Starting them out in the womb…..

How soon should you start to teach your child? It really depends on the mother. Learning is a life-long process; no one can be too young or too old to learn.

One day, when I was about 24 weeks pregnant with my first child, I went to see the gynecologist and got an ultra-scan done.

“These are your baby’s ears, they should be functional by now,” he said to me, pointing to a small grey patch visible on the computer screen.

“Does this mean I can now introduce him to some music?” I asked, full of hope.

“Yes, why not, I am sure he will love it!” the doctor replied encouragingly.

That night, before going to bed, I put a cassette into my Walkman and gently placed the headphones against my bulging stomach. Then I pressed the ‘play’ button. Sure enough, within minutes, my sleeping baby began to react to the vibrations produced by the music. He began to roll actively inside my womb. It was a tickling sensation and I gave out a delightful squeal.

You see, a mother’s womb is a dark, silent and watery sanctuary for the growing baby. But it can also act as a classroom for the baby and a very conducive one too! With this in mind, I began to look out for the right materials to be introduced to my baby. No, I am not a “kiasu mom” but hey, what’s wrong in giving your child a head-start in life? For me, it’s more a case of stimulating his brain.

I started with some primitive music produced by Mother Nature. I got hold of some tapes of birds chirping in the forests, humpback whales humming in the oceans and horses neighing in the fields. My baby seems to love it. He became very active whenever he heard them. Each music session produced series of jumps, kicks and punches inside the womb – perhaps his way of telling me that he heard them too.

After a few weeks, I switched to some classical piano recitals. Later, I began to play him one of the most soothing Buddhist mantra there ever was – the Prajna Paramita Heart Sutra. I alternated them each day. Each time when we shared the music together, it was like we were communicating with each other. It was awe-inspiring to be able to feel your baby moving so actively inside his little abode.

When I got into the third trimester, I decided to change the materials. By now, he was getting bigger and there is simply not enough space for him to somersault or rotate freely anymore. I thought it would be good to get him to sit still and listen to lullabies and children’s stories. Each night, I played Jack and the Beanstalk, Snow White, Aladdin, Cinderella and many other classical children’s stories to my baby.

Sometimes he would stretch himself so hard that I could see the shapes of his little limbs jutting out along the surface of my stomach. Once, I saw him putting out his little feet against the uterus wall. “The little fellow must be getting bored by all the songs and stories by now,” my husband teased me.

After Nicholas was born, we would often play the same music, songs and stories to him whenever he refused to sleep or cried incessantly. He could recognize them at once, quickly quieted down and curled up into a fetal position. Before long, he would suck his thumbs and doze off to sleep.

The same procedure was repeated when we have our second child. But something even more amazing happened one night after we came home from the hospital.

Not long after breastfeeding Alexandra, I dozed off to sleep but soon, I was awoken by a familiar sound. Lying in her crib, my baby was trying to mimic the sounds of humpback whales humming in the ocean! Twisting her little rosy lips, she purred soft sounds similar to humpback whales humming. Foouii…. Foouii ….. Foouii …. Foouii….. This was the sound she was exposed to for a long time while still inside my womb. I woke my husband up and we both stared at her in marvel. It was a very astounding sight and something we could never forget even to this day. Too bad we did not have any gadgets to record that beautiful moment but it stays forever in our minds.

“She was trying to mimic the humpback whale; that’s for sure!” her daddy cried delightfully and gently blew a loving kiss on her forehead. We stroked her little rosy cheeks while she purred on. She did that for almost eight minutes before closing her little eyes and drifted off to a blissful sleep……

For a marvelous performance which she repeated night after night for the first few months of her live, we gave her the nickname, “The girl who hummed like a whale.”

Now, don’t you agree babies can learn even before they were born?

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