A: A very quiet sleep environment is unfamiliar to babies and may make it harder for them to fall asleep. While in the womb, babies are enveloped in sound, mum’s voice and heartbeat, the rhythmic movement of the digestive system, the oceanic whoosh of breathing and arterial blood flow, and the filtered sounds of the world outside. Pink noise can be found in a heartbeat, the roar of the ocean and the fluctuations of the tide. Every day as we live and breathe, like babies in the womb, we are enveloped in pink noise. Pink noise aids in falling asleep faster, deeper and for longer as it provides baby with a comforting and familiar and more natural background noise in comparison to other noises or no noise at all.
A: While both are in the pink noise spectrum, one applies a low-pass filter, reducing frequencies greater than 1,000Hz. Infant ear canals are more sensitive than ours and they amplify high frequencies. In other words, what is a negligible difference to us is a big one for babies. The closest comparison is adults with tinnitus, who are also sensitive to high frequencies.
A: Research has shown that compared to exposure to blue light, which significantly suppresses melatonin, red light exposure has little to no effect on melatonin suppression, the hormone which signals to the body it’s time to start winding down. Red light is also minimally stimulating, in other words, by using red light as a night light, infants (and adults) can drift off in the same way they would in a completely dark room and makes re-settling easier after night-time awakenings.
