After our pediatrician informed us that our baby has colic, she recommended a few methods that we could use to help settle him. One was to carry him around in a Snugli or sling; the gentle rocking motion, close proximity to his parent's heartbeat, and the way he is tightly wrapped up creates an environment similar to that found in the womb. So we did indeed get both a Snugli and a sling, and they definitely work; in fact, I am now firmly convinced that the sling is one of the greatest inventions of all time.
The other suggestion that our pediatrician made was to use white noise to help settle our baby - run the clothes dryer, dishwasher, a vacuum cleaner, a hair dryer, and other things of that sort. I thought this was an interesting idea, but I didn't really feel like running appliances every time I wanted to get our baby to settle. But I thought a CD of white noise that I could play anywhere at anytime might be worth getting, so I began searching on the internet for free sound files of white noise. I found some, but not nearly as many as I was hoping for - it seems that a lot of sites sell CDs of white noise, but not very many have free files for people to download.
This little site will be my own way of trying to rectify that. What you will find here will be sound files that I have recorded myself, and I will make them freely available for anyone to download. Whether you use them to help soothe your own colicky baby,or simply to relax yourself, I hope they end up being useful to you. Whatever the case may be, I would greatly appreciate your comments; please drop me a line at jeff.c.taylor+whitenoise@gmail.com
Update: December 2007
In an effort to better communicate site updates to my readers, I have created a Free White Noise blog that will be updated every time new sounds are posted to this site. The blog can be subscribed to either in a feed reader or by email, which will enable you to be informed of site updates as they happen.
Update: February 2009
I've been doing some minor tweaking to a few things on the site. The biggest change is the addition of a Help page, which attempts to answer some of the questions that I have been asked. Hopefully this will make the site at least a little more useful.