And if you are a parent who has benefited from the beautiful and bonding experience of reading to your baby before birth, we’d love to hear your story! Please send your stories, photos or videos and we’ll include them on on our blog to inspire other expectant parents to read to their child in the womb
Research says that the best stories for reading to your baby before birth are those that are rhythmic, rhyming, and repetitive. Preborn babies respond best to this type of auditory stimulation, and studies definitively prove that these kinds of stories are the best remembered and have the most soothing effect on newborns.
Newborn babies can’t talk, but they can suck, and scientists used a pacifier connected to a computer to determine whether or not babies recognized sounds they had been exposed to. When a newborn hears or experiences something familiar, the sucking response slows down, and conversely, it increases for unfamiliar stimuli. Through this method, scientists discovered that babies recognized specific vowel sounds as they were spoken by their mothers.
And since it’s highly unlikely that these vowel sounds were learned in the short time after birth, the obvious conclusion was that “babies’ understanding of the difference between native and nonnative sounds could be attributed only to prenatal learning.”
Article:
ABC News: Babies Cry with an Accent, Study Finds
ABC News: Babies Recognize Mom's Voice from the Womb
So when you speak to your child in the womb, your baby is latching onto your words and your voice, and especially to those vowel sounds. The ooo’s , eee’s, and ahh’s are what your baby hears and remembers best.Many other studies have since shown that babies recognize music, nursery rhymes, and their native language due to hearing them from inside the womb.Many research studies around the globe have shown that newborns are born ready to learn and begin to discriminate between language sounds within the first months of life.
Many of the studies (as cited above article link) strongly indicate that babies remember patterns, rhythms, and beats heard from inside the womb, and this most recent research shows that babies hear and remember specific vowel sounds. You can choose books for your baby that have both rhyming and repetitive vowel sounds.
Research shows that babies recognize the voice of their mother at birth and can distinguish their mother’s voice from that of a stranger:Thirty fetuses were played a two-minute audiotape of their own mother reading a poem and 30 fetuses were played the voice of a female stranger reading the poem. The researchers found that the fetuses responded to their own mother's voice with heart-rate acceleration and to the stranger's voice with a heart-rate deceleration. The responses lasted during the two-minute tape as well as for at least two minutes after the offset of the voices."The fetuses learn about their mother's voice in the womb and then prefer it after birth”.
Mom's Voice Plays Special Role in Activating Newborn's Brain
The brain signals also revealed that while the infants did react to other women's voices, these sounds only activated the voice recognition parts of the brains. "This is exciting research that proves for the first time that the newborn's brain responds strongly to the mother's voice and shows, scientifically speaking, that the mother's voice is special to babies.
"Motherese" -- the special voice mother's use to communicate with their babies-- is scientifically recognized.
“Utero experience has an impact on newborn/infant behaviour and development and that voice recognition may play a role in mother-infant attachment."
It was already well known that babies have some innate language capacities, but researchers are only just beginning to understand what these capacities are and how they work. For example, when a baby hears the "A" sound, he or she will make the mouth shapes needed to imitate this noise, even if he or she has never seen it spoken. "This research confirms that the mother is the primary initiator of language and suggests that there is a neurobiological link between prenatal language acquisition and motor skills involved in speech,"
"These little ones had been listening to their mother's voice in the womb, and particularly her vowels for ten weeks.
From the fetus' point of view, whatever is in the womb is considered "good."- Pregnant Mother's Diet Impacts Infant's Sense of Smell-A major new study shows that a pregnant mother's diet not only sensitizes the fetus to those smells and flavors, but physically changes the brain directly impacting what the infant eats and drinks in the future.
Take care of your unborn baby.
Disclaimer
The sole purpose of these blogs is to provide information about the tradition of ayurveda. This information is not intended for use in the diagnosis, prevention or cure of any disease. If you have any serious, acute or chronic health concern, please consult a trained doctor/health professional who can fully assess your needs and address them effectively. If you are seeking the medical advice of a trained Ayurvedic expert, call us or e mail.
Dr Unnati Chavda
(Promoting pregnancy wellness)
www.ayurvedapanchkarma.in
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