This $18 sound machine for babies is my secret to a good nights sleep

I'm one of those people who literally cannot sleep without white noise playing in the background. Otherwise, I'm stuck staring at the ceiling, trying to will myself into a slumber. Thankfully, I have a great sound machine at home that whisks me off to dreamland every night instead of allowing my hyperactive brain to wander. It's improved my overall sleep quality by quite a bit ever since I started using it, but only when I'm home. When I'm traveling, I'm pretty much out of luck — my Hatch Restore is too bulky to carry around with me, and I'm not too keen on checking a bag at the airport just so I can pack an alarm clock.

So, after countless sleepless nights in hotel rooms and vacations marred by tired eyes, I bought this teeny-tiny sound machine on a whim, and let me tell you, it may be the best $25 I've spent all year.

Sidenote: I think Babelio technically made this sound machine for babies. But you know what? I'm going to keep using it. Aren't we all just former babies, anyway?

Without the Babelio portable sound machine, I have to rely on Spotify and a really long white noise playlist, which kind of worked, but at the expense of my iPhone's battery (it dies very quick now). Unfortunately, sleep earbuds just aren't for me.

Babelio's portable white noise machine is pocket-sized, but does just as good of a job getting me to sleep as my Hatch does at home. The circumference of the compact speaker is about the size of a quarter, making it a cinch to bring on the go. You can even add on a carrying case for it, which has a convenient little strap so you can attach it to your bag. I grabbed one of those, too, and definitely recommend it. I like how minimalistic it looks; I picked the sleek wood grain finish, but there are a lot more options to choose from.

It has a pretty short battery life — it lasted me only three nights before needing a charge — but the tradeoff for its portability is totally worth it. Plus, you can charge the device during use, so I'm never confronted with any mid-sleep interruptions.

The pint-sized noise machine features 15 non-looping tracks to choose from, including white noise, pink noise, brown noise, oscillating fan, rain, waves, insects, campfire, birds, streams, and more. I usually stick to the plain white noise, but it’s nice to have the options to play around with.

It also has a programmable timer in case you’d like it to turn off automatically while you catch some Zs, and has a memory function that remembers your preferred track, volume, and time settings from your last session. I don't use this feature much at all, but I could see it being useful for a quick power nap.

The cherry on top? This sound machine goes on sale quite often. At the time of this writing, it's just $16.99 on Amazon, so if you want one, take advantage of the discount. (And if you want to wait until later, it'll probably go on sale again soon.)