Home » My Wife’s Lexus RX 350’s Ride Is Too Good To Calm Down Our Crying Baby

My Wife’s Lexus RX 350’s Ride Is Too Good To Calm Down Our Crying Baby

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I never really spent a whole lot of time thinking about the Lexus RX 350, but ever since dating and subsequently marrying and subsequently procreating with the owner of one, I’ve become a fan. You see, it’s hard to find a car this good to be boring; the engineer in me feels nothing but a deep respect for a machine that fulfills its intended purpose perfectly. It’s an A+ crossover SUV and a good family car; in fact, my biggest issue with the RX is just how comfortable it is.

I’m learning a lot about babies since my own — Delmar (not his real name) — was born in April, and among the many odd Quirks and Features I’ve discovered is: A crying baby will often calm down during a car ride.

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This is a pretty well established in the parenting community: Driving kids around in a car legitimately helps them fall sleep. Check out this Reddit thread titled “So you drive your child around in the car seat to get them to sleep.” and this HuffPost article titled “Yes, Sometimes I Drive Around Town to Get My Kids to Sleep” and this Australian news article titled “New parents racking up 1000’s of km’s driving their kids to sleep.” Here’s a quote from that last one, news.com.au’s Kidspot, discussing the prevalence of this cars-as-baby-sleeping-pill phenomenon:

Forget magic self-rocking bassinets, fancy swaddles and white noise machines, it seems parents today are reverting to old school methods to get their kids to sleep. A recent survey of new parents revealed that a staggering 95 percent of them admit driving their kids around endlessly in order to help them settle. In fact, when the stats were all tallied up, it found they were driving around 1500 kilometers a year- that’s the equivalent of Sydney to Adelaide!

There’s biology behind this, and the publication Motherly gets into how a baby’s brain is soothed by the various characteristics of a car ride, writing:

Your baby’s response to rocking is a natural reaction of their sensorimotor systems. Researchers have found that gentle and constant rocking regulates your baby’s central, motor and cardiac systems in a coordinated way that calms them down.

Your baby’s cerebellum is the part of their brain that is most primitive—always on guard and keeping track of everything going on in their environment. It’s directly linked in a feedback loop with the vagus nerve, a part of the parasympathetic nervous system that connects the brainstem to the body and allows it to monitor and receive information. The parasympathetic nervous system oversees a vast array of crucial bodily functions, including the fight-or-flight response and heart rate. Rocking puts your baby’s cerebellum at ease and creates a parasympathetic response of relaxation, lower heart rate and increased sense of well-being.

[…]

Your car’s engine is a kind of white noise that can mimic the familiar sounds your baby heard in your womb and can mask loud sounds that may stimulate your baby’s brain. White noise influences sleep by encouraging your baby’s brain to adopt and maintain the slower, rhythmic brain waves associated with sleep.

[…]

The inside of a car can be insulated, warm and dark, just like your womb. And the interior doesn’t change, so there is nothing new to see, hear, feel or do. Plus, your baby knows you are nearby and feels safe.

[…]

Not only does the car seat harness hold your baby’s body in the proper position in case of an accident, the feeling of security it provides and the cozy warmth of your car’s interior can utterly transport your baby back to the womb.

It turns out, a moving car is rather womb-like, with snug-fitting car seats, usually rather dull and dark visuals, white noise, and a float-y ride from the suspension hitting bumps. This soothes a baby.

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The problem with my wife’s otherwise flawless baby-car (OK maybe the 24 MPG fuel economy could be better, but it’s roomy, reliable, safe, and the leather is spill-resistant) — her 2017 Lexus RX350? The ride is just too good. Here’s what Car and Driver had to say about her generation of Lexus RX:

Ride quality, on the other hand, is creamy, amplified by relaxed-fit seats that are all-day comfortable. The standard 18-inch wheels contribute to the supple ride quality (higher-spec versions roll on 20s). And the smooth going is further enhanced by an exceptionally quiet interior. The redesign gave considerable attention to noise reduction, an intriguing priority since the interior of the previous generation was far from raucous. Be that as it may, interior noise levels of the new one are lower still—a traditional Lexus virtue made more virtuous.

Creamy, folks; creamy! This is not good!

I know, that sounds ridiculous, but here in my part of California, the roads aren’t that bad, and that, combined with a really well-tuned and rather soft suspension, means those in the cabin often feel nothing when going over expansion joints, cracks in the road, or speed bumps.

Lexus Rx Bump

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I figured the car’s white noise and the floaty-ness would be enough to get Delmar to fall asleep, but no — most of the time we go for a car ride, Delmar cries:

 

Since I’d previously noticed that he tends to fall asleep in my arms when I bounce him up and down a bit (fairly standard baby behavior), I decided to try taking speed bumps a bit too fast and also steering the RX 350 into broken parts of the road. The result? He stops crying!

After a while, though, I found myself swerving around my lane trying to make sure my tires were hitting every manhole cover, every big crack, ever speed hump-peak, and it probably looked absurd from the outside. The reality is that, for getting Delmar to fall asleep, my BMW i3S is a much, much better car because its ride is terrible.

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Some of that owes itself to the i3’s wheelbase, which is 8.6 inches shorter than that of the Lexus. Basic physics/geometry tells us that a bump of a given height will yield a higher change in the i3’s pitch due to that short wheelbase, and that means a bumpier ride. That the i3’s spring rate is clearly stiffer — in part because it’s the “Sport” version of my car, and in part because i3s generally ride like crap — just makes my little Bavarian EV that much more of a baby sleeping-pill in comparison to the otherwise-excellent RX 350.

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I never thought I’d ever consider a car’s smooth, well-tuned suspension would be a bad thing, But indeed; my child sits in the back seat with his blown head gasket, billowing steam as I frantically hack at the wheel trying to hit some crack or bump or anything that will upset the RX’s well-tuned chassis. Eventually I just pull the car off the road, take out his baby carrier, and swing it back and forth a bit until he chills out. That buys me a bit of time. But only just a bit.

Top image: depositphotos.com

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EricTheViking
EricTheViking
1 day ago

My brother often put his children in their car seats atop the laundry machine while it’s washing clothes. Same effect as driving around…

Drift Cobra
Drift Cobra
1 day ago

This makes me grateful that my wife drives a 4Runner. 2 minutes into riding in that lumber wagon and our baby is fast asleep.

Phuzz
Phuzz
2 days ago

When my niece was that age, my brother would take her for a drive until she fell asleep, however, attempting to remove her from the car would wake her up and start the cycle again.
Their solution was to park in front of the kitchen window, so that they could keep an eye on her without moving her.

Give Me Tacos or Give Me Death
Give Me Tacos or Give Me Death
2 days ago

The galaxy-brain solution is to stance it.

Camp Fire
Camp Fire
2 days ago

Did you just find another justification for buying an old leaf-sprung Jeep?

Shocking. Absolutely shocking. 😉

Sid Bridge
Sid Bridge
2 days ago

Coming up later in Tales from the Slack…

DT: I’m not getting any responses from our CraigsList Ad.
MH: Read me the text again.
DT: Seeking six babies between the ages of 0-11 months for road test. All shapes and sizes accepted.
MH: Maybe we should reword that a bit.

Cryptoenologist
Cryptoenologist
2 days ago

My daughter hated riding in the car from 2 months to almost 6 months. She tolerates it now but it certainly isn’t a panacea. It’s not the car seat she hates, it clips into our strollers and she is happy rolling around in them. It was just being in the car.

One thing to check for soon: most infant seats have a newborn insert that you need to remove around 4 months. Our baby is huge so we realized around 3 months that the insert was making her really uncomfortable.

Last edited 2 days ago by Cryptoenologist
Andrew Wyman
Andrew Wyman
2 days ago

Our baby hated the carseat from 1-4 months…but then we found out that it was dealing with high amounts of acid reflux, so it all made sense. Now it loves the car.

Last edited 2 days ago by Andrew Wyman
Box Rocket
Box Rocket
2 days ago

What I’m hearing is it’s time to move from LA to Moab so that that Baby Tracy can sleep while being driven around?

I’ve heard that it’s best not to let infants sleep in their car seats, but as frequently and opposively as advice seems to come about children, I dunno how accurate that is/was.

Maybe consider some noisier tires that have a low-pitched drone at road speeds when the RX next needs tires?

Curtis Loew
Curtis Loew
2 days ago

Try playing Black Sabbath’s Paranoid album. It puts babies right to sleep. An older guy I used to work with told me about it and it worked perfect for my kids.

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