Pictures from Sprint View MessageRecently, my daughter and new granddaughter visited my 85- y.o. mother in SC. On the last day, Baby Layla was getting tired and beginning to fuss and fret. My mother said “hand her to me” and so we did! She immediately started singing this jazzy song from the 40′s and Layla was immediately mesmerized! She stopped crying and just loooked at my mother like this was the most amazing thing she had ever heard or been a part of! Music: the perfect solution for fussy, crying babies!

When I go out to speak at conferences and associations and universities, I often tell this story of “The Miracle of a Brother’s Song.” It is such a powerful story and brings home all of the healing you can have just “for a song!” Don’t miss it!

My “Lullaby” CD has created quite a stir and is now being used literally around the world. If you’d like to know more or purchase it, go to http://www.healingmusicenterprises.com/products/lullabies/lullabies.html. You’ll also receive the lyrics to all 22 lullabies!

Baby has already found her thumb

The sound of a mother’s voice has such an influence on her unborn child that even tiny babies cry with an accent, according to new research.

 Babies are likely to imitate their mother’s voice, to increase bonding

A study of 60 newborns from France and Germany found that babies appear to pick up the nuances of language even while they are in the womb, and their very first wails can be distinguished according to their mother tongue.

French newborns tend to cry with a rising melody contour, while German babies prefer a falling melody shape – patterns which scientists say fit with characteristic differences between the two languages.

Kathleen Wermke of the University of Wuerzburg in Germany, who conducted the study with French and American colleagues, says it shows newborns “are capable of producing different cry melodies”.

The research shows there is an “extremely early” impact from native language, and confirms that babies’ cries are their first proper attempts to communicate specifically with their mothers, she explained.

“We are the first ones to have provided evidence that language begins with the very first cry melodies.

“They prefer exactly the same melody patterns that are typical of their respective mother tongues.

“Newborns are probably highly motivated to imitate their mother’s behaviour in order to attract her and….foster bonding.”

The team’s analysis, published in journal Current Biology, reveals clear differences in the shape of the newborns’ cry melodies, based on their mother tongue.

Previous studies have shown that human foetuses can memorise sounds from the external world by the last three months of pregnancy.

However, scientists had always thought that language traits did not begin to have an influence until much later.

Calm a crying, fussy baby

Scientists tell us that babies cries are very intentionally hard to ignore because if a baby cries, it needs attention of one kind or another! How about a lullaby? As a mother and a professional musician, I believe that singing, humming, or playing a recording of a lullaby, especially if it is familiar, can calm, soother and comfort a baby. Of course combining that with rocking, holding or snuggling the baby will also help.

If you played these lullabies for your baby during pregnancy, baby doesn recognize this music and often calms down very quickly. To see my lullabies and either get the download immediately or order the CD, go to fussy_babies.

It’s Official: Music can help preemies with pain

“Music may reduce pain and improve behavioral states in premature infants, researchers found.”

LITTLE FALLS, N.J., May 29 — Music may reduce pain and improve behavioral states in premature infants, researchers found.

A systematic review of nine studies investigating the effects of music on outcomes in premature babies found preliminary evidence for therapeutic benefits, Manoj Kumar, M.D., of the University of Alberta in Edmonton, and colleagues reported online in the Archives of Disease in Childhood.

But because of the methodological weaknesses of some of the studies included in the review, a meta-analysis could not be performed and the findings need to be confirmed in more rigorous trials, they said.
Music is increasingly being used in neonatal units to improve behavioral or physiological outcomes and to manage pain during common procedures. Benefits include calmer infants and parents, stable physiological parameters, higher oxygen saturation, faster weight gain, and shorter hospital stays, the researchers said.

To document such benefits, the researchers conducted a review of nine randomized trials reported between 1989 and 2006 that studied use of music on outcomes in neonates. Six studies evaluated music for painful procedures including circumcision and heel prick.

The studies used various types of music, but lullabies were the most common.

http://www.healingmusicenterprises.com/products/lullabies/lullabies.html

The methodological quality of the studies was generally poor, the researchers said.

One high-quality pilot study of 23 infants undergoing circumcision showed benefits of music for the outcomes of heart rate, oxygen saturation, and pain, while two low-quality studies found no difference.

Three studies evaluated the effects of music on pain from heel prick, and found it may be beneficial for measures of behavior and pain, but they were of low quality, the researchers said.

One study of music-reinforced non-nutritive sucking among 32 poorly feeding preterm infants found a significant increase in oral feeding rates compared with controls.

The researchers said it would be of particular interest to confirm the effects of using music to improve oral feeding rates, which could have the potential of “saving finite useful healthcare resources.”

Another showed significant benefits in terms of heart rate and behavioral scores with recorded music versus no music in stable preterm infants.

But one methodologically strong study found no difference on the effects of recorded instrumental lullabies in 22 preterm infants with chronic lung disease compared with a no-music control group.

In general, the researchers said, the studies demonstrate that music may be beneficial in terms of behavioral states and pain, although they showed inconsistent effects overall on physiological measures.

Therefore, they said, benefits need to be confirmed in future well-designed, high quality trials.
By Kristina Fiore, Staff Writer, MedPage Today
Published: May 29, 2009
Reviewed by Dori F. Zaleznik, MD; Associate Clinical Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School, Boston and
Dorothy Caputo, MA, RN, BC-ADM, CDE, Nurse Planner

Picture a mother softly crooning to her newborn.  Picture this throughout history because I believe that mothers have instinctively done this from the beginning of time.  Why?  Because it calms the infant and it also calms the mother!  What if the baby comes early? 

No one plans for a preemie but all over the world, preemies come into the world and their little lives dangle precipitously between life and death for days and weeks.  Could lullabies help?  Absolutely!  Because we know that the fetal ear is functional by the second trimester, the unborn child associates the melodies that Mother sings with security and safety and respond in the NICU by calming down and stabilizing heart-rate, BP, and body temperature.

If you give birth to a preemie, please sing these lullabies, but you must start doing this as soon as possible after the first trimester.  Even if your baby is full-term, the benefits of singing to the baby are tremendous and powerful!  Music contributes to wellness and emotional stability.

Click here to get my best-selling lullaby CD or download!

Why Mozart with babies?

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