Child developement blog 2
These recent classes revolving around the behaviour of infants has been really quite fascinating for myself personally. I live with my girlfriend and she is a doula so you can imagine how much I hear about babies on a regular basis. She's always talking about various forms of prenatal, early postnatal treatments and practices, one of which I heard her mention in the past was the concept of talking/reading to your baby while it's in the womb. To me I always kinda doubted the practical benefits of actually doing this, I understood the superficial benefits of speaking to the unborn infants such as bonding, comfort, or just satisfying that need to talk to somebody. Heck, I find myself having intellectual conversations with my dog on several occasions; but deep down I know she doesn't understand our thrilling debates, so why should I believe that an unborn baby can understand or gain anything more from hearing shakesphere than any dog would? I figured it was just propaganda meant to sell Dr. Seuss to eager parents forever fuelling the pockets of big publishing, but this week in class I had a moment where I finally understood why it could be important to read or talk to your unborn child. For me I always looked at it from a literal perspective "babies don't know anything, how could they understand English?", but this week I realized it's not the literal words being spoken, it's the sounds. The fact that the only thing the baby hears for approximately forty weeks is their mothers voice. It makes perfect sense that the baby can form relationships and connections with the sounds of its mothers voice if it's one of the only sensory stimuli it is experiencing. These relationships and connections being made are probably greatly beneficial for the overall brain development as well as the overall bond of the mother. I am even starting to actually hypothesize whether or not the mother's experience talking to her unborn baby throughout her pregnancy could be beneficial for her bond with the child, overall benefiting the production of oxytocin. After discussing this with my girlfriend I was curious about whether hearing the mothers voice postnatally would elisid a subconscious reaction or cause a sudden production of oxytocin in the babies brain.
