Do certain sounds help your baby sleep?

I wouldn't buy anything in advance. Many babies sleep fine despite a noisy environment. We lived 100 feet from the Bart tracks and had a dog and our baby mostly slept like a rock.

Admittedly, my husband and I were both sound sleepers as children, and perhaps our daughter inherited this tendency, but she could sleep through anything, including noisy restaurants. I remember reading that, in fact, many babies find background noise rather soothing, perhaps evidence that life continues and they haven't been left all alone. Whatever sleep routine you choose (or whether you just wing it), I don't think noise-versus-quiet will necessarily play a part. Have the best possible labor and delivery, and enjoy your little girl.

We used the Homemedics Sound Spa white-noise machine for our first baby, which is great. It's $20 on Amazon and has 6 options, all of which are nice (I like the ocean, rain, and summer night ones the best), and realistic-sounding. What I like best about it is that it doesn't auto-shut off. I find that for babies, anything that shuts off after, say, 20 minutes causes them to wake up! This can run all night.

https://www.amazon.com/HoMedics-SS-2000G-Relaxation-Machine-Nature/dp/B…

If you do go the white-noise machine route, be sure to wean the baby off of it at some point... I know some older kids (and adults!) who are still totally dependent on their white noise and have to travel with a machine, or use their phone w/ an app open next to their heads... it's silly.

I think every baby is different, but sound machines definitely help my kids sleep. We lived in the city with my oldest and didn't have a sound machine. He would often awake during his nap if there were sirens, etc. They are more likely to rouse if the sounds occur during their lighter sleep phase (non-REM sleep). My second was a very light sleeper from the beginning. She startled at every noise in the hospital and it didn't get any better once we were at home with a noisy toddler running around. We now use the Marpac Dohm machine for both. It works great at helping drown out noise and keeping them asleep. Good luck and congrats!

White noise definitely helps infants, as they're used to loud swooshing noise from inside the womb (akin to the volume of a shower head running). We already slept with a noise machine pre-baby, and continued to use it when our daughter was born. She was colicky and the white noise significantly reduced crying. (Also look up Dr Harvey Karp's book on the 4 S's to calm a fussy baby.... one of the S's stands for loud shushing.)

We use the LectroFan which has lots of sound options, and I've heard good things about the Dohm too. Both on Amazon.

It is totally going to depend on your baby. My baby seemed to like to sleep in conditions that were as noisy as possible (maybe because we live very close to a train track). On the other hand, if it was quiet and we so much as picked up our keys, he would jolt awake. We had a Graco white noise machine that we put next to him when he slept, but I'm not sure it did anything for him. Congratulations and good luck! 

The Sound Sleeper app has been great with our 3 week old. We put the "womb" noise on for about 45 minutes and it held him go to sleep. Lots of other white noise sounds available, too.   Congrats on your baby-to-be!

Best thing is to use a sound machine. They are cheap and have sounds preprogrammed in that are best suited for a sleeping baby. We liked the ocean sounds and the white noise (true white noise). Important feature is that it have a power supply (you will be constantly replacing batteries otherwise) and not turn itself off after a predetermined amount of time (we had one we received as a gift that turned itself off after 45 min, without an option to turn the feature off. Baby kept waking up every 45 min and we had to keep turning it back on. Nightmare). 

Hi!  We had a small "tabletop" fan in both our kiddos rooms when they were babies.  We read that it helped with combating SIDS but the bonus was that they both slept really well with the white noise.  They still sleep with the same fan in each of their rooms (now 5 and 2 years old) and sleep really well.  My friend had an electronic device that played a "rain" sound and his kid really likes it too.  I think whatever "noise" you decide on will be great - it seems to work as a trigger for our kids as to when it's time to sleep, nap or bedtime.  Hope this helps!!

I use the free Relax Melodies app on my iPhone, which works sometimes, but my baby really likes it when I run the vacuum cleaner! She quiets down right away.  

We had a CD a friend of our made for us with two tracks: hairdryer and vacuum cleaner. It was great. That said, my pediatrician FIL said that it was better not to insulate newborn babies from ambient household noise - don't take off your shoes, tiptoe, whisper, or otherwise hush the household - when the baby is going to sleep because if you do you are creating necessary conditions for sleeping. We would put her down, put on the hairdryer/VC cd,  but leave the bedroom door open and continue to talk, wash dishes, walk around in shoes, listen to the radio, etc. As the baby got older she needed a more purposefully quiet environment b/c she was more apt to become distracted. By four months babies really prefer to babble and interact with you than go to sleep. Don't worry about the dog toenails on the hardwood floor.... really.  The best soothing routine is holding the baby on your chest - mom and dad, but not every nap or ed time or you will still be holding them on your chest to put them to sleep when they are in pre-school - ugh!  (ask me how I know ;-) )  Sleep-training is not a bad idea, but not for the first weeks. We never did sleep training... hence the holding the preschooler to rock her to sleep. (ugh!).