Pregnancy and Sound Therapy

How pre-natal listening helps unborn babies

A baby’s brain begins to develop several months before birth. Millions of brain pathways are created, the foundations for thinking and learning already laid in place at birth. The baby’s brain is stimulated by inputs from the senses. Smell, sight, touch, taste and movement — all these sensory inputs build the new being’s sense of the world.

It has been proven that the foetus has hearing at four and a half months, and Dr Tomatis, the pioneer of the early scientific exploration of sound and hearing, believed that hearing begins much earlier.

He discovered that baby birds will be born unable to sing if they do not hear their mothers sing while they are in the egg. This triggered Tomatis’s curiosity to explore the soundscape of the womb. The sounds that the foetus hears are mostly low frequencies due to being filtered through water. However, as the embryonic ear develops, it is attuned first to hear high frequencies. In this way, Tomatis surmised, the foetus is aware early on of the mother’s voice.

Environmental sounds form a background medley over which the mother’s voice dominates, holding the attention of the foetus. These sounds are extremely important, for through them the first emotional and mental bonding is established between child and mother. Much research shows that babies become calmer when exposed to a recording of intra-uterine sounds.

Dr Tomatis describes the sounds heard in the womb:

‘The universe of sound in which the embryo is submerged is remarkably rich in sound qualities of every kind. The foetus experiences internal rumblings, the movement of chyle at the time of digestion, and cardiacrhythms at a sort of gallop. It perceives rhythmic breathing like a distant ebb and flow. And then its mother’s voice asserts itself in this context, a little noise superimposed on all the other sounds, a noise in the form of a coded message of exceptional quality.’

I now sleep better, think better, write better and am eager to get all my patients onto Sound Therapy, particularly the pregnant women and children with learning problems.

Dr Cliff Bacchus

I now sleep better, think better, write better and am eager to get all my patients onto Sound Therapy, particularly the pregnant women and children with learning problems.

Dr Cliff Bacchus

One of the most important discoveries Tomatis made in his years of research was the beneficial effect of high frequency sound on the brain. The mother’s voice is the first high frequency sound we hear.

Its special encoding of detailed meaning, its message of love, gives it an importance no other sound will ever have.

High frequencies are high tones, as opposed to low tones. Children’s voices contain more high frequencies, and fewer low frequencies than adults’ voices. A violin gives out more high frequencies than a cello.

The human ear is designed to respond to, and benefit from, the rich medley of high frequency sounds found in a natural environment. Rain, running water, birds and insects generate an abundance of stimulating, high frequencies. Unfortunately, today children grow up in a world dominated by low frequencies and these have a tiring and dulling impact on the nervous system. They are not the sounds which stimulate, enliven and create interest. Moreover, most of the low frequencies are machine noises, accidentally generated by industrial necessity, not created for the purpose of enjoyment,
communication or education. Our willingness to let ourselves and our children suffer this constant bombardment of noise, clearly demonstrates that we do not attribute much importance to the impact of sound upon our health.

Sound stimulation before birth helps the brain to develop higher levels of organisation. The elements of music—such as tonal pitch, timbre, intensity and rhythm—are also elements of spoken language. This is why listening to music prepares the brain of the foetus to understand and produce the sounds of language. Music is like a pre-linguistic language which stimulates and nourishes the growing baby. Music affects our physical body, emotions, intellect and our sense of beauty. It is a language of its own, which gives us an understanding of that which cannot be expressed in words.

It is much easier than I thought to keep those head phones on while you are doing almost anything: housework, looking after the baby, talking on the phone, even taking the baby to a park. I just try to get the music into my ears as much as possible. It doesn’t affect your ability to function properly because it is played very softly in the background and doesn’t get in the way of people talking.

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Nurturing sound for your baby

Protect your young children from loud noise.
Create a sound nurturing environment with gentle music and Sound Therapy.
Sing to your baby in the womb, in the bassinet, and sing with your toddler.
Sing the lullabies, songs and rhymes that you remember from childhood.
Play classical music in your home so the child’s brain is stimulated by its intricate harmonic structure during its most formative weeks and months.
Respond when your baby cries. Babies cry because they are lonely, scared, hungry, in pain, or bored.

When nursing your baby, listen to calming music to help you feel peaceful and centred. The calmer you are, the calmer your baby will be.
Nurse your baby in a rocking chair or swing seat. The rocking motion will help to soothe and calm your baby.
If your child is fretful, try holding him in your arms while you do a regular slow dance to a soothing tune. Hum quietly along with the music. The vibration of your voice will add to his comfort.
Have a regular bedtime ritual that brings you close to your child each night.

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