BayDad

If you want to hear a long drawn-out story, ask any parent about what it was like to have a newborn in the house for the very first time.  It’s an amazing change, and it takes a lot of effort just to keep things going from day to day.  It’s been just over a year, and I still remember it pretty vividly.

One of the things that I really think helped me get through that time were a good selection of “environmental” recordings.  My favorites are “Ocean waves at Sunset” and “The Underwater Cave,” but we have a few others: a rain forest, a stream, and some other stuff too.  At Amazon’s $0.99 per track, you can’t find a better deal.  That’s 2 hours of music for less than $2!

These have proven especially useful (and still are) for times when we have friends over and are having a dinner party or otherwise making a bit of noise around the house.  We have a stereo system in Mr. Busy’s bedroom, and we turn on the Ocean Waves pretty loud, and put the Squeezebox on infinite repeat.  After everyone is gone and he’s sound asleep, I can even turn of the waves directly from my PC without entering his room.  Thats a godsend!

We used it as a replacement for a white-noise generator, but I also think of it as a parental sanity generator.  Just imagine: It’s 4am, you went to sleep 3 hours ago, and there’s a crying baby who needs food, comforting, changing, or something.  You’re tired, he’s tired, and that about describes the situation.  Having something to mute the crying (after you’ve fed, changed, and entertained him) helps immensely.

I can remember more than a few nights spent sleeping on the couch, Mr. Busy in his swing, and the Ocean Waves blaring on the stereo.  There were nights where this was the only thing that could get him a good solid block of sleep, and getting a good nights’ sleep was the key to keeping him happy the next day, so you can see how important this was!

These days, Mr. Busy is sleeping well, can stay up later (9pm+) with little ill effects, and we’re working our way steadily towards a 7:30am wakeup time, which is just totally awesome!

This entry was posted on August 1, 2008 at 5:03 pm and is filed under Products. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.