Getting Real With Shadra Bruce
I’ve written before that I believe there are far more important things you should be doing for the health of your fetus than reading to it or playing it music, but if you do want to do more, consider this: By the time you have been pregnant for five months, your baby’s brain development, the number of brain cells your baby will have, is already determined. By this twentieth week of pregnancy, your baby’s brain will have entered into a period of rapid growth and maturity. The brain cells begin to mature, and the brain itself becomes more complex. Most likely, by this stage of development, your child can see and hear throughout much of the second half of the pregnancy, and before that time can sense emotion, vibration, and sound.
The research is inconclusive at best, but because so much of your baby’s brain development takes place before birth, some medical professionals believe it is important to begin providing stimulation and building a connection with your baby even before he or she is born, and suggest that one of the best ways you can provide this stimulation to your unborn child is by playing classical music. According to some researchers, playing classical music to the baby provides a number of prenatal benefits. Classical music is at once calming and lyrical, but the volume of the music should be kept under 100 decibels (40-60 decibels is typically loud enough).
The prenatal benefits of playing classical music to your unborn child are still being studied, and quite honestly, I think it worked more as a marketing ploy to sell baby cds and associated products than anything else. I do believe playing classical music can have a calming effect – on mom. I would suggest playing it when you are feeling stressed, perhaps even including it in your delivery room when you go into labor to make the experience less stressful.
