Family music can do wonders for your pregnancy
Listening to music. Pregnancy can be emotionally stressful due to the hormonal and physical changes that women experience during this special time. The mental changes that women experience can result in anxiety, depression, fear, and frustration that can have adverse effects on their babies. Poor eating and sleeping patterns can limit overall functioning, which may be associated with an increased risk of prematurity and low birth weight, along with delayed infant development and negative temperaments in children. Drug therapy in pregnancy to manage stress always has risks of side effects for both mother and child, making non-drug intervention a safer alternative.
Music has always been used as a form of therapy to reduce stress, pain, and anxiety by promoting relaxation by creating a healing environment for physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being. Already in 555 a. C., a well-known Greek philosopher and mathematician named Pythagoras thought that music was an important therapy in medicine to maintain good health and often recommended music to maintain harmony and healing in the body.
Stress can affect the hypothalamus, pituitary, and adrenal cortex, awakening the sympathetic nervous system. Music can elicit a pituitary response with the release of hormones and endorphins, which are natural opiates that can relieve pain. It stimulates the thalamus and limbic areas of the brain, stimulating good feelings and emotions. Music has been shown to affect blood pressure, heart rate, and breathing along with emotional balance in adults.
Care during pregnancy, childbirth and the newborn is likely to complement and expand conventional medical care through the use of alternative therapies such as music to reduce stress, anxiety and pain. Music has been found to stimulate the pleasure response and distract from labor pains. Sidorenko published an article in 2000 showing that music improved relaxation in pregnant women by lowering heart rate, blood pressure, breathing patterns, and pulse. Additionally, there was a reduction in the need for pain relievers and improved sleep patterns, and a reduction in the number of preterm births. Women who listen to music during labor and delivery have reduced anxiety and pain during labor, both vaginal and cesarean deliveries. It also made it possible to reduce work time and shorten hospital stay.
The choice of music has been found to be important to your success. The most beneficial responses occur when the music is familiar, desirable, and meaningful. Browning in Canada conducted a study showing that music can be an important adjunct to pain and stress management during labor when music was chosen by the mother, with an emphasis on pieces that have significant meaning for both the mother and the mother. mother and her partner. Daily listening should begin in the third trimester to become familiar before labor in the hope of promoting a positive conditioned response during labor.
Music has also been found to be therapeutic for babies. Studies of preterm and low-birth-weight babies have shown shorter hospital stays, less weight loss, and fewer episodes of apnea when recorded music was played in intensive care unit settings. (Casino 1992, Stardley and Moore 1995) A study by Keith in 2009 showed a significant reduction in the frequency and duration of inconsolable crying in infants as a result of musical intervention, as well as improved heart rate, respiration, oxygen saturation and Mean arterial pressure. Other studies showed an increase in head circumference and a decrease in heart rate in premature babies in the neonatal intensive care unit between 28 and 32 weeks when listening to music. (Cassidy 2009)
A newborn has a predilection for the maternal voice and also for the musical pieces to which it has been exposed in the womb, indicating that the fetus may have the ability to learn in the womb. (Gerhardt, 2000) It is believed that the fetus can hear at the end of gestation. Studies from Canada have shown an increase in heart rate in response to Brahms’ lullaby starting at 28 weeks.
Some additional guidelines published in the Journal of Perinatology in 2000 by the Physical and Developmental Environment of the High Risk Infant Center Study Group on Neonatal Intensive Care Unit Sound and the Expert Review Panel recommend that:
1. Pregnant women avoid prolonged exposure to low-frequency sound levels (
