Why I Can't Fall Asleep Without a Sound Machine (Even Though It Makes No Sense)
I grew up in a tiny town outside Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, in a house where we slept with the windows open and no air conditioning. It was quiet — the kind of quiet you don’t even notice you have until it’s gone.
So when I moved into residence for my first year of university in Halifax, I was completely unprepared for how loud a building full of eighteen-year-olds actually is at midnight.
I couldn’t fall asleep for weeks. I ended up running a fan just to have something to drown out the noise, and that was basically the beginning of the end for me and silence.
The following summer I worked at a golf resort in Wallace, Nova Scotia, co-founded by one of the guys behind Tim Hortons, of all things.
Same story there — needed the fan again, and I’m fairly sure I have some fuzzy, half-believable memories of minor celebrity sightings that summer (I think I may have spotted a Tampa Bay Lightning player and, possibly, Anne Murray— I genuinely can’t swear to either one). What I can swear to is that I have not slept without background noise since.
Present Day: Still Can’t Do Silence
Fast forward to my actual adult house, which for some reason runs unusually humid — our bedroom felt damp when we first moved in, and I’m slowly coming to terms with the fact that I probably need to figure out why at some point - but honestly that feels like a well it's time to do renos and knock down a wall future Ashley Problem.
For now, we just have to run our dehumidifier all day every day... and I mean EVERY DAY.
But every single night, no matter what, ♡ our Dreamegg Portable Noise Machine is running in my children's rooms.
It’s been part of our kids’ bedtime routine since before they could talk, and it travels with us too — it just takes a USB-C cord and either a wall cube or, most hotels these days, one of those built-in USB ports. It’s familiar for the kids wherever we are, and selfishly, it’s familiar for me too.
I know it probably sounds like a small, slightly ridiculous thing to build a whole personality around, but ask anyone who has shared a bed, a dorm room, or a hotel room with me — the sound machine is non-negotiable.
If you’re someone who has never been able to fully explain why silence feels louder than noise, you’re not weird, you’re just like me (which might also mean that you are weird - but that's a whole other story).
Get the machine, keep the humidifier hunt going, and let’s just agree that sleep hygiene is a whole personality trait at this point.
If there’s one thing you’ll learn about me, it’s that I love finding things that make life feel a little easier. Whether that’s a travel essential, a parenting hack, a cozy self-care find, or something that simply makes me think, “Why didn’t I know about this sooner?”
I’m grateful you’re here and I hope you found something helpful. Wishing you comfort, calm, and a little less overwhelm wherever life takes you.
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