Magical Melodies

The Benefits of Music for You and Your Preterm Infant

By Tamar Weiss

When Stacey Kent went into labor more than three months before her due date, it was clear that she and her husband would have many challenges ahead of them and a great deal of adjusting to do. Stacey recalls feeling overwhelmed and helpless when she first entered the neonatal intensive care unit. "We saw all the incubators decorated, and we were nervous to surround our babies with additional, artificial things," she says. "We figured we'd just talk to them."

Yet just a few days after their twins were born, Stacey and her husband decided to play recorded music with accompanying womb sounds and soothing nature sounds at their sons' incubators.

Throughout history, parents have been soothing newborn babies with lullaby music and repetitive, calming tones. These days, it is possible to document the health benefits these practices have on newborn and – more specifically – premature babies. "Music is a logical intervention, because it is structured and sequential," says to Jan Schreibman, a music therapist at Methodist Children's Hospital in Indianapolis, Ind. "If a steady, calming rhythm and melody are introduced into an environment, it supports and encourages those in that environment to become steady and calm." Such advantages have been shown to dramatically increase the health of premature babies.

Research in this field, most notably by Dr. Fred Schwartz, suggests that because the premature infant does have a developed sense of sound, and due to his/her loss of the intrauterine environment, sounds evocative of the womb can greatly improve the health of an infant. Dr. Schwartz's studies, as well as those of Dr. Jayne Standley, show that the use of specific music (generally lullabies sung in a female voice and uterine sounds of a pregnant woman's voice mixed with female singing) increased oxygen saturation levels, healthy sleep patterns and weight gain in newborns. In addition, irritability (causing stress which forces the infant to expend much-needed calories) decreased, sucking ability improved, the length of the hospital stay was shortened, and head circumference – which indicates brain size – increased. Researchers have found that low birth weight babies, whose head circumference does not grow at a fast enough rate, display decreased cognitive abilities later in life.

Studies have shown decreased developmental delays in premature infants who were exposed to recordings of their own mothers' voices in the hospital. A study by Juanita Keck, a professor at the Indiana University School of Nursing at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, found that music also has pain-relieving benefits to babies. "One can trace a pain inhibition pathway from the ear through the auditory neural pathway to areas of the brain known to be involved with pain inhibition, including both the intensity of pain and the negative emotional and distress components of pain," Keck says.

Such findings may ease parents who are forced to watch their tiny babies hooked up to numerous machines. The idea that singing or playing music for their child may be decreasing some of their discomfort is certainly needed reinforcement for parents with babies in NICU.

Want to see more?

• Your Preemie's First Year
• Decoding Your Preemie's Signals
• Nurturing Your NICU Baby
• Going Home Alone: When Preemies Need to Stay in the NICU
• Close Contact: How Kangaroo Care Can Help Your Preemie
• Talk about it!