These days there is a booming business in products and programs which are designed to help your baby get to sleep. While some of them work better than others, and all of them will work with some babies, most of the advice that you can receive from a sleeping coach is available for free over the Internet, or even at your pediatrician’s office.
Don’t get us wrong: there are many wonderful products on the market today which genuinely do help babies sleep. Just be careful about getting hooked into anything that sounds too weird. There isn’t generally any good reason to shell out a lot of money on baby sleep aids when most of the things which really work are available free or relatively inexpensively.
Rather than spend a lot of money that you don’t have on products that don’t work any better than things you can try for free, try one of these free or cheap ways to help your baby get to sleep:
- White noise. You can buy a white noise machine if you want to (and there’s certainly nothing wrong with that: they work), you can also create white noise with your vacuum cleaner, dishwasher or clothes dryer. You can also download womb sounds to your mp3 player or iPhone. The mp3 downloads are usually relatively inexpensive.
- Good vibrations. You can buy a device which will make your baby’s crib mattress vibrate, simulating a ride in the car, but why not just take a ride in the car instead? Or, if you have the dryer running, put baby in her car seat and set it on top of the dryer. Of course, you will need to stay there with her to make sure she doesn’t fall, but these free methods have the same effect as more expensive products.
Generally speaking, the best way to get your baby to sleep is by using the time tested, true blue methods that your mother and grandmother used. Cuddle her, rock her, feed her, change her. You get the idea. Do the basics. You’ll find that nine times out of ten, they work better than any program or product you could buy anyway.