep sounds on YouTube and soon found this was useless as you had to leave the iPad / phone open on the app, and as soon as you wanted to do something else, or worse, someone sent you a message, bang the spell was broken. So then I began searching Apple Music, Spotify... vacuums, washing machines pink noise we tried them all but then the track ended and again bang the spell was broken. Then we found Fade Away Sleep Sounds.... genius I thought. As the track slowly winds down she has the chance to transition gently into a quiet room to continue her sleep. Simple, genius and unrivaled. Fade Away Sleep Sounds now travels everywhere with us. It's my most played track on iTunes and I don't think my life would be quite so calm without it.
Twitter’s @Mum_Chance is not affiliated with Fade Away Sleep Sounds. Her story of using white noise as baby sleep sounds is her own. If you also have a sleep sound success story and would like to share it, please contact us using the form at the bottom of this page.