wrathex
Expert Member
If all goes well, we will become parents later this year
I will surely take selective heed of (some of) your parenting advice that I come across on this forum !
Congratulations. I hope everything goes well, and little Blu will be with us right on time, best of wishes.
Tip : Talk a lot, laugh a lot, let your baby get to know and love the soundwaves of your voice.
I sang and read to my babies from when they were born, my son and daughter were both calm children, (both also love music and reading)
Listening in the Womb
sources: http://icls.fimc.net/hearhere/article.asp?id=931359 and http://www.benedictine.org/medical/audiology.htm
The early building blocks for listening are put in place during foetal development.
By 20 weeks of development of the foetus, the cochlea (hearing organ) is formed and by 3 months the nerves and the connections are in place to allow the developing foetus to start processing sounds.
By 8 months the baby can already discriminate phonemes of their own language.
Sound measurements from within the womb show that certain sounds are passed to the baby better than others; in particular low frequency sounds, vowels, intonation and melody of the voice.
Male voices travel better than female however the mother’s voice which travels through the body is higher in level than those voices outside.
The cochlea works initially in the 1-3 kHz range, a critical frequency region for speech and a very important place to start listening.
Along with the ability to feel, see, and hear comes the capacity to learn and remember.
These activities can be rudimentary, automatic, even biochemical.
For example, a fetus, after an initial reaction of alarm, eventually stops responding to a repeated loud noise.
The fetus displays the same kind of primitive learning, known as habituation, in response to its mother's voice.
