People say, listening to music during pregnancy can provide calm, help mothers reduce stress during pregnancy, and can also help stimulate baby's development. Is it true?
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When pregnant, the mother has its own stress, so it is recommended that the mother is always happy to do the things she likes. This is done to maintain the health of the mother and baby in the womb. One way to provide peace and pleasure to pregnant women is to listen to music.
Benefits of listening to music while pregnant for the mother
For mothers, listening to music during pregnancy can reduce maternal stress and this has a very good impact on babies.
Pregnancy can make a mother feel anxious and stressful, so that it can have a negative impact on mother and baby. Research shows that high stress levels during pregnancy can cause premature babies, low birth weight babies, and increase the risk of behavioral problems in babies when they reach the age of children.
Listening to music while pregnant can minimize the level of stress you feel so that it can provide the optimal environment for the baby to grow. When the mother relaxes, the mother's body produces the hormone serotonin and endorphins, which are hormones that make you feel happy, this hormone is transferred to the baby through the placenta. Listening to music can calm your mother, reduce stress hormones and increase happy hormones, relax muscles, and create a comfortable environment for mothers and babies.
Benefits of listening to music while pregnant for babies
Towards the end of the second trimester or around the age of 20 weeks, the fetus in the uterus can hear fully. The main sounds that can be heard are the heartbeat, breathing, pumping blood, and the mother's digestive voice. The fetus has also been able to hear sounds held from outside the mother's body.
After birth, the baby will remember and be entertained by the sound he hears when he is in the womb. The baby recognizes and chooses the mother's voice more than the other person's voice, so the baby sees his mother when he speaks.
A study found that playing the same music with music played when the baby in the womb can calm the baby after birth. Babies can stop crying, open their eyes, and make movements, so that babies can associate their experiences while in the womb.
Some of the benefits of listening to music during pregnancy for babies include:
1. Develop the ability to learn and behave
Listening to music while pregnant can develop the basics of learning and behaving in the future. Reporting from the Guide of the Hope Mother, Wilfried Gruhn, Professor Emeritus of the Educational Music Music University in Freiburg, Germany says that music stimulates the growth of brain structures and connects many areas of brain activation. Learning is based on brain development where the strongest occurs in the early years and continues throughout life. Brain development is basically determined by offspring, but the structure itself depends on how individuals use it. All experience is stored in the brain and affects its nerve structure.
What can be taken from the quote is that music can stimulate the early development of the brain, but does not guarantee that the child will be intelligent. Brain intelligence is more determined by the way children use it. After all, there is no evidence to explain that listening to music while pregnant can make babies smarter.
2. Helps the baby sleep
Studies show that babies can remember and recognize music they usually hear when they are in the womb, at least one year after birth. Listening to the same music that is played when in the womb can help calm the baby, babies fall asleep faster, and sleep longer than babies who don't hear music. Listening to the same music for babies after birth can help shape better sleep patterns for babies.
3. Improve the newborn's reflex
Listening to music while pregnant makes the baby in the womb listen to the vibrations produced by music and the baby can react to music. Babies can try to move according to the pulse of the music vibration. This can improve the baby's reflexes and the overall movement of the baby.
4. Increase the ability of the baby's sense of hearing
When the mother listens to music through headphones, this can increase the concentration, hearing senses, and skills of the baby in the womb. Maybe babies don't understand music at the moment, but the vibrations and waves of music that reach babies can make babies concentrate more on sound and this is good for stimulating a baby's mentality.