Sing You A Lullaby

I’ve watched some pretty crazy videos on YouTube about how babies get to sleep … parents getting into the crib, babies sleeping under running water… perhaps the lullaby is passé? It still works for me!

Singing to baby, in addition to soothing them to sleep, is an important way of communicating and acclimating baby to sound and motion. I remember being sung to by my mother – she said she would sing until I seemed to be asleep but then the moment she’d stop, my eyes would POP open and I’d cry out, “SING!” My favorite was Wonderful Words of Life.

I actually don’t know the lyrics to Brahm’s Lullaby, I’ll confess. I just looked them up online and there’s something about “roses bedight”???? Now, I took plenty of literature classes in college and have read most of Shakespeare’s works but… what in the world does “bedight” mean? I’m all for increasing baby’s vocabulary, but seriously!

I am more of a fan of RockABye Baby…even though I shed a tear when baby slept through the night, at the end of the day, I do want him asleep! On a typical night, I sing about a dozen versions of RockABye to my baby before his eyelids get heavy with sleep. Sometimes I get so sleepy I switch around the lyrics by accident, or get creative and harmonize, or just skip words all together and just sing “la la la la la” to the tune. Although every time I sing “when the bough breaks / the cradle will fall” I feel like I’m threatening the baby with personal harm! Supposedly Native Americans used to hang baby cradles from trees and RockABye was a warning about picking the right branch. Does this have anything to do with “the apple not falling far from the tree?” I’m not sure.

At any rate, lullabies may have a darker past than their lilting tones imply! Even Hush, Little Baby talks about one disappointment after another, but I like how in the end, the most important thing is that mommy & daddy love baby… and that is after all why we loving sing them to sleep, no matter what the words actually mean!

I’m also not a One-Hit Wonder – my repertoire extends to praise songs like Jesus Loves Me, Sweet Adoration, More Precious Than Silver, or Gentle Shepherd… or nursery rhyme-type songs like Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star, When You Wish Upon a Star and Baby Mine.

Maybe you don’t sing the typical lullaby to your baby, but keep singing – it’s good for baby and for mommy!

What was your favorite lullaby or your child’s favorite? Leave a comment and/or link to the lyrics below!