Listen to this textWhat is it about the sound, “Shh”, or “Shhh” or “Ssh” that causes babies to calm down and if you’re lucky, sleep. I’m not sure why it’s so effective. I hear it may be related to it’s similarity to the sounds made in the womb: of the muffled rushing of liquids in the body that a baby associates with comfort and safety. It seems to work on crowds too. We were all once a baby — so they say. Maybe we never quite shuffled off that instinctive feeling of quiet and calm when we hear that sound. And so we relent, trance-like when our neighbor shushes us during Zoolander 2.
For our daughter, in the middle of the night — say 3AM — if she is still wide awake after a feeding and I’m trying to get her to sleep, I will play a recording of this sound over and over again. I will raise the volume and slide the phone under her cradle. This works most of the time. If you’re in a similar situation with a midnight-jazzed baby, you can download an hour-long MP3 of the shh recording that I use below and let it play in the crib. Load it on your phone or tablet and hopefully it works well for you and your little one.