Like their unborn babies, pregnant women should listen to lullabies. Sweet melodies and nature sounds before bed can reduce stress, depression and anxiety related to pregnancy. This has been shown by the study of Taiwanese scientists. They studied two groups of women aged 30, who were between 18 and 34 weeks pregnant. One group was asked to listen to CDs featuring lullabies, classical music, nature sounds, and Chinese nursery rhymes and songs for 30 minutes every day.
At the same time the women were asked to note which CDs they preferred and what they were doing while listening them. The other, control, group didn’t listen to the CDs. Before the experiment, women’s stress and anxiety levels were measured on a special Stress Scale. The results showed that the level of stress, depression and anxiety in women who listened to music dropped dramatically by the end of the study.
Interestingly, the women in the music group expressed almost unanimous preference for the styles of music they listened to. Lullabies and nature songs were the most popular.
