Throughout my three pregnancies I wondered, “can my baby hear the music around me; can she hear my conversations with friends and family?” Well, I didn’t know the answer then, but I do now! The developing ear is beginning to be functional by the beginning of the second trimester! Research shows that around the beginning of the 4th month, baby can hear Mom’s heartbeat, digestive sounds and circulation sounds. Over the next six months hearing grows and by the last trimester baby can pretty much hear what you hear! What does this mean for the health of the baby? If you sing or hum a carefully selected 6 or 8 tunes for baby, these very same songs, sung after baby’s birth, will calm and soothe baby immediately! They will be associated with warmth, nurturing and feeling safe. If perchance your little one comes early these songs will help her to gain weight faster, stabilize body rhythms and temperature and go home as much as five days earlier! According to hospital bills, one day in the neonatal intensive care unit is over $15,000 per day!! So start singing!!

If you don’t know any lullabies, order my CD “Lullabies for Healthy Bonding.” Link to this CD above.

Breastfeeding and Lullabies

Nursing your baby is one of the best things you can do to get her off to a healthy start in life. Research and common wisdom tells us that Mommy’s milk is meant to feed a newborn baby and no baby is ever going to be allergic to Mommy’s mild. It almost seems like a miracle to me that the whole process works so beautifully—usually!

Sometimes new mothers or mothers who have had difficult pregnancies get tense and anxious and have trouble getting their mile to “let down.” This happened to me after my first child was born: my breasts were full of milk and my baby was crying but the milk would not “let down” into my breasts so that my daughter could satisfy her hunger!

So how do lullabies play a part? Women have been softly singing, humming and crooning to the infants since the beginning of time. The benefits of mother singing to her baby, rather than playing a CD or radio, is that THIS is the same voice that baby has been hearing for the past nine months and is the voice that makes baby feel safe and secure. When baby calms down, mommy calms down and before you know it, the milk is flowing. Is this immediate and instantaneous? Of course not. It’s a process and can take days depending on how anxious the mother is.

My recommendation is that mother listen to my lullaby CD during pregnancy so that the melodies come easily to her when she sits down to nurse baby! You can order the CD or you can download these classic lullabies that have been passed down from generation to generation! Do let me know how it goes!!

One of the most gratifying things that a pregnant woman or new mother can do is sing lullabies to her unborn or newborn infant. Mothers have been doing this for millions of years and not only is it calming and soothing to the infant, but it’s also calming and soothing to the mother, the father, and anyone who is within earshot. As a mother of three daughters, I know that singing or humming softly to them made such a difference in all our lives. Even today, my youngest daughter, now in her 20′s will sometimes ask me to sing her a lullaby!
You may also know that lullabies have been shown to help preemies in a hospital NICU to gain weight faster, stabilize biorhythms faster and get released from the hospital faster. At a cost of $15,000 per day in the NICU, this is a fantastic benefit.
Today I got a new batch of lullaby CD’s to take with me on my next speaking tour. If you hurry, you can get one for your new baby, friend’s baby, or grandbaby! You’ll need to order NOW because I only ordered 50!! These won’t last the weekend if people find out. Click here to order!

To see the lullaby blog, go to http://pregnancyandpreemies.blogspot.com/