Our baby was born at 30 weeks and the neonatal unit has a music therapist who wants to help me sing to her. Will it help her development or is it really for me?

#1Priya D.(Joined Oct 2026 · 3 posts)October 11, 2026, 11:14 pm

Writing this from the expressing room at quarter past eleven at night so forgive the state of it.

Our daughter arrived at 30 weeks, nine days ago. She is doing well, which is the phrase everyone uses and I have learned to hear as "nothing new has gone wrong today". The unit has a music therapist two days a week, funded by a charity they told me, and she came over yesterday and asked whether I would like to sing to the baby with her help. Through the porthole of the incubator. Quietly, she was very clear about quietly.

I said yes because I say yes to everything here. But I did not sing, I just sort of hummed and then cried, and the therapist said that was fine and that we would try again on Thursday.

My husband has read something online that says singing to premature babies "boosts brain development" and now he wants me to do it every day. My mum says it is lovely but obviously just for me. I do not know which of them is right and I would quite like to know before Thursday, because if it is doing something for her I will make myself do it properly, and if it is for me I think I would rather just hold her hand.

#2Marion K.(Joined Jul 2024 · 38 posts)October 12, 2026, 8:02 am

No experience of neonatal units, only of the other end of life with my brother, so take this for what it is. But the thing you describe, the therapist saying humming and crying was fine and coming back on Thursday, is what a proper therapist sounds like. Nobody was trying to get a performance out of you.

I hope she is still doing well today. And I would hold her hand as well, there is no rule that says you have to pick.

#3Priya D.(Joined Oct 2026 · 3 posts)October 12, 2026, 7:40 pm

Thank you. She is still doing well. Held her hand for most of the afternoon.

#4stillpainting62(Joined Nov 2024 · 26 posts)October 14, 2026, 9:05 pm

I am usually the one on here asking whether something I saw meant anything, so I recognise the question.

Your husband's "boosts brain development" is exactly the kind of sentence this board exists to ask for the source of. I would ask him where it came from. Not to win, just because if it came from a proper trial somebody here will know which one, and if it came from a blog selling something that is also worth knowing before you put yourself under pressure at a quarter past eleven at night.

#5Dr Rhian VaughanMusic therapist moderator(Joined May 2024 · 91 posts)October 19, 2026, 12:30 pm

I work clinically as a music therapist, mostly with adults rather than in neonatal care, so I can describe the work and the evidence but I cannot say anything about your daughter. Whether she is ready for any added sound, and how much, is a question for the nurses looking after her, and from what you describe the therapist on your unit is already working closely with them.

The direct answer to "will it help her development" is that it has been tested properly and the best trial did not find that it does. The largest study, LongSTEP, randomised 206 babies born before 35 weeks and their parents across neonatal units in five countries. The intervention was very close to what you are being offered: a parent singing to their own baby, softly and in response to the baby, supported by a music therapist, three times a week in hospital or in sessions after going home. At 24 months' corrected age there was no effect on language, cognitive or motor development, and at 6 months there was no clinically important difference in the bonding questionnaire the trial was built around. The intervals were wide, so a modest effect cannot be ruled out, but a "brain boost" is further than the evidence goes.

What the smaller trials do show, at low to very low certainty, is short term change while the music is happening: a slightly lower heart rate and breathing rate, and in some studies larger feeds, and lower anxiety in mothers. And LongSTEP's authors reported that the singing was safe and well accepted by families.

So your mum is closer than your husband, though I would put it less bluntly than "just for you". It is for the two of you, in the time you have together on the unit, and it does not need to be done properly to count. Miriam has written the trials up in full on music therapy for premature babies, with the figures and their intervals, if your husband would like the source.

#6Priya D.(Joined Oct 2026 · 3 posts)October 24, 2026, 3:52 pm

Update for anyone who finds this later.

Showed my husband the post and the article. He went quiet and then said he had got it from a video somebody shared in a parents' group, and that he had wanted it to be true because it was something he could make sure happened.

We have sung to her four times now. Actually sung, the second time onwards. The therapist showed me how to watch her hands and her breathing and stop when she started to look busy, which on the first proper go was after about two lines. My husband does a very bad version of a Bollywood song from his childhood and her heart rate does in fact go down, which he is insufferable about, and which I now know is the low certainty bit.

She is 1.6 kilos and on the special care side now. It is not for her development. It is the best twenty minutes of the day and that turns out to be enough.