White Noise For Colic

You might wonder why in the world white noise works so well for babies suffering from colic. Why simply turning on your vacuum cleaner in the midst of a colic outburst will stop your baby in mid-cry. Well, it has to do with what the baby heard for nine months while in the womb…which was her mother’s very own white noise.

For nine months, baby heard nothing but the sound of her mother’s blood rushing around. Let’s replicate this sound with an experiment. Cover your ears with your hands. What do you hear? You hear a sound very similar to the sound baby hears while in the womb.

When baby is born, she is thrust into a world full of strange sights and sounds. Babies that are colicky are thought by experts to be over stimulated by all these sights and sounds they encounter. They simply can’t deal with all the sensory stimuli taken in over the course of their day. When they’ve had enough, they do one of the things they innately know will help them release the stress. They cry….and cry….and cry some more. For more info about colic, check out Colic Baby Bootcamp.

One way to stop the crying is by recreating the sense of security, happiness, and warmth baby felt while in the womb.

Now, you can accomplish this by several methods.

You can swaddle baby, which means to wrap them up (kind of like a burrito), in a blanket. Swaddling not only recreates the warmth felt while in the womb, but, also the snug feeling of being back in the womb.

You can turn off the lights and reduce all external stimuli. This simply means make it very quiet. Don’t have a television or radio blaring. Close the shades, and darken the room to remind baby of those nine happy, dimly lit months in mommy’s tummy.

You can get baby moving. If you have a swing, place baby in the swing for a while and let her rock. Baby was constantly on the move in mom’s tummy. So laying still in a crib is not her idea of being comforted. The gentle swaying motion of the swing is similar to the gentle jostling baby felt in the womb.

Finally, recreate the whooshing noise baby heard while in the womb. The whooshing noise that most closely resembles the same sound frequency baby heard while in the womb is created by a vacuum cleaner. That explains why if you pull out your vacuum cleaner while baby is crying, you will see almost instantaneous relief.

You can obtain white noise easily via mp3 download, where you burn your own cd. Or, you can buy a white noise cd already manufactured. It is recommended that you play the white noise on continuous loop on or around the time of baby’s typical colic outburst, and even while baby sleeps at night.

Utilizing all the methods outlined above will definitely minimize crying and stress associated with colic. Save a vacuum cleaner…buy yourself some vacuum cleaner white noise.