How to Shush Your Baby to Sleep
by Lena Vogelgesang
Nov 09, 2016
When my first son was born, I hadn't read any books on how to be a mom and I hadn't sought out any advice on what I should or shouldn’t do. My thought was simply, “I don’t know what I don’t know, so rather than read a book about everything, why don’t I wait until baby is here, and then I will know what I need to know.”
When our baby boy arrived, I instantly found out exactly what I did not know: how the heck to get that baby to sleep!
I dove right into asking all my friends who were moms what their tricks were and I got a lot of feedback that ran the gamut. I heard some moms tell me to let that baby just cry and cry, and some that told me to hold him all the time and he will sleep.
Fortunately, I was able to land somewhere in the middle.
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We were told to rock him, bounce him, give him a pacifier, swaddle him and even put him in his car seat and place him on the dryer with a load of laundry in there.
Of course we tried almost everything, and we did find that a lot of things worked. But one of my favorite things we found was that the sound of us "shushing" in his ears was almost an instant relief.
When we were first introduced to the idea of shushing our baby, my lips and cheeks got pretty sore very fast, so I thought, "Surely there is an for app for that."
And there was.
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I was able to download a White Noise App and on it we found the "Pink Noise" option that sounds most like someone "shushing”.
We had an old iPhone with the app on it and took it with us everywhere. When it was nap-time, our baby boy could sleep anywhere; we simply turned on the shushing app. Many times when we were driving in the car and our son began to fuss, we just turned on the "shusher" and he would calm down. And at night, we ran the app all night long in his room. It was such a helpful and INSTANT soothing tool.
It also freed my husband and I to have a little bit of a life in the evening too; we could finally go enjoy an evening at a friend’s house by simply bringing the Pack-N-Play and the "shusher" and we'd be set. He could literally sleep anywhere.
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The other day I was helping out in the church nursery and a mom dropped off her 2-month old baby girl, and this little one would NOT stop crying. Her mom told us she was fed and dry, but tired because it was nap time. I said, "I think I have something that might help her sleep". I turned on the "shusher" (because I have the app on my phone of course) and INSTANTLY she was calmed down, soothed and was sleeping soundly five minutes later.
Just yesterday, a friend of mine who has a 4-week old baby boy was putting him in his car seat and he was just as angry as could be. I shared with her about the "shusher” app. She was skeptical. I turned it on near her son and voila! Baby boy (who had been screaming for about fifteen minutes) was immediately calmed down. The mom's jaw dropped and a believer she became.
Moms- if you have a smart phone, download the White Noise app and try it! It doesn't have to be right next to your baby's crib, but loud enough to be just above the rest of the ‘everyday’ noise. If you do not have a smart phone or a device that can download apps, then get a white noise maker (preferably portable) and your world will be forever changed.
Lena Vogelgesang
Lena likes to define herself by the Seven C’s: Christ, Chris, Children, Comrades, Coffee, Cheese, & Cardio. Due to her love of coffee and cheese, she must also have a relationship with increasing her heart rate. The Lord has given her a wonderful husband in Chris and they have two young boys.
