The History of Shush Buddy

Before the birth of our daughter, Maelie, my wife and I took the usual maternity classes at the hospital at which we planned to go when it was time for her birth.  Naturally, as a computer guy and someone who is more comfortable working with cranky machines than with cranky babies I found the information useful but was still fundamentally worried about what I would be able to do when taking care of our baby once she arrived. 

However, during one of the last sessions, the nurse that was teaching the class brought in a DVD called "The Happiest Baby on the Block" which was created by a pediatrician named Harvey Karp.  In the DVD Dr. Karp presents his "Five S'es" techniques of baby calming composed of: swaddling, side or stomach holding, shushing sounds, swinging, and sucking.  Watching the DVD I was at first a bit skeptical as it had a bit of a late night TV infomercial feel.  But after watching the whole thing I was eventually convinced that Dr. Karp wasn't some sort of TV pitchman but instead really had figured out a reproducible method for quieting fussy babies.  As a software developer this was very appealing to me as it looked to be an algorithm with discrete steps that, if executed correctly, would lead to a desired outcome of keeping one's baby happy.  At the end of that class I decided that once our baby arrived I was going to become a practitioner of Dr. Karp's techniques.  Even though I felt clueless in all other aspects of baby care I was determined to become a master baby calmer.  Regardless of what else I may contribute to the care of our daughter, developing the ability to calm her when she is upset would be my primary achievement.

On December 6th, 2008 our daughter was born and little did I know quite how often I'd need to put the 5 S'es into practice.  Like most baby's she can get upset by a great many small and seemingly inconsequential things.  We definitely heard the only word in her vocabulary, "Waaaah!" quite a bit and it took a couple of weeks before I became proficient at all of the S'es and was able to calm her reliably.  For the white-noise Shushing part of the process I started out just doing it myself; saying "Shhhh, shhhh, shhh" to Maelie over and over again.  This worked wonders but it usually takes about 10 - 15 minutes of shushing to calm our baby.  After a while I started looking for more mechanical alternatives as this manual form of shushing was tiring.  I started with the usual vacuum cleaner and hair dryer alternatives that Dr. Karp recommends in his book.  But, these ran into logistical issues.  First, our vacuum cleaner broke as it really wasn't designed for the amount of usage to which it was now being subjected.  (Certainly it was not a high-quality vacuum to begin with.)  The hair dryer became an issue when I nearly started my daughter's dresser on fire!  I had it sitting on the top of her dresser and the high temperature air, after about 15 minutes of use, was starting to make the paint on the dresser soft and bubble!  After that my wife and I were more careful about the direction the hair dryer was pointed but still worried about accidentally leaving it in the wrong position.  Plus, due to the vibration of its motor, it had a tendency to move itself when placed on a flat surface.  Even if you started out with it pointed away from things flammable it might vibrate itself into a different position and heat something else up anyway.

From vacuum cleaners and hair dryers we moved on to various white noise CD's, including the one published by Dr. Karp.  Unfortunately trying to use CD's introduced it's own logistical issues primarily that the the CD player was in the living room, not the baby's room.  Once getting our daughter quieted down the act of carrying her to her bedroom and trying to put her down to sleep often woke her up and then the whole process had to start over again.  The other issue is that it is rather difficult trying to operate an audio system with one hand while holding a crying baby in another.  Turning things on, putting in the right CD, changing the input source, and adjusting the volume all of which are seemingly simple actions became difficult especially when feeling a bit paniced and wanting to make our baby happy as quickly as possible.

Thinking about things one night I realized the one thing my wife and I always had with us were our iPhones.  With ithe audio reproduction capabilities of the iPhone I figured Ithat  could just eliminate all of these mechanical and logistical issues by recording some of these sounds myself and developing an iPhone app to play them back.  Such an app would have to play them back in a seamless loop so shushing could go on as long as was needed.  This was the first, unreleased, version of Shush Buddy which just plaid back 12 different shushing sounds.  We started using it on a regular basis and it worked just as good as our own shushing, the vacuum, the hair dryer, or the CD's, without any of the logistical issues that these devices had introduced.  We purchased a sound dock to help with the volume.  (The phone's external speaker is adequate if kept nearby but a sound dock makes it possible to fill the room and overcome a loud baby's cry.)

After fully reading Dr. Karp's "The Happiest Baby on the Block" book we learned that shushing sounds played while our baby is sleeping would help her sleep longer at night.  To this end the timer function was added to Shush Buddy to allow shushing to go on all night but automatically stop at feeding intervals.  As our baby grew and became more interested in being entertained the recording functions of Shush Buddy were added as I realized it could be used for more than just shushing sounds.  Even when we were away from home Maelie would recognized and be entertained by the sounds of her toys.  Finally, after a while, my wife had accumulated a number of good sounds on her phone but I had no way of getting them onto mine.  As a result Shush Buddy's sharing function was born.  It allowed my wife and I to exchange sounds that each of us had recorded and we also imagined that, in general, users of the application would appreciate having access to a growing library of additional sounds that work well when quieting fussy babies.

Quite frankly, what I find most astonishing about Shush Buddy is the fact that it really does work.  Just as Dr. Karp's book says the shushing sounds really do help calm our baby when she is cranky and really do help her sleep longer at night.  Our bedtime process always incudes Shush Buddy and my wife will just leave her phone near the crib playing a shushing sound once Maelie has fallen asleep.  While our daughter doesn't necessarily sleep straight through every night there has been a significant improvement. not only in getting to sleep but also in staying asleep.  While some might argue that she is just getting better at sleeping as she is getting older we have experienced  many occurrences when she is obviously tired but unwilling to sleep but will calm down, close her eyes, and zonk right out once turning on some shushing sounds.  Since we take our iPhones everywhere we are also taking Shush Buddy everywhere and sounds of her toys keep her entertained while in the car or at a restaurant..  It's funny, although I've written a lot of code that is used in a lot of places it turns out that Shush Buddy is, hands down, the most useful application I've written to date!  I hope you will find it helpful as well.