Shush Your Baby
Tell your baby to ‘shush’.
No, really!
Shush is the most natural sound for a new parent to calm their child. While it’s considered taboo and pacifying to ‘shush’ someone when they’re older, for babies the ‘shush’ is the best natural calming method.
In combination with a tight, wrapped and swaddled body, a slow or more rapid rocking motion, a pacifier or nipple, the shushing sound really gets your new baby into dreamland.
What’s behind this might seem so simple! In utero, your baby’s environment is super duper loud. The sounds of heartbeat and blood flow can be overpowering, but slightly dinned by the cushion of the amniotic fluid around your baby. What’s left behind is a static, continuous shushing noise.
When a baby is crying, parents naturally will recreate this shush with their mouths, inadvertently starting louder so that the baby can actually hear over its own wails. As the baby gets calmer, the shushing gets softer too.
Shushing follows the natural cadence of our bodies, and it’s the perfect static white noise. Ditch those ocean sounds, quiet rain falls, and settle for something that creates a shush for baby when you’re not around.
A great duplicate is the Baby Shusher, our postpartum doula and infant care specialists’ favorite tool for helping a baby to find sleep and settle. It sounds exactly like a shushing parent, and can be made louder or quieter as needed.
Apps containing fan sounds or the whir of an airplane cabin are great second choices as well!
If you’re a but stumped on when to use a shushing tool, don’t worry. Our specialists will walk you through what to look for and the best times to start using things like a shushing white noise to help your baby sleep!
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