The Dishwasher's Lullaby

The other night, or rather early one morning, Client Two was awake. And I don't mean the barely awake because he wants to eat awake. I mean he was giggling and cooing. It was just a little after 3:00 am and I was tired. Client One had already woken up twice with nightmares, so my sleep pattern was even more interrupted than usual.

Now, I knew Client Two had to be tired, it was just a matter of convincing him that he was. I tried all the usual stuff- nursing, singing, rocking- but nothing seemed to be having any sort of effect. In fact, it seemed as if everything I did only woke him up more. Then, I pulled out my handy-dandy iPhone.

Now, if you'll recall in my previous post about nap time, I mentioned that Client Two is often lulled to sleep by the dishwasher. Honestly, the dishwasher works like 90% of the time in putting Client Two to sleep. That's where my iPhone came in. I got on iTunes and found a couple of albums fully devoted to white noise for babies- all with dishwashing sounds. I found one reasonably priced and put the song on a loop. It wasn't five minutes later that he was out like a light.

White noise is a highly effective way to lull a baby to sleep. When a baby is still in the womb, he has the constant drum of a heartbeat so it only makes sense that similar sounds would have a calming effect once he is born. For Client One we downloaded thirty minutes of vacuum cleaner sounds. She was a colicky baby and that stupid vacuum cleaner was just about the only thing that would calm her. 

Honestly, I think it's weird that household appliances can work such magic. But I'm not going to argue, because I like my sleep.