Got a Newborn? How Amazon Alexa Can Make Life Easier
Put your Amazon-built robot voice assistant to work helping you raise a baby..
That whole “it takes a village” thing isn’t just a trite platitude. New parents need all the assistance they can get. The basics of keeping a baby alive — food, clothing, shelter, burping — are only the beginning of raising a functional human being.
Look for some help from the digital assistant you’ve got sitting on the countertop. That could be Google Home or Amazon Echo; in my house, I have one baby and five methods of speaking to Alexa. I’d suggest a minimum of two smart speakers — one for each floor (or either end of a long home), at least. Certainly have one with a decent speaker in the room the baby sleeps in, whether that’s a nursery or with the parents.
Why is having an Echo around so important? For hands-free info, quick access to music that calms a screaming child, and maybe even a little non-infant interaction. A parent’s brain can turn to mush after speaking only to a newborn for hours on end, making even an audio-only robot a worthwhile companion. Especially one that helps you shop and remember all the things you have to do.
For the purposes of this story, I assume you have an Amazon Prime account, as it gives you access to almost all the features of an Echo.
Embrace Amazon Music
Amazon Prime also includes Prime Music. That means you have access to 2 million songs for free, which you can play on various devices, including your PC, smartphone, Fire TV hub, and Amazon Echo devices.
Why is this important to parents? Music can soothe—in this case, your screaming papoose. The discovery early on that my child was instantly calmed by one specific song (AC/DC’s “Thunderstruck”) has become a godsend that has paid us back a thousandfold.
To get that song, I did have to add to my subscription. Paying for Amazon Music Unlimited at $79 per year (on top of the Prime membership) hurts a little. But it pushed the number of songs available up to “tens of millions,” including all of AC/DC’s hits, and a lot of other heavy metal and kids’ songs that help keep my son from melting down. You can also pay only $3.99 a month for the Echo Plan, which puts Amazon Music Unlimited on one single Echo device of your choosing — but if you have multiple Echos, and you’re walking around with a baby, it behooves you to get Unlimited.
Build Baby Music Playlists
You may be wondering: Why should I embrace Amazon Music on the Echo when I can play songs from so many other services, like Pandora and Spotify? Naturally, you get a lot more control over the tunes from Amazon Music when using an Amazon Echo; in particular, building playlists.
Amazon Music is filled with pre-made playlists, but your kid is probably going to need something you created yourself. When listening to a song the baby loves, say “Alexa, create playlist,” and you’ll be asked to give the list a name. Then say “Alexa, add this to the playlist [name].” Each new song is appended to the playlist. Re-order or rename a playlist by going into the Amazon Music app on your desktop PC, iOS, or Android, or use it right on the web.
Learn to Shuffle Music
One key to making playlists work is to add a ton of songs; then ask, “Alexa, shuffle the Baby playlist” for songs in random order. The variety will make a huge difference to your already precarious sanity.
Always put the most important songs that calm baby up front. If you say play and get through those, you can always say “Alexa, shuffle songs,” during any song. Starting with the next tune, it’ll be in random order. And if a certain song needs to be played again, say “Alexa, repeat this song.” Shuffle and repeat only work with Amazon Music, not with Spotify, Pandora, iHeartRadio, or TuneIn.
Play Music Everywhere
If you’re streaming music on one Echo, and ask Alexa to stream to a different Echo without stopping what’s streaming on the first, you’ll get a long-winded warning/commercial: “Amazon Music is streaming on another device. With the Amazon Music Unlimited Family Plan, you can stream to multiple devices. Would you like to learn more?”
For me, the answer is always no. While I can’t fault Amazon much for trying to push its $14.99/month ($149/year) plan, the number of times I hear it when I’m exhausted and the baby is cranky can get annoying, real fast. (Which from Amazon’s perspective is probably the point.)
One way to avoid that annoying ad: play the same music everywhere on all your Echo devices. While not as polished as shared speakers like Sonos, Alexa’s multi-room music feature does the job, as long as you have all Echoes registered to the same account.
For example, I have a Sonos One with Alexa built in, plus the portable Amazon Tap; neither of them support it, which is irritating. Multi-room music works with the regular Echo, Echo Plus, Echo Dot, and Echo Show. It only works with music — not other content like news briefings or skills. However, putting it to use means you can wander the whole house with the same tunes in every room or floor, which is nice for babies who force parents into walking them around (baby’s hate gravity and stillness… until they don’t).
Here’s how to set it up. Then say something like, “Alexa, play the Baby playlist on the everywhere group” to get whole-house sound.
Special Shout Out to Caspar Babypants
We may always be a “Thunderstruck” household when it comes to getting my baby to sleep, but for sheer musical joy there’s only one artist — whose music can all be found on Amazon Music and thus via any Amazon Echo — and that’s Caspar Babypants.
We found his tunes by accident, after asking “Alexa, play baby music.” You may know him better as Chris Ballew — that’s right, he was the lead singer for the band The Presidents of the United States of America. Now he appears to be a full-time children’s entertainer. His albums are full of catchy earworms, perfect kids lyrics, sleepy-time songs, and he’s even got a couple collections of Beatles’ covers for tykes. There is no name invoked in my home more than that of Caspar Babypants, as we’re always calling up his songs on the Echoes to slap a smile on our son’s face.
Use “Drop In” as a Baby Monitor
Need a quickie audio-only baby monitor from one room to another? If you have a supporting Amazon Echo in each location, each with a specific name assigned in the Alexa app, you can do a drop-in, which turns Echo into an intercom.
Saying “Alexa, drop in on the nursery” will let you instantly listen in on what’s happening there. Just be sure to tap the mute button on the Echo at your end, so you don’t wake the baby; or make sure the volume is down to 0 on the Echo in the baby’s room before you connect.
A drop-in will work even if you’re not at home, as long as the Echoes on each end are on the same Amazon customer account. You can also drop in from the Alexa mobile app by selecting the Conversation (word balloon) icon, then Drop In, and the name of the device. Note that drop in doesn’t work on the Amazon Tap or the Echo Look.
If you’re worried about snoops, the light ring on any device being dropped in on will turn green.
Monitoring the child is not limited to audio if you’ve got an Echo Show or Echo Spot. Position them so the camera points at the baby, and you can monitor from another Show or Spot, or via the Alexa app.
Use Smart Cams as Video Monitors
Better yet, if you have a home security camera that works with the Echo Show, Spot, or an Amazon Fire TV or a Fire tablet, set that up to monitor without going through the drop-in procedure at all.
By invoking “Alexa, show [cam name] camera,” you’ll be spying on the sleeping cherub in no time. Amazon’s list of supported cameras includes the Amazon Cloud Cam (naturally), doorbells from Ring (which Amazon just acquired), and cams from Nest, Netgear’s Arlo line, Logitech, and Ezviz. Some camera feeds time out after a specific time, but you can always restart it with the same command.
Get Skilled at Shushing
There are five “esses” of soothing babies: swaddling, side position, swinging, sucking (as in a pacifier), and shushing. (No, not spanking.) Babies don’t like to sleep in silence — the inside of a womb is a noisy place. It turns out that shushing a baby with a lot of sibilant mouth hissing is an excellent method of coaxing a baby to sleep.
However, there’s no need for you to dry out your lips. The Shush My Baby skill for Alexa is literally a never-ending playback of shush noises. For non-parents, it sounds like walking into a recording session for a haunted library movie — it’s a little unnerving — but it’s a godsend for parents. Just say, “Alexa, shush my baby.”
Because this skill is ostensibly targeting kids, it requires extra permissions be granted via the Alexa app on your phone, tablet, or on the web. Which is a good thing in an age of excessive privacy issues, even though this particular skill doesn’t collect any info.
Pick the Perfect White (or Brown) Noise
If you sleep with a baby in your room, Shush My Baby will likely drive you mad. You could always just run a fan or an air filter/purifier for some background noise, but where’s the fun in that? Alexa has hundreds if not thousands of background noise skills. There are several called “white noise,” but I find that a little shrill; my baby prefers the lower bass of Brown Noise. (Not to be confused with “the brown note.”) The best is the skill from Voice Apps, which loops all night long without ceasing until you say “Alexa, stop.” For something half-way between brown and white, there’s pink noise. You can read about them at Sound of Sleep.
Time Feedings With the Alexa Stop Watch
Lots of new parents track every little thing, and one of the most important is how long a baby feeds or does tummy time. There are lots of apps for that — one of the best is SevenLogics’ Baby Nursing for iOS and Android.
When your hands are occupied, it helps to start a stopwatch with your voice. There is no stopwatch function built into Alexa, but there are lots of Stopwatch skills, all of which do pretty much the same thing. You say “Alexa, start stopwatch” and then “Alexa, open stopwatch” to hear the countdown, and then the somewhat awkward “Alexa, ask stopwatch to stop” to turn it off.
One of the better skills is Fast Watch, but you have to learn the wake phrase — “Alexa, open Fast Watch” — and commands like “Alexa, time,” and “Alexa, End” to control it.
Listen to Anything Other Than Baby
A parent hanging out alone with a child for a long time, can lead to insanity, as the only interaction parents get are the coos and goos and lots of wailing. Alexa to the rescue!
Since it’s an audio tool, there are a number of games (the Jeopardy! skill, in particular, is great), but you can also listen to podcasts — here’s how via TuneIn, iTunes, Amazon Music, and more using Alexa. Many popular podcasts also offer standalone Alexa skills for their shows.
Don’t forget your audiobooks. If you’re an Audible.com subscriber, any book you’ve got there is accessible on Alexa (Amazon owns Audible.com, too.) Say “Alexa, play audiobook” to instantly listen to your current sound-tome in progress from the point you left off. Start a new book if you know the title: “Alexa, start the audiobook Artemis” (for example).
Cool or Heat Up the Baby
My son was born in the winter, so the smart home appliance getting a workout in my home is the thermostat. Alexa now has much better control of smart thermostats — you can just say “Alexa, thermostat to 70” without any weird syntax. It instantly adjusts your baby’s surroundings on the fly, a must at bath and bed times.
The Miracle of Smart Lighting
Haven’t embraced smart bulbs yet? Imagine you’re a mom, stumbling through the darkness of your house, holding a baby who is literally throwing her head around as if she wants to jump out of your arms (which is totally a thing, and super annoying). Being able to say “Alexa, turn on the nursery light” will make a huge difference for safety and sanity.
I set up LIFX Color 1000 bulbs in just two places, the kitchen and the nursery, so we can find our way around in the dark, hands-free. It helps even more that we can say, “Alexa, set nursery light to 10 percent” so it’s not a bright shining beacon that wakes the baby.
Shop for Baby Stuff Via Voice
Sometimes, parents don’t have time run to the store for items they need. If you’ve got Prime and can time it a couple of days ahead, you can typically get what you need with Alexa in two days or less.
Just listen closely to the details if you try a new purchase (44 diapers is much different than 216) and make sure it falls under Prime for the free shipping. The best thing is to make a regular purchase, and then use Alexa to purchase it again later. That works well for wipes, but be careful about diapers, as babies outgrow the sizes relatively fast.
Two more miracle products I’ll suggest you buy for any baby, Alexa or not: Get a Halo Sleepsack Swaddle for babies age 0 to 3 months; it hugs them tight with Velcro wings in a way regular swaddle blanket can’t.
At 3 months, as the child is breaking free of any and all swaddles, invest $39.95 and get the small (3- to 6-month) size Baby Merlin Magic Sleepsuit. This “swaddle transition” holds a fidgety baby in comfort and leads to long, long naps and total overnight sleep sessions. It has saved my family’s sanity. Hope it helps yours.
Read more: “The Best Baby Monitors of 2018”
Originally published at www.pcmag.com.
