Best Baby Sleep Sounds

If you have ever raised a baby, I bet you have noticed that your baby fell asleep better and stayed asleep longer under certain conditions. Namely when there was a soft mechanical hum in the background. Many experts agree that the best baby sleep sound is a soft fan-like mechanical hum. Maybe you noticed that your baby fell asleep quickly and easily while driving in a car, or when you had an air conditioner running or when you were vacuuming. Did you notice that when the air conditioner shut off or you turned off the car or when you finished vacuuming, your baby woke up? My theory is that in deep silence the babies hearing picks up the slightest sound in the surrounding environment and startles awake but with a smooth gentle background noise such as a fan, the sound that would ordinarily startle the baby awake gets masked out resulting in better baby sleep.

There are a whole plethora of baby sound machines on the market and many of them are quite well executed and do a fine job and offer many different baby sleep sounds. But my recommendation would be to try the Marpac Sleep Mate 980A as your first choice. Why the Sleep Mate? First off, it is the simplest device with no choices or decisions or experimenting required; the Sleep Mate only makes one type of sound. Secondly, the Sleep Mate makes a real sound as opposed to a looped recording of a sound that is played through a speaker like almost every other baby sound device. Thirdly, the Sleep Mate produces a soft smooth mechanical hum that experience tells us is the most effective at inducing baby sleep. The Sleep Mate 980A actually makes its fan-like mechanical sound with a motor but unlike a fan there are no fan blades to worry about and no air blowing around.

If you want to try a baby sound maker different than the Sleep Mate, I would recommend the Marpac TSC-330 as my second choice. The TSC-330 produces a simple rain like sound that is especially soothing to babies. The sound is played through a speaker but it doesn't go to real loud volume to protect the sensitive hearing of a baby. The sound produced by the TSC-330 can be altered with slider switches to sound more like a waterfall or ocean waves which are also highly recommended baby sleep sounds.