Why listen to music while pregnant? Playlist for expectant moms

Why listen to music while pregnant? Playlist for expectant moms
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Until recently, it was thought that listening to music by pregnant women only calmed them down. However, it turns out that it is an important channel of contact with the unborn child. What music should be listened to during pregnancy?

The right choice of music has a beneficial effect on the psyche of a woman and her whole body. What can music do?

Stress reduction

A problem accompanying pregnancy is a higher level of stress. Appropriate music leads to a reduction of this negative factor, and thus to a reduction of anxiety or fear

Protection against hypertension

Regular listening to music during pregnancy, according to researchers at the Max Planck Institute in Munich, also protects women from hypertension, which is common in this state. Thus, future mothers who have a problem with this parameter can avoid health problems

Musical taste during pregnancy

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It turns out that musical taste during pregnancy can be very specific and different from what a woman preferred before. In particular, her sensitivity to low, high and inharmonious sounds increases, so it is worth to take this into account when composing a pregnancy playlist

Music’s influence on the baby’s development

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(Photo: Hollie Santos, source: unsplash.com)

More mysterious, however, are the relationships between a mother’s music listening and her child’s fetal development. Recent research points to some interesting correlations!

Since when does a baby hear music?

A baby in the womb begins to respond to sounds as early as 4 or 5 months. The membranes dampen most of these sounds, but the baby still perceives some of them. This is especially true of rhythm and low-frequency sounds. For example, the sounds of the bassoon

Does the baby remember a tune?

It turns out that not only does the foetus respond better or worse to particular melodies while in the womb, but the baby after birth is able to respond particularly vividly to certain sequences of sounds that it often heard while in its mother’s belly

What else does listening to music in the prenatal period offer the baby?

Listening to well-chosen melodies during the prenatal period can be a tool for early music therapy and benefit the future. Children treated in this way are often calmer, more attentive, learn their first words more quickly, and show creative abilities.

What music to listen to during pregnancy?

Classical music

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It is this genre of music that is recommended by far the most for moms-to-be and the babies developing in their wombs. Especially often recommended are:

  • works by Sergei Prokofiev,
  • nocturnes in D flat major, B major and A flat major by Frederic Chopin,
  • claude Debussy’s compositions,
  • Eine kleine Nachtmusik by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart,
  • Antonio Vivaldi’sFour Seasons ,
  • Ludwig van Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata ,
  • Serenade by Franz Schubert,
  • Swan Lake by Pyotr Tchaikovsky

What’s beyond the classics?

Of course, listening to classical music by a future mother does not guarantee that she will have a child-melome. In fact, it is not always this kind of music that appeals to a woman’s taste, or even that of a child, who may already express his or her disapproval in the womb.

At the International Congress of the Association of Music and Medicine in Barcelona (2018), the results of a study by Spanish scientists on the behavior of more than 300 fetuses (mouth and tongue movements were assessed) to 15 songs representing three musical genres (classical, traditional and pop-rock) were presented. It turned out that:

  • 84% of the babies responded well to classical music,
  • 79% liked traditional music,
  • 59% responded well to pop-rock

Mozart’s Eine kleine Nachtmusik was the clear winner, but among the pop songs, YMCA Village People and Bohemian Rhapsody by the immortal band Queen also did quite well. Unfortunately, Adele and Shakira did not find fans among the youngest

Main photo of the article: photo by Freestocks, source: unsplash.com

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