Pump up the Jams

In this installment of “Father Knows Best” I’ll answer a question submitted by Sean from Vancouver BC.

Just started following your blog a couple of days ago and so far it seems great. Good work!

My partner and I are scheduled to accept delivery of our first baby this May. While she worries about things like health and reading 15 baby books, my area of expertise lies in baby gadgets and ways to influence my future child’s mind. I have heard that playing music in utero (not the Nirvana album) can affect a kid once they are born. They recognize the music and it sometimes has a calming effect on them. I was wondering if you have any experience in this area, and if so how did you get the tunes into the belly. I have a setup that involves her sitting on a subwoofer and listening to my carefully crafted itunes playlist, but I have not told her about that yet.

Thanks Sean in Vancouver BC

First of all thanks for your kind words. Now to answer your question. My wife and I read about this concept but did not play music for Chandler while he was in the womb. So I don’t have any experience with it, although I do have some theories.

I do believe that if the baby were to hear certain music while in the womb then it would serve to have a calming effect on the child after birth. The natural sounds of the womb are some what of a “wooshing” sound that can be simulated simply by playing white noise. Ashley and I employ this tactic every time we put Chandler to sleep. At first when we played the noise his eyes would get real wide like, “I know what that is! That sounds like home!” And then he’d slowly nod off. Now he is a little more grown up (4 months) and when he hears the white noise he kind of gets this look like, “I know, I know. Time to go to sleep. Fine.”

I assume that years from now he will stumble upon an old DVD of the Michael Keaton horror movie “White Noise” and it will have a similar effect on him.

So the question remains, if you could pump some good tunes into the womb would that benefit the baby after he/she is born? I think it would. It certainly would benefit you as the parent because listening to music is going to be a heck of a lot more enjoyable than white noise.

So what’s the best method? As I said, inside the womb there’s already a fairly loud wooshing sound that you’ll have to compete with if your want your fetus to rock out. Your subwoofer setup seems like a good idea. Have you thought about buying an iPod Shuffle and sending it in to your baby as a care package?

I didn’t really give you any answers. I just kind of babbled on and elaborated on your question. Hope that helps!