Price: $14.10

Most lullaby albums I’ve come across contain “music” played on artificial instruments that sound as if they’d been put together by a computer programmer rather than a musician - and, in actual fact, most of them have (thanks to MIDI which, in case you haven’t heard of it, is a way of storing instructions to a machine to play notes). I don’t know whether the target audience (i.e. infants) actually cares (even though I like to think that they do), but in real life grown-ups end up listening to these CDs along with their kids and the experience quickly becomes wearing.

This album, hooray for Disney, is different - there’s a list of twenty-two musicians on the inlay card. The instruments (piano, strings, guitar, flute, oboe, etc.) are real, the arrangements are lovely and the playing is beautiful. Quiet, soothing, instrumental music, suited perfectly to a quiet evening in front of the fire for adults as well as to easing a baby’s journey to The Land of Nod. The tunes are mostly familiar - nursery rhymes, some Disney favourites like “When you wish upon a star”, a Lennon/McCartney number and of course Brahms’ lullaby - which adds to the overall comforting vibe.

But, says you, does it work?

Well, the first time I tried it Heather fell asleep before the end of track 2. Subsequent experiments haven’t always been so successful, because her big sister likes it too and is inclined to “do quiet dancing” around the kitchen when it’s on. This, as you can imagine, is a bit of a distraction, but when I shoo Isabelle away a handful of tracks almost always does it, and even one or two often calms Heather enough for me to put her down in the cot without her objecting and let her drift off on her own in silence.