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A friend of mine just had a baby and she gave me the idea for this article. Her family was urging her to “get the baby used to sleeping with noise.” If I had a dime every time someone told me part of my son’s sleep problems were because he needed to get used to sleeping with noise… Well, I’d probably only have $5, but still, it was really frustrating to hear! Here’s what I’ve learned in my years of experience helping families with their sleep…
YOU CAN’T GET A BABY TO GET USED TO NOISE AND SLEEP THROUGH IT.
Okay, you might be able to help them not wake up with every little noise, but overall, your baby has a certain hard-wired threshold where certain things will wake him up. Period.
When your baby is a newborn, he will spend most of his time in a deep sleep and may even sleep through almost ANYTHING! In deep sleep, it takes a lot to wake us up (adults included). Around 6 weeks old, he will become more social and start returning your smiles. This might be around the time that noises start becoming interesting. He may not be able to sleep through as much, but usually, he will still be in a deep sleep a lot of the time. By 4 months old, the way he sleeps changes a lot regarding when he goes into a deep sleep and he may be even more affected by noise.
Babies will vary as to how many noises interest them or wake them up and how quickly they can fall back to sleep if they do hear a noise.
Both my boys could not sleep through much noise at all and were not portable babies. (I could not count on them falling asleep on the go). But, my second son could fall back to sleep MUCH easier than my first. You might think I didn’t make enough noise with them, but let me assure you, I did! My first son was in a very noisy daycare for 8+ months. (This was before we got a nanny and kept him home, partially due to his sleep issues). He NEVER “got used” to noise! He simply has always been worried he will miss something fun if he has to sleep! And he all but went on a nap strike at daycare many times.
Even as a 3-year-old, at bedtime, he would claim he was not tired, say he didn’t want to go to sleep, and then fall asleep 4 minutes later. (I am not exaggerating!) He was no different as a baby and would fight sleep tooth and nail. 🙂
With both of my boys, we made sure we put the barking dogs away and gave them a quiet place to sleep. The nursery was calm and quiet. We later bought White Noise Machines, to block out some of the household noises and encourage longer naps and better night sleep. Another friend’s baby was able to sleep through a lot more noise and on-the-go compared to my boys. It’s often just luck of the draw!
So, the next time someone tells you to get baby used to sleeping with noise, don’t walk on your tiptoes! But please do try some white noise, and give your baby a quiet place to sleep if he needs it. I can tell you one thing, I certainly can’t sleep with dogs barking outside my door or the radio blaring. I don’t expect my babies to, either.
Do you think a baby can learn to sleep through noise?
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Joy says
Despite all my efforts to provide a calm and quiet
environment for my son to sleep in we have
construction next door. It’s either sleep or go crazy.
Bless my little guy. The first few days (maybe even
week) he jumped/startled at all the new sounds.
He IS however able to sleep through the noise now.
I mean pounding, beeping, drilling, scraping,
screeching, humming and oh yes a continual stream
of cinderblocks, radiators, scrap metal being dumped
into dumpsters. Some days and moments are quieter
than others and when the noise picks back up he
remains asleep. He is currently 5 months and we
started working on our naps a month ago. I stuck with
it, though cannot wait until this construction is over!
Nicole says
@Joy Very interesting! Thank you for sharing and I hope the construction is over, soon. 🙂
Erica says
Thanks for posting this. I too am a parent who has continually been told that I should have “conditioned” my daughter to sleep with noise. I still don’t know who is right, but it is nice to know that I’m not the only one who is annoyed from hearing this. I’m a very light sleeper, and part of me just thinks that my daughter takes after me. However, I will admit that I have utilized white noise and blackout curtains to assist her with sleeping. It’s kind of a “which came first, the chicken or the egg” scenario, since she had trouble sleeping through noise when she was an infant, and that is why I started with all that stuff in the first place. She had colic, and sleep time was sacred. I wasn’t willing to mess around. Also, I might mention that she was NEVER one to fall asleep in public, and when she fell asleep in the car, she awoke instantly when the car was shut off. We are dealing with issues now because I have put her into a toddler “school” at my work where she has a mandatory nap that just isn’t working due to her sleep issues. Hence my interest in this blog.
Kathleen says
There is scientific proof on this! They did a study at I think Harvard or Stanford just a few months ago. Those who are light sleepers release fewer “rods” in the brain when they sleep, and those who are heavy release more. Apparently these rods help block noise from being received in the brain. You can google it if you want more details, I may not have described it perfectly. They have no idea why, but it’s a physical difference and trying to train your children or yourself to tolerate more noise is pointless.
Nicole says
@Kathleen Thank you for letting me know! I found the link here: http://www.businessweek.com/lifestyle/content/healthday/641946.html I’ll also update the article above. Very interesting!
Jessica says
Well I have been teaching my daughter to sleep through noise with success. My son (age 5) will sleep through anything, which I feel is as a result of being taken out in public since he was little- I taught him to fall asleep in restaurants, church, people’s houses etc. My daughter (both my children are adopted) came to us at 1y and was unable to sleep through any noise at all. I couldn’t even check on her at night, just opening the door would wake her up completely. She couldn’t fall asleep anywhere except a dark, silent room. If you walked past too noisily she would wake up. Now, 15 months down the line, she is able to sleep with an open door and the passage light shining into her room. She is still a light sleeper, and vigorous noise will startle her, but she has adjusted well. I began by opening her door and then just walking out again. Sometimes I’d go into her room, say hello and walk out. Sometimes I’d just hit the door as I walked past, enough to teach her to fall back asleep with ease and learn to habituate. Children are able to habituate to noise- if they can’t do this, there is something neurologically wrong. (Numerous clinical studies on fetal alcohol syndrome babies can substantiate that).
Nicole says
@Jessica Interesting! Are you teaching her to sleep through noise, though, or simply conditioning her to go right back to sleep if she wakes? To me, that’s a difference. Also, as children get older, their sleep deepens and it’s harder to wake them. Think of the child who falls asleep in the car and you can pretty much pick him up, move him all around, and put him to bed without waking. My son could not sleep with his door open as a baby, but does so now. I definitely agree you can condition babies to go right back to sleep if a little noise wakes them (similar to how I have to go right back to sleep if my husband’s snoring wakes me), but I don’t know that you can teach them not to wake up in the first place. What studies are you referring to? Thanks for the comment and sharing your experience!
DaddyOfA1yearOld says
I have a 1 year old boy who is a marginally lighter sleeper than my daughter was (who is now 4 1/2). When she was first born, we lived in a small house and her room was immediately adjacent to the living room. We were told by my mom that we should never be ‘quiet’ while she napped or slept to avoid getting her used to silence, which (in her opinion) would make it much easier for her to be waken up by house noises. As such, we made it a point to enjoy action movies on our surround sound at +25 nearly every night for the first couple of months and we never had a problem with her waking up to sudden but relatively quiet noises, like doors or talking on the phone in the next room.
With our son, his room is in the quietest place in our (new) house, and I have noticed that he consistently wakes up with the same type of low level house noise that never wakes my daughter up. For instance, their rooms are above the garage, and opening the door in the morning usually wakes him up but not her.
I am making a baby noise CD today that I’m interjecting low-level sudden noises throughout with a relatively steady but constantly changing white noise, so he will hopefully get adjusted to sleeping through a variety of different types of noise — but not so much *constant* noise as much as periodic, low-level, sudden noises. I have never heard someone say “my kid wakes up every time that there’s a low-level, constant white noise in my house”. Reading the above comments it’s almost always “my kid wakes up when there’s this noise or another”.
I’ll repost my findings in a week or two to see if this helps!
sunnyday says
@Gobliness: Thanks for that post! That’s a good way of looking at it, babies are people and people (adults) all sleep differently so why wouldn’t babies sleep differently. People can be so quick to judge parents, as if they’re doing something wrong. LIke you said, more than likely, it’s just the baby, not the environment or whether they’re youngest or oldest, or the parents.
Gobliness says
Continued from last post (sorry)… As a result he barely slept and was a very nervy miserable baby and child, he needed quiet when there never ever was any. So it is clearly not a matter of not trying, it is dependent on the baby a lot of the time, not just their environment.
Gobliness says
I would just like to add that my bub spent her first three weeks in a very noisy special care nursery which I tried to emulate when we brought her home…she just doesn’t like sudden loud noises, her and one other bay would wake up with the door buzzer and the nurses predicted a startled but said to try anyway…they were right, she startled easily no matter what I did.
Also, I am one of 6 children myself, 3 of use sleep through anything, the other 3 are light light sleepers. I am the oldest and a very light sleeper which mum thought was because the house was quieter with just me. That was until she had her last child who is as light if not lighter sleeper than I. He had no choice but to sleep in a noisy house full of inconsiderate siblings. As a result he
Gobliness says
I am so glad there are others!! I had my baby sleeping In the lounge for the first 10-12 weeks of her life and she slept beautifully…then things changed. A creaky board, a clanged plate, an u usually loud cough and she was awake. Today she is an amazing sleeper, if she is in either continuous quiet OR continuous humming noise. Any out of the blue loud noise will wake her up but I can have her sleep through a loud humming wedding because all noise meshed. At home all sleeping areas are down one vend of the house while living areas are at the other so she sleeps in relative quiet. Door shuts loudly or the dog barks too long and loud and she is awake. Tried keeping the tv and radio on but any sudden noises like sirens or shouts from shows wake her up.
All babies are different, and I don’t know anyone who hasn’t tried to get their babies used to noise but I know plenty who it just did not work for and equally as many for whom it did. I wish people would remember that babies are just people. Adults all sleep differently, why on earth would it be different for a baby??
sunnyday says
to Katie: it sounds like your baby got used to having the noise around her and now she’s not used to the quiet. Maybe you can leave a radio on in her room or a fan? We use a radio with nature sounds. Just a thought. Or if she likes the light, you could leave a small lamp or nightlight on. worth a try. I hope it works out for you, I only have one baby right now and it’s hard enough with the sleep issues, I can’t imagine having two up at the same time. We’re up every 2 hours!