6MO used to white noise...any harm with this?

[nello]

DD was born in a very hot country where we had the fan on all night so right from the start has had white noise whilst sleeping. We spent a couple of week in rural UK over the summer and quiet nights freaked her out completley and we used a white noise cd quietly in the room to help her with this, with the aim to slowly decrease the sound level. We now live in a very busy city, lots of traffic can be heard from our house, beeping horns and car alarms etc and so I have continued using the white noise cd to drown out some of this noise. Is this ok, or a bad idea? Should I be weaning her off it, and if so, does any one have any experience of living in a noisy area and the noise not affecting naps and night time sleep? Thanks.

also want to mention, that as we lived in 5 very different places in the first 6 months of her life, i felt like the white noise gave a consistency in her bedroom that she wouldn't otherwise have...it now seems ridiculous to be playing white noise every night, doesn't it?

No harm at all. My DD, now 2, spent her first months in hospital so we used White noise with her from when she came home as she was used to noise. When she was about 1 I changed the white noise to music, and lately to story CDs. We live in a noisy area and I prefer to drown out the racket too.

watching with interest. No personal experience but my neice is a bloody nightmare at night. Hopefully co-incidence but I would like to see some anecdotal evidence stories :)

Murun - does your niece use white noise? i'm not convinced it actually helps my dd sleep, just that it gives a consistent noise that she is comfortable with and drowns out noises that could wake her. If we lived in a quiet area I would choose to gradually reduce the white noise to non, but it is so noisy here that she would not only lose the white noise, she would also be bombarded with car noises, dogs barking etc.

I have used music on my DD since about 1 month old. I use it for naps and night time sleep. We used to turn it off before we went to bed (she is 1 year old and in own room), but we stopped bothering as she started stirring when we went into the room. She is a light sleeper. I am aware we will have to ditch it at some point, but it works for us now and drowns out some of the bumps etc that you hear in our 2nd floor flat.

My DS is 11mo and has always had a white noise (ocean sound) machine for all his naps and night time sleep and still does. We also take it with us when away as I think it must help make new sleeping environments feel a bit more familiar for him. I keep thinking I should really try phasing it out by gradually just turning the volume down but am loathe to do anything to unsettle him as he still wakes about 50% of nights. We live in a fairly quiet small town.

I don't think there is much harm in using it, especially when they are young and their sleep can be erratic. Anything that helps!!

Coincidentally when we went camping at a festival he slept fine without it and it was obviously not that quiet.