Approximately from week 20 until the end of pregnancy, the baby hears from the womb the voice of his mother and the rest of the people abroad. It is proven that speaking to the baby in gestation is beneficial, but when he is born before term and must be admitted to an ICU, he constantly stops hearing the voices as before. Spend most of the time noises from machines, monitors and unknown people.
A study conducted by researchers from the United States and published in the journal Pediatrics has shown that talking to the premature baby while still in the neonatal care unit favors further development.
Previous studies had found that premature babies were at greater risk of having language development problems, so they wanted to see if talking to them at birth could reduce this risk. Indeed, it is the first study that associates the early exposure of premature babies to a greater number of adult words with better cognitive and language outcomes.
We studied 36 babies who were born before week 32 and remained stable but admitted to the ICU who were placed in a vest capable of measuring for four weeks the sounds and conversations they received in word count.
They recorded that as babies grew more conversations they received. The sad thing is that some received just 144 words while others were exposed to more than 26,000.
When measuring later, between 7 and 18 months of babies their motor skills and mental and language development observed that the children who had been most talked about had better scores. And of course, much better for their emotional development than if those who speak to them are dad and mom. Talking to them calms them, their stress levels are reduced and they feel comforted.
Studies like this do nothing but confirm that the best thing for premature babies is to try reproduce as faithfully as possible intrauterine life. And for that, the ICUs should allow parents to stay with him for as long as possible.
