Best Apps To Help Your Baby Sleep

We’ve come a long way but one thing evolution and modern technology hasn’t managed to solve is the awkward sleep cycles of babies and the epic sleep deprivation of new parents.

But though we can’t change babies’ need to wake regularly in the night we have more tricks to get them to go back to sleep than ever before.

There are some fabulous apps available now that do everything from provide womb-like noises to help soothe little ones to high-tech tracking apps that let parents look for patterns in their baby’s sleep.

We’ve rounded up some of the best baby sleep apps out there to help you and your little one get all the time in the land of nod you need.

Lullabies

Parents soon discover the power of their own voice when it comes to settling their child off to sleep. But sometimes no amount of singing or cajoling seems to work. And there are times when mum and dad are just too exhausted to sing another round of Twinkle Twinkle. But there’s an app for that.

Lullabytes (free) is a great basic app with 12 piano-based tunes including Mozart and Beethoven and Brahm’s Lullaby. It also has a parent centre for tips and you can track how long it takes your baby to fall asleep with an easy-to-keep sleep diary and graph.

Angelsong Baby Sleep Deluxe, £1.49, is a beautiful option for sung lullabies. With vocals on favourites such as Hush Little Baby and Twinkle Twinkle from Amy Robbins-Wilson, the app allows you to set the volume to decrease as the songs go on and can be set as a gentle wake up too. It also has a nightlight and the songs are high quality, originally released as an award-winning CD.

You can also get Lullaby Lyrics if you want to sing but don’t know the words.

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White noise

It’s well known that babies respond well to regular ‘white noise’ sounds such as the vacuum cleaner, washing machine and the car engine. It’s because these noises remind them of being in the womb, they’re used to being surrounded by noise, and it’s comforting.

And apps really come into their own here.

Baby Sleep Womb Sounds (£1.49), is an easy-to-use option that plays either womb sounds or the sound of a hearbeat to lull newborns to sleep with recognisable sounds.

White Noise Ambience is popular for babies and parents (and non parents for that matter) alike and dubbed the ‘nap app’. Available for free in its Lite version or £1.49 for the full option it has a variety of sounds including ocean waves, a fan, rain and thunderstorms and the crackling of a campfire. You can try a few out on your baby and see which helps the most.

Baby Shusher, £2.99, is a soothing app designed to stop your baby crying with a ‘rhythmic shush sound that engages a baby’s natural calming reflex by reminding them of still being in the womb’. You can record your own ‘shush’ sounds (as can anyone else looking after the baby) and it will adjust to be louder or softer depending on how hard your little one is crying. It’s a godsend for teary babies and can help calm them down before sending them off to sleep.

Sleepy Sounds combines the two and lets you choose between playing lullabies and white noise, depending on what’s working for your baby.

Storytelling

Goodnight Safari, Nighty Night and Bo’s Bedtime Story are all delightful storytelling apps that help parents bring storytime into the 21st Century with graphics and sound effects that help engage children. Using them as part of a bedtime routine helps to prepare babies and toddlers for sleep and signals that it’s time for rest.

Tracking and advice

By understanding how their baby sleeps, what helps and what distracts, parents can help create the perfect environment for happy sleep. And it gives them the tools to soothe their baby faster when he or she wakes up in the night.

Baby Sleep Tracker is a simple way to do this, you can tap ‘woke up’ when your little one wakes in the night rather than faffing about with any complicated timing sheets or pens and paper. It also automatically creates charts so you can analyse your baby’s sleeping patterns.

Weissbluth Method Infant Nap App, £1.99, is a more complex version and adheres to Dr. Marc Weissbluth’s school of parenting associated with his book Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child. It has advice for parents on how to help their baby sleep at different ages and stages, signs to look out for about changing sleep habits and sleep reminders to help parents set healthy sleep habits. It also has tracking charts and lullabies.

Finding the app that works for you and your baby can transform both your sleeping habits and make a real difference to the quality of sleep you’re getting and the development of a good sleep routine for your little one. Make sure to read the reviews of parents with similar sleep situations to you and try as many of the free or lite options as you can to help you decide.

And while you’re at it you might like to download a few fun apps for yourself while you’re on the nighttime feeding shift.