The Best Ways to Sooth Your New Baby to Sleep

Bringing your new bundle of joy home from the hospital is the most special time in your life. It can also be the scariest for a first time parent. For nine months, you've been dreaming about holding your little one and just being able to feel the warmth of his or her skin against yours, and imagining how perfect life will be. Unfortunately, what a lot of first time parents don't realize is how much a baby needs just be comfortable and soothed. In those same nine months, your new baby has been in the comforts of mom's stomach and hearing nothing but soothing noises, which consisted of stomach grumbles, sounds of liquid swishing, and the humming of mom and dad's voices.

Reenacting these sounds once the baby has arrived is no easy task, and consoling your baby when all they want to hear is a familiar noise or feel a familiar feeling can get pretty complicated. Luckily, there are some wonderful products on the market today that actually assist in imitating these familiar feelings and noises. There are also some easy home remedies as well.

From day one, your baby is going to want to be swaddled to re-create the feeling of the enclosed space in mom's uterus. Any thin blanket can be a great tool for the swaddling effect. Another great method is to use a sound machine, which can play sounds of the uterus, rainfall, ocean waves or even a heart beating. These familiar sounds can miraculously put your little one right into a deep sleep. Another challenge that many parents face is trying to figure out where to put your baby while trying to do a few things around the house. No new parent is comfortable leaving a newborn's side for too long. Therefore, one of the best soothing objects out there is a swing. The swing can be placed pretty much anywhere you are going to be, and it's easily mobile. There are various types of the swings that vibrate, swing back and forth and even come with one of the sound machines we talked about earlier. The rocking motion will certainly keep your little one entertained and relaxed long enough for you to throw a load of laundry in, or start dinner.

Some of you might be looking for a less expensive way of all these soothing techniques, and there are some very easy ways to re-create some soothing sounds from household items you already have. Some of the most annoying noises to an adult can actually be some of the most relaxing noises to an infant. Running the shower, vacuuming the rugs, turning on a hair dryer, or even a washing machine and dryer can be a substitute for white noise and could definitely do the trick of helping your little one fall asleep.

Once you are able to figure out what works best for your baby, it will most likely work most of the time when you need to try the soothing techniques. This should work up until the time when your baby will be able to soothe themselves to sleep. The first few weeks can definitely be a challenge, but trying a few of these ideas can definitely make the transition into parenthood a lot more peaceful.