Real Bodies: Dig that music, baby

Experts say play Mozart during your pregnancy if you want a brainy child. JUSTINE HANCOCK investigates

Womb song sounds like the theme tune for a hippy therapy weekend - in fact, it's the melody a mother should sing to her unborn baby to calm him or her during and after birth. The lyrics, typically something like "Hello my sweet, O baby mine, I love you, O precious baby mine" are hardly Gershwin, yet it's claimed that a Womb Song will soothe most crying babies, most of the time.

A tape of womb songs (pounds 43, plus p&p) is just one of many "educational" tools now available to parents interested in teaching the baby in utero. But while womb songs promise to calm the baby "so learning can begin", the marketing for other products goes further, claiming that prenatal stimulation will give your child a head start in terms of intelligence, social skills and creative ability.

The notion of the womb as early- learning centre is fast catching on. No wonder - it does have a certain appeal. Lying around with a Discman playing Mozart is hardly hard work and could give your unborn the head start you think they need. But does playing music to an unborn baby make a difference? Or is it yet another example of paranoid parenting, as in the argument that we can never do enough for our children?

The evidence suggests that the foetus is able to hear from around the 20-week mark. Professor Peter Hepper, a psychologist at Queen's University, Belfast, has found that at this stage the foetus will bounce around the womb in response to music. Psychologists at Keele University go as far as saying that babies in the womb can remember music as early as 20 weeks into gestation. Previously it was assumed that babies younger than 24 weeks could not remember things because the relevant part of the brain, the cortex, is not developed at this point.

What this all means for the child's long-term development is yet to be discovered. However, Donald Shetler, a former professor at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York, has looked at the effects of playing symphonic musical selections to foetuses and says that a large percentage of his subjects (children aged two and younger) can use one finger to play notes on a piano rather than bang away at the keyboard as most young children do. Furthermore, he found these children are also reasonably good at picking out simple melody patterns.

Dr F Rene Van de Carr, an obstetrician in Hayward, California, and founder of the "Prenatal University" claims that prenatal stimulation will heighten musical ability, language skills and overall cognitive development. In his book, While You Are Expecting: Your Own Prenatal Classroom, Van de Carr argues that "prenatal stimulation gives the brain an opportunity to make use of more brain cells before birth, thus giving the baby a greater total brain capacity and a true head start in life. Prenatally stimulating your baby using music may also influence their own musical talent."

But there are no long-term scientific studies to prove that playing music during pregnancy makes the child grow into a musical prodigy. Indeed, Michal Hambourg, a concert pianist who sits on the music council for the National Association for Gifted Children, reports that although she worked and listened to music throughout her pregnancies, neither of her sons turned out to be a "musical genius".

On the other side of the debate, there are some, like Michel Odent, who are concerned that prenatal "teaching" could prove harmful. "I'm against this tendency to try to stimulate the foetus artificially, putting loudspeakers close to the woman's body," he says. "Perhaps there's a risk of over-stimulation - we don't know where to draw the line between useful stimulation, and overdoing it."

In the past he has run "singing workshops" to stimulate the foetus in what he describes as an entirely "natural" way. "Singing is the sort of music that has been offered to babies in the womb through the ages and all over the world. And what we know for sure is that it makes the women happy - this is probably good for their hormonal balance which, in turn, can help foetal development."

Ironically, given all the sophisticated research into the way babies respond to stimulation in the womb, there is also an argument which suggests that it's the mother's emotional state during pregnancy which is the most important factor. Animal studies show a strong link between a mother's stress and the emotional development of her offspring. "In general, this makes them hyper-responsive to stress, and their reaction to ordinary stimulus is greater," says Dr Vivette Glover, director of Foetal and Neo- Natal Stress Research at Queen Charlotte's Hospital, London. In a study of 100 women patients at Queen Charlotte's Hospital she found that, if a woman is anxious during pregnancy, this impairs the blood flow to the baby, which can make for a smaller baby - and could have an effect on its development. "Taking time off to relax and look after yourself, particularly from the emotional point of view, is likely to be helpful and certainly won't do any harm."

Perhaps it's the mothers-to-be - and not the baby - who could do with a few soothing bars of Mozart.

WOMB FOR IMPROVEMENT

Melanie Griffith and Don Johnson apparently joined the queue for tapes from a company called A Sound Beginning to help them prepare for their child's birth. The idea is you choose one or two womb songs from the ASB tape, Inside the Womb, and make your own recording. The manufacturer claims the womb song will calm most crying babies 75 to 100 per cent of the time. For more information, contact A Sound Beginning, Suite 207 32129, Lindero Canyon Road, Westlake Village, California 91361, USA. (www.asoundbeginning.com).

BabyPlus offers a prenatal enrichment system - a series of 16 tapes that resemble the mother's heartbeat. The mother wears a belt with stereo speakers around her abdomen for one hour in the morning and one at night, starting from the 18th and 24th weeks of pregnancy (each tape is played for one week). BabyPlus (pounds 125 to hire, pounds 199 to buy), 1-7 Harley Street, London, W1N 1DA (tel: 0171 637 1828).

Make Way for Baby! Is a pregnancy and prenatal stimulation video offering techniques to `optimise' the baby's mental and motor development. It has been devised by Dr Beatriz Manrique, a child development psychologist, on the basis of her own research in Venezuela ($19.95 plus $20, p&p. www.amphion-comm.com/baby/order.htm).