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Question: We have a 16-month old who sleeps great, yet my husband and I have a long-standing disagreement about how quiet the house should be kept while she is sleeping. He insists there should be no sound of footsteps on our hardwood floors or on our stairs, no microwave or ice machine being used, and I disagree. Walking normally (not stomping of course) should not affect the sleep of a baby, should it? It has never woken her so far. The baby’s room is upstairs from the kitchen and hardwood floors, and we use a fan in summer and humidifier in winter for white noise in her room.
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Ah….there is nothing I love more than getting drug into the middle of a good marital squabble. Presumably this woman hasn’t been allowed to use the ice machine in over a year and she’s probably getting tired of drinking warm tap water.
The Short Answer: She has answered her own question. “It (household noise) has never woken her so far.” If it’s not waking her up then you don’t have a problem. Or maybe you do. Your husband believes you have a problem despite the lack of empirical evidence to suggest you actually have a problem. Which technically means HE has a problem. Only apparently he is making it your problem.
Ah, good times.
The Long Answer: Most of the time you could host a book club meeting full of loud-talkers who insist upon playing the accordion while discussing books and your child would sleep just fine. However if you drop a pencil on the floor at the wrong moment she’ll wake up screaming. (My best guess is that this happened to your husband at some point and it left him understandably gun-shy.)
Why Does This Happen and What Can You Do About It?
How You Sleep
Adults are pretty good about sleeping through household noise because a) there isn’t much of it going on when we sleep and b) we spend most of the night in a state of pretty deep sleep. There is a period in the middle of the night where adults cycle into light sleep. A quiet noise (ex. ice machine) at this time might wake you up but for most of the night you would easily sleep through general household noises.
How Kid’s Sleep
However children don’t develop this sort of sleep pattern until they are closer to 10-12 years old. They cycle into light sleep far more often.
Getting back to the matter at hand, when you or your child is in a state of deep sleep you’re welcome to put on clogs and dance around your house with glee (I’m pretty sure most of my readers do this sort of thing) and your child will be none the wiser. However when your baby cycles into light sleep you’ll find that an ill-timed sneeze has the potential to wake her up.
So for the vast majority of the night you can live your life, run your dishwasher, and put ice in your iced tea with total impunity. But there are times when even quiet noises will wake your child. HOWEVER most children over ~9 months have become accustomed to “standard household noises” and will have no problem sleeping through these sounds even when they cycle through light sleep. They MAY wake up if they encounter UNEXPECTED noises. For example, garbage trucks that are relatively infrequent may wake your child up if they come when baby is in a light state of sleep. But familiar noises generally don’t pose much of an issue.
What If Noise IS an Issue?
Use white noise. It’s just that simple. Although generally thought of as a soothing tool for babies some kids use white noise to help them sleep all the way through high school.
{Photo credit: Breezy Baldwin}
This is so interesting and helpful–as always. Your posts are right on target. I was just talking to my sister-in-law about this today 🙂
Elisa,
You are very kind to say so 🙂 I need to post more of the questions I get in email – some are funny (baby ate cat vomit, what?) and I just haven’t had time to do so. Life of a blogger, right?
Alexis
ps. I use comment luv but I don’t see your latest posts showing up below your comments. What up with that?!?
Nice use of charts & graphs.
I’m not a parent, I’m just reading this for interest, but I think I’m going to try white noise for myself (insomniac and light sleeper as long as I can remember).
Also, Alexis, (completely off topic) I’ve just noticed you have the same name as my main character in my novel.
White noise is awesome. I’m not an insomniac (sleeping well is my secret super power) but I still bring it with me when we travel. And by “it” I mean one of the many free ipad apps for white noise 🙂
So I’m assuming your character is also going to be fabulously beautiful, brilliant, and sought after? I am one of those people who feel that vampires have been “done to death” but I also have read a shameful number of vampire books and would love to check out yours when it comes out. Good luck with the writing!
Thanks!
Well, he (Alexis is more common as a girl’s name these days, but it’s traditionally both) is definitely pretty good looking, and you could probably get away with sought-after, although sometimes by people he’d really rather didn’t, but I’d say he’s more troubled than brilliant. You know what main characters are like.
And I promise you there are still a few untouched drops left in the very bottom of the vampire barrel. This will be something new.
My daughter is a terrible sleeper but she was directly under the smoke alarm when it went off the other day and didn’t even flinch. Usually though if a shadow passes over her she’ll wake up instantly.
Shadow sensitivity eh? That’s a common problem. Babies start waking up when birds fly overhead and such. Investing in a really quality scarecrow might help.
;P
Most babies will need to get accustomed to sleeping at night. I presume their nights will be relatively quiet. If she were making noise for the purpose of making it a habit for her baby to learn to sleep through noise, I could understand her argument, but since it appears that she’s more interested in doing what she wants to do and getting others to support her, she should also own up to the fact that her noise will “sometimes” wake the baby up and make it hard for others to sleep. Her husband is also being considerate of others you know. Advice…make a better effort at reducing noisy activity by proactively anticipating and managing activities at home. White noise machines are helpful, but after a while, babies become numb to the sound and can still be easily awakened. We know that some noise can’t be avoided…but you could have certainly bought disposable dishes and utencils to eat with instead of using and cleaning noisy silverware. Just saying.
Sorry, I should’ve mentioned that the comment about buying disposable dishes is just an example of something you can do to help reduce indoor noise.
hi
how can i get white noise?
Hi love your blog. I have a 5 month old and generally we tend to keep things quiet when she naps and nighttime too. However we have friends coming for brunch soon. I’m worried about the noise we’ll make downstairs. Any advice? I can try and resettle but do kids at that age sleep too lightly during the lunch hour so can’t avoid wakings or is there anything I can do to disguise the noises downstairs..
Thanks in advance
Rae
Great post Alexis,
It’s nice to know how baby sleeps!
Now i can understand why babies can sleep whole day, cause it separates times between awakes and sleep.
I have a cousin, he has a weird way to feed his soon during the night.
Every 02 hours, he woke his soon up to take the milk.
Every day like happen like that until the soon turns 7 year olds.
Good information! For the first two or three months I was afraid to even breathe when the baby was asleep. But as soon as I left the baby with my parents once and saw that she slept perfectly to the sound of a lawnmower, I began to take it easier.
And now I understand, thanks to you, why this happens. It turns out that in the phase of light sleep she can be awakened by anything, so it is not so necessary to keep complete silence.
Thank you for this- what a wonderful resource! Appreciate your explanation on how adults sleep versus how babies sleep. Thanks for posting!