Music can play an important role in your child's growth, even before birth. Exposing your child to music ignites all areas of child development. And doing this early can help ensure that your baby grows up healthy. Keep reading to find out how is that even possible and what are the benefits from exposing your unborn baby to music!
Disclaimer: Midwifery is a very inclusive and safe space for everyone, where your identity and your needs are valid and important to us. Thus, the terms used in this article aim towards making everyone feel comfortable and included.
Uterus owner (person with a uterus, uterus having person) <--> Woman
Parent <--> father (dad), mother (mom)
Birthing person <--> mother (mom)
Pregnant (pregnant person) <--> mother (mom)
Breastfeeding (Breast) <--> Chestfeeding (Chest)
[if you feel that you are not included at any point, please contact us and help us change that]
© NIKOLETA CHATZIPANAGIOTIDOU, SOME RIGHTS RESERVED 15/11/2020
General Information About Music
Music is found in every known society, past and present, and is considered to be a cultural universal. Since all people of the world, including the most isolated tribal groups, have a form of music, it may be concluded that music is likely to have been present in the ancestral population prior to the dispersal of humans around the world. Consequently, the first music may have been invented in Africa and then evolved to become a fundamental constituent of human life, using various different materials to make various instruments.
In all probability, music has played an important role in the lifecycle of humans perhaps even before we could speak. Significant evidence has been discovered that very early man developed primitive flutes from animal bones and used stones and wood as percussion. Voice would have been the first and most natural means of expression in our distant ancestors, used to bond socially or comfort a sleepless child. It is from these humble beginnings that the music we enjoy today evolved.
As we move further through the history of music we find increasing evidence of its key role in sacred and secular settings, although the division into these categories was not defined in this way until many years later.
Music in Medicine
The ancient Greeks declared the partnership between music and medicine when they created the god Apollo, whose functions included both the musical and healing arts. In the sixth century B. c., the Greek philosopher and scientist Pythagoras proposed his theories of numbers and harmony. He saw the human soul as a harmony within itself and believed that daily singing and playing helped one achieve emotional catharsis. By the fourth century B. c., both Plato and Aristotle had proposed a unity and interrelationship between the soul and body. Plato stated that order and harmony were restored to the soul by means of melody and rhythm. Aristotle, the great logician, made specific distinctions about appropriate melodies, instruments, and harmonies, and their effects on the soul and body.
Though acknowledging the role of music in addressing illness is not new, recent research is illuminating how music affects the brain and other body systems in a measurable way. Using that knowledge, practitioners can now integrate music with medicine to augment healing.
For example, tempos that are slow, relaxing, or joyful appear to reduce blood pressure and heart rate and promote vasodilatation, whereas fast, tension-producing music has the opposite effect. These changes are short-lived, but daily sessions of music-guided slow breathing for 10-15’ may produce a sustained reduction in blood pressure not seen with music alone.
What effect does music have on babies in the womb?
It is proven that music has a role in brain development before birth. The developing nervous system in utero is exposed to myriad influences with potentially far reaching consequences. Most of the research in this area is directed towards understanding the adverse influences and their structural or functional pathogenesis. However, it is also interesting to investigate if foetal neurodevelopment can be positively influenced or enhanced in an analogous manner. There is evidence that appropriate vibroacoustic stimulation by exposure to music alters foetal behaviour and is carried forward to the newborn period.
Music is a noninvasive, culturally acceptable intervention with multiple putative direct and indirect beneficial effects on the parent and foetus through the pregnancy and perinatal period. In animals, prenatal music exposure has been shown to improve postnatal spatial learning and memory; to reduce isolation stress. Music has been found to beneficially affect stress response and recovery from critical illness or surgery. Using optical topography and salivary cortisol as a marker of stress, music has been documented to stimulate pleasure and happiness. On a molecular level, music has been shown to alter dominergic neurotransmission and have direct effect on neurotrophic growth factors including brain-derived neurotrophic factor and tyrosine kinase receptor B.
Besides direct influence on emotions, behavior, and neurotransmitter systems, there are multiple endocrine effects of music exposure including altered levels of adrenal and gonadal steroids. These changes in the pregnant parent can influence neuroblast proliferation, axonogenesis, synaptogenesis, and neuronal organization with effects on cognitive performance and behavioural gestalt.
In general, listening to music during pregnancy will not only have a soothing and uplifting effect on the pregnant person, but also a positive influence on the unborn baby.
Around 16─18 weeks of pregnancy, the little one hears its very first sound.
By 24 weeks, the little ears start to develop rapidly and babies have been shown to turn their heads in response to voices and noise in the last few months of pregnancy, an unborn baby can recognize their parent’s voice, their native language, word patterns and rhymes. Incredibly, other studies have shown that babies are born with the innate ability to detect musical beats. And even more importantly, some research suggests that soothing music may encourage premature babies to feed, and could improve their vital signs like heart rate and O2 saturation levels.
The pregnant person’s voice is the first type of music the baby hears. Singing lullabies to babies has always come naturally to parents and carers, and it may well be that there are benefits from listening to music in the womb that are yet to be fully understood.
As an interesting aside, research from 2014 shows that pregnant people are more sensitive to music than those who aren’t pregnant, exhibiting an increase in blood pressure in response.
What music should a pregnant parent listen to? In the third trimester, the baby will be definitely able to hear the music you play. Classical music, gentle sounds like lullabies, nice melodies that inspire happiness all are designed to be soothing. There has been a great deal of research into the effect of a pregnant parent’s voice on their unborn child. When the parent reads aloud, their voice has a calming effect on their unborn or newborn baby, decreasing their heart rate. Intonation in a voice has been proved to shape auditory learning, leading to their newborn recognizing, and forming a preference for, their parent’s voice. And not only does the parent’s voice affect the development of the baby’s auditory system, but amazingly, it also impacts their social and emotional development.
Apart from all the facts, we should not forget the most important of them all! You should listen to WHATEVER you find pleasing because that’s exactly what you need. The music you enjoys is the most beneficial for you and the baby!
How can music help develop a young child’s brain?
Scientists have proved that, in the third trimester, an unborn baby can recognise their birthing parent’s voice, their native language, and even begin to remember word patterns and rhymes. It makes sense then, that music also has an impact, but does listening to classical music really make a foetus any cleverer?
<< The ‘Mozart effect’ >>
The concept that playing classical music to your bump made your child more intelligent became popular in the late 1990s, spawning an industry that sold brain-boosting music to pregnant parents. But the reality is that there’s little proof it’ll make your offspring any brighter. The legend springs from psychologist Frances Rauscher's study into American college students, where she found a small link between IQ and listening to Mozart. How the jump was made from students to unborn babies is something of a mystery, but may just be down to our natural desire to do what’s best for our children.
Although Mozart may not have the effect we might want, it may make their brain more active. Babies in the womb have shown increased brain activity when exposed to music. Music ignites all areas of child development and skills for school readiness, particularly in the areas of language acquisition and reading skills.
Music, in general, is proven to help the baby’s brain in the uterus, as it helps with the preservation of the neurons that are created during pregnancy. So even though music won’t make your newborn as clever as Einstein, it will help with their brain development, on the long term, alongside with helping their breathing patterns and bringing down their heart rate.
Turn down the volume
It’s important to remember that the womb is a noisy place. Your stomach gurgles, your heart beats, your lungs fill with air. On top of that, your voice is amplified by the vibration of your bones as the sound travels through your body.
While pregnant, you should try to keep the volume of outside sounds around 50 to 60 decibels, or about the same loudness of a normal conversation. That means you definitely don’t want to use headphones on the belly.
Doctors say that the sound from earphones will be very loud by the time it reaches the baby in your belly, which is something you want to avoid.
You can attend the occasional concert while you are pregnant or sit in a loud movie theater once in a while. But regular exposure to high-volume noises is something nearly all professionals warn against. Avoid very loud concerts after 18 weeks.
All the warnings aside, sing, dance, and enjoy your musical pregnancy — your baby will enjoy it, too!
That's why we created 2 playlists with songs that will relax you and help you bond with your little one, creating amazing memories!
And one to get you in the mood, with Christmas songs!
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6htrZXstvsxLz0JoD8tCo9?si=PWNpKg2-SqaVwxN8F1Qf5Q
We hope that this acticle helped you understand the benefits of music and gave you some ideas to apply to your own life! We strongly encourage you to contact us in whatever way suits you and discuss the article, suggest ideas for upcoming content, tell us your strong and emotional stories or for any other reason you would like.
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Co-Founder and Co-Writer The Being a Midwife team Bibliography https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_music https://www.cmuse.org/history-of-music/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3299264/ https://www.unicef.org/parenting/child-development/how-music-affects-your-babys-brain-class https://www.aptaclub.co.uk/pregnancy/bonding-and-development/pregnancy-music-the-effect-on-unborn-babies.html https://www.healthline.com/health/pregnancy/music-for-baby-in-womb#Turn-down-the-volume- https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-642-71697-3_36 ( Musik in der Medizin / Music in Medicine by Ralph Spintge and Roland Droh) https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/center-for-music-and-medicine/music-as-medicine.html https://www.amjmed.com/article/S0002-9343(14)00924-3/fulltext Gabryella Mylona, "Music in Pregnancy" speech at the "Midwifery Week 2020" congress
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