those white noise cd things

[party_of1]

 has anyone had any success with those?
i got a few off of itunes once for my ipod, but my mother, being herself, was all "what if theres a fire or something and you cant hear anything cause you have those earbuds in". and i DONT want to use the cd player/clock, cause that would mean plugging in that nasty bright blue LED light that ive read about being the natural enemy of sleep. 
co, i guess i just wanna know if its worked for anyone. ive read its good for babies. and my mom says when i was a baby we lived near enough to a expressway that she would take me out on the porch and i would go to sleep because i could hear all the cars go by.

Comments

[automaticdoor]

I find them extremely helpful! Especially the ocean waves ones. It's sort of lulling, like a heartbeat, the whoooosh. You could set your iPod on a sleep timer so that it turns off in a half-hour or so, and frankly, a half-hour should lull you to sleep faster than you might think. Or if you have a cell phone that has a speaker and plays things, there are some good apps--I have Lightning Bug for Android, totally free, and it works super well. You can put it facing down so that it doesn't give off light. Or could you cover up your CD player/clock with a towel or something so that you can't see the light if it comes to that?

[party_of1]

i dug around in my 'settings' and found the sleep timer. thanks for that suggestion; i had always thought there WAS one, but never really took time out to actually look for it. so, yeah.

[eleanorjane]

I use a thunderstormy one on my iPhone - in fact, I made the track myself using an audio-looping program on my mac, but I know there are apps for iOS that will do a similar thing. I have my phone sitting:

* on a small stand next to the bed, out of my eyeline so if the screen lights up I can't see it
* plugged in to a wall charger so running the sound won't flatten it
* running a playlist that contains a 1-hour thunderstorm track, repeated three times.

I also have a "harbor waves" one, but it's a little distracting because it's got birds chirping and boat-bells ringing. Apparently recordings of rainstorms are the best because they work like grey noise, which (I have heard) is the best for masking annoying incidental sounds.

(Incidentally, if you're looking at white/grey noise generators/sound recordings to help sleep, the Wikipedia page on colors of noise is really interesting, and has audio samples of each type of noise. I find grey noise by far the best for me, personally, as it's the least 'sharp' and hissy sounding to my admittedly undiscerning ear.)

[kate_nepveu]

I use this with my babies: http://www.amazon.com/Myrtle-Beach-Ocean-Waves/dp/B00121U5TC/

As the reviews note, there is some kind of glitch in the file but if you're comfortable with audio editing you can extract the workable bits and either put it on repeat in your player or stack it up in a new file, you know? And it's only 99 cents.

[synecdochic]

sarah and I use an app on the iPad for sleep noise (Relax Melodies, to be precise), but I don't see any reason why you couldn't do it with headphones/earbuds too. Or, if you hate the feeling of falling asleep with earbuds in your ears, use the CD player but throw a towel over the face of it so it doesn't glow at you.

[untonuggan]

I have found them helpful, although these days I generally just want silence. If you don't want earbuds and you don't want a CD player/clock, you could always get an official "sound soother" machine. I have this one: http://www.amazon.com/HoMedics-SS-2000-Relaxation-Machine-Nature/dp/B000F3QG0U/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1329197101&sr=8-1 and it only has one green light that could easily be covered up with duct tape and/or a towel. It has several different settings - I like the ocean waves one, but there is also a generic white noise one too.

[automaticdoor]

Oh, also, there is this website:

http://relax.withwhitenoise.com/1/Brown-Noise-%2B-Vibrato?hl=en-US

which is really good. It has six variations on white noise and its siblings. I linked you to the one I liked the best, but experiment! Very soothing.