In an effort to gain much needed hours of sleep for my wife I am often charged with taking my crying son out of the bedroom in the middle of the night for as long as he will put up with me. Mommy, in turn, is able to sleep and replenish a drastically drained milk supply while we are away. Cillian is receptive to a number of techniques I use to distract him from the fact that his mother is no longer feeding him. Today I will outline two of my main techniques for keeping him entertained in the middle of the night.
Cillian, my son, seems to be very perceptive when it comes to sounds. Back when we were dating my wife bought me a wind chime which we now keep in the house. If my son is starting to get upset he can frequently be soothed (and amazed) by the sound of the chime. He stops crying and listens intently. He’s not even concerned with seeing where the sound is coming from but focuses only on the interesting sounds he hears. If that doesn’t work he seems to be interested in running water. A running shower will put him to sleep and a faucet will often do the same. I even downloaded an hour long clip of rainfall for him to listen to in the car if he’s really upset. I’m glad he has an ear for sounds because he’ll be surrounded by guitars and pianos.
My son is also receptive to movement. I think this is related to his interest in sound. During the day my wife will play some bass heavy pop music and move with him to the beat of the music. He really seems to enjoy it and now frequently smiles at her. Some of this goes back to when he was breech and we were trying to get him turned around in the right direction. One of the methods was playing strategically placed music for him to move towards. My wife chose to listen to pop music with him. He now enjoys and calms down when he hears the songs she played most often when he was in utero. Blasting music in the middle of the night is out of the question so I end up whispering beats and creating soft songs while we dance around the room. This seems to soothe him for a little while as well.
What do you do to keep a crying child in the middle of the night soothed?