Babies Blog

Many parents enjoy playing music for their unborn child. So does your prenatal baby hear the songs you are playing for them? Researchers in Hungary believe that the answer is a resounding YES. From Mozart to Metallica your baby does indeed hear what you are playing.

What Your Baby Hears & How It Could Help Doctors

Apparently, even at such a young age your child’s brain has the ability to register rhythmic patterns. Changes in beat and melody are all picked up by your baby even when fast asleep, and they do it automatically. This is all according to a recently released study by The Hungarian Academy of Sciences, coordinated by Dr. Susan Denham, of Plymouth University. When researchers conducted their experiment they could tell whether or not the unborn baby was able to recognize when key beats were missing by observing changes in brain activity.

Why is this good news? Among other things, the ability to recognize musical beats and patterns could help doctors to diagnose potential cognitive disorders in babies before they are born. This type of careful prenatal screening and diagnosis could allow doctors to treat potential developmental issues early on before your baby is even born. Dr Denham also believes that by exposing your child to music at this stage of life will make your toddler more perceptive of rhythmic speech patterns that will assist in developing language skills.

This study seems to validate something that many parents felt they already knew about early childhood development. So sing to your unborn child and play them lots of beautiful music. They are definitely listening to the world around them and what better world than one filled with music!

Where To Find More Info

If you would like to find out more information related to this study you may want to visit the University Of Plymouth page on this prenatal study.

Now for the most ridiculous item of the day. You may want to wear a helmet to the next baby shower you attend. The Salt Lake Tribune is reporting that a husband and wife are being charged for their part in a fight at a baby shower that left one woman unconscious. The woman, 40 years old, attacked another woman, a neighbor, with a shovel while the attacker’s 35 year old husband grabbed a shotgun out of his truck and swung it at the crowd. Both have been charged by police with third-degree felony aggravated assault. The husband has also been charged with resisting arrest.

Unbelievable, you just can’t make this stuff up. This woman is lucky she is only being charged with aggravated assault and not attempted murder (which she probably should be).

According to an eFlux Media article by Alice Carver on autism , The National Institute on Mental Health or NIHM has decided not to move forward with an autism study that proposed mercury in children’s vaccines was a cause of autism. The main goal of the proposed study was to evaluate the effectiveness of a controversial treatment called Chelation Therapy.

Read the main article from eFlux and the Wikipedia article I linked above for more info.