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Baby sleeping aids: the iOS/Android apps that every parent needs

We review the Android and iPhone/iPad apps that help your newborn or young baby to get to sleep in the wee hours, thus saving your sanity.

Having a baby is great and all, but it can also be stomach-squeezingly stressful if your bundle of love decides to scream his or her tiny head off at every opportunity. Thankfully you can lull your little one off to sleep or at least calm them down quite easily thanks to these iOS/Android sleep aids.

How do sleep aid apps work?

Babies are used to a constant noise when they’re in the womb – the sound of their mother’s heart beating, blood rushing around her body and so on. The apps we’ve covered here produce a variety of white noise, such as hairdryers, streams and vacuum cleaners, which can be soothing to a child and help them to relax.

Gone are the days where parents had to stick their kids next to an actual hairdryer. Now you just need to load up the following and your baby should calm right down.

Android baby sleep aid app: Baby Sleep (Free)

Baby Sleep has 13 different sounds, including washing machine, hair dryer, fan and car engine, and I found that three or four of them consistently worked. Just set a time limit, from five minutes up to non-stop, then hit ‘play’ and leave your phone close to your baby. The noise usually starts working straight away, unless they’re in a serious state – and even then, it can help to soothe.

You can also record your own voice to play back to your sprog via the app, or a random noise that seems to soothe them for no real reason – for some reason, my kid seems to like very loud anime, for instance.

iOS baby sleep aid: Sound Sleeper (Free version, or £2.99 to unlock)

Sound Sleeper includes a variety of sounds to lull your little ‘un to sleep, at least one of which should work to calm an upset baby. The fan and vacuum modes seem to be particularly effective. As well as simply playing sounds, the app has a nifty ‘Listen’ mode which activates when your kid starts fussing during the night.

The free version only gives you 30 minutes of noise and a trial of the listen mode, so it’s worth stumping up the three quid for a full night’s kip.

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