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 Health & Beauty | September 2005 
Mozart to a Baby's Ears Helps Ease Birth Trauma
 Agence France Presse
| | Newborn babies listen to music with headphones at the 1st Private Hospital in Kosice-Saca. The experimental program that started approximetly two years ago, is based on using musical therapy in improving the quality of carring for the newborns shortly after birth. (Photo: Joe Klamar) |
On their little heads, the newborns in the maternity ward are wearing stereo headphones and their tiny hands seem to move to the rhythm of the music.
From the first hours of their lives, the babies are tuned into Mozart at the Kosica-Saca hospital in eastern Slovakia.
This is no experiment in producing a generation of musical geniuses.
The infants are listening to the classical composer to stimulate their mental and physical functions thanks to the benefits of music therapy.
The birth trauma is "enormously stressful for the baby," said Slavka Viragova, the doctor in charge of the hospital's maternity unit, who launched the music project.
"In the womb, the baby listens to the mother's heart beat which represents a source of protection and good feelings. We have the baby listen to music so he can recall his mother during the period immediately after the birth when he is not with her," she said.
In a room where the walls and windows are covered with animals from fairytales, about a dozen infants in two rows of cribs are listening to music and sleeping peacefully.
Nearby in another room with incubators premature babies and those with health problems are also exposed to music, which has been shown to help them stabilize their breathing, Viragova said.
"In general, music therapy helps a baby to gain weight, get rid of stress and handle pain better," she said.
Viragova said she used music therapy with her own two children, now teenagers, when they were babies. Again the musical choice was Mozart.
"It has been found that Mozart's music has a very good effect on the development of the intelligence quotient (IQ)," she said.
At the hospital, the newborns listen five or six times a day to a 10-minute piece of music consisting of either one of Mozart's classical works, a piano composition by French painist Richard Clayderman, a mix of natural forest sounds or some other soothing music.
"The music is very soft and relaxing. Its intensity is between 30 to 50 decibels which can be compared with the sound of normal footsteps or the opening of a door," Viragova said.
Most of the time the music is played in the entire room and also helps relieve the stress of the nurses, caring for 20 to 30 babies in the nursery.
But the hospital rooms are also equipped with personal stereo sets so when the babies are with their mothers they can listen together to soothing music of the mother's choice.
The music therapy project began some two years ago and has been well received by the expectant and new mothers.
"It is certainly a very good idea and affects the baby in a very positive way," said Livia Oliarova, 30, who has just given birth to her second son, Adrian.
"We are definitely going to continue to have him listen to music even at home," she added.
The Kosice-Saca hospital is now creating quite a noise. Some women are prepared to travel many miles in order to give birth at this hospital, tucked way in the east of Slovakia. |
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