On a cold February night, Sheila Savage and her husband, Ian, cuddle comfortably on the couch of their Red Hook garden apartment and place a small disc-shaped speaker on her seven-months-pregnant belly.
Grabbing a microphone, the couple take turns speaking to their fetus about their plans to decorate the nursery.
“It’s fun and exciting to think that by using this [high-tech device] that our baby can actually hear us,” says Savage, 34. “Obviously we know the baby can’t understand us, but it makes us feel like we’re getting a jump-start on the bonding process. Without a sound system, our words might be muffled.”
The Savages are among a growing number of New York parents hoping to build a stronger auditory connection with their unborn babies. A new wave of “womb boxes” — devices that amplify noises in the uterus — has recently flooded the market, including the Ritmo Advanced Pregnancy Sound System ($129.99), which launched two months ago. The Ritmo, a Velcro belt with speakers for an MP3 player, attaches to a mother’s waist and allows her to shop, clean, even dance while her kid listens to the latest Top 40.
Five-months-pregnant Maria Suarez, 32, of Roosevelt Island, pipes in classical tunes to her fetus using “Belly Buds” ($60), which has suction cups for speakers that connect straight to her iPod.
By the time her baby boy is born, Suarez expects him to have a broad musical appreciation.
“Hopefully by seven months he’ll be listening to Beyoncé,” she says.
But doctors are now warning against the potential hazards of a mother turning her womb into a boom-boom room. “This could be a hindrance to a baby’s sleep cycle,” says Dr. David Cabbad, a pediatrician at the Brooklyn Hospital Center.
“Why don’t we just let the baby develop normally in utero? Let him hear the father screaming at the mother, the TV, the phone ringing, and then when he gets out let him deal with that. It’s not natural. They’re in a womb, a protected atmosphere. Now you’re going to give them outside interference? Why don’t we give them a cellphone, too?”
The trend for blasting sounds to the womb began in 1991, when French ear, nose and throat specialist Dr. Alfred Tomatis released his book “Pourquoi Mozart?” claiming that fetal exposure to rhythmic noises could increase a child’s intelligence — and possibly treat developmental disabilities including autism.
Since then, thousands of New York parents have pushed their personal musical tastes — including jazz, classical, rock, even reggae — onto their unborn babies.
West Villager Polly Draper, 54, the mother of two music prodigies, was at the vanguard of this trend. When she was pregnant with both her children in the early ’90s, she put a speaker and a CD player on her belly and covered it with a pillow to create a concert-hall experience.
“We thought it might help get them a head start with music,” Draper says.
“My husband is a successful musician, and he wanted his kids to love music and appreciate it as much as he did. He’d always ask me, ‘Did you put the CD on your stomach today?’ ”
Today her kids are superstars — Nat, 15, and Alex, 12, formed a rock band, the Naked Brothers, in 2005, which was a top-rated show on Nickelodeon for three years, and they are currently working on their third album.
“I guess it certainly didn’t hurt,” she says. “Now that I think about it, I should’ve played them instructions on how to get your homework done and helping your mom when she is grocery shopping.”
But doctors say there is no proof that fetal noise exposure is beneficial. Tomatis, who died in 2001, was discredited by the medical community and gave up his license. While his research today is still popular worldwide, it is considered alternative medicine.
Bernard P. Dreyer, director of developmental pediatrics at the NYU School of Medicine, says the trend for baby blasters is a waste of money. If you want a smart kid, he says, leave the fetus alone and wait until it’s born.
“I’d suggest going with something we know makes babies smarter — invest in books and start reading to your child when they are about 4 months old,” says Dreyer.
In fact, the womb is actually a loud, chaotic environment that doesn’t need additional noise, doctors say. And because fetuses are asleep 90 percent of the time, sudden bursts of music could wake them up and potentially disturb their development.
Most device makers, including Graco, the manufacturer of Delux BeBeSounds Prenatal Heart Listener ($19.99), recommend using their sound system for just 10 minutes a day. And although Ritmo manufacturer Nuvo claims on its Web site that: “. . . babies exposed to prenatal music stimuli exhibit superior gross and fine motor activities, improved linguistic development, positive influence on some aspects of body-sensory coordination and certain cognitive behavior,” its marketing executive, Marlene Lewis, seems to backpedal on these claims.
“I don’t think anyone at Nuvo believes that music is going to help your baby develop faster or increase intelligence,” she says. “We just have a general belief in the power of music to sooth or energize.”
Either way, doctors are warning mothers to give baby blasters a wide berth.
“As human beings, we’ve evolved in a certain way for many thousands of years, and there’s no reason to think that we should be doing anything different,” says Dr. Tracy Dennis, a child development expert and psychology professor at Hunter College.
But that won’t stop parents like Darren, 41, and Patty Riva, 36, on the Upper West Side from encouraging other parents to try out the latest in “ultra sound.”
They say their daughter Isabella, now 8 months, is more alert and advanced because they regularly played Mozart to her before she was born, using two in-utero devices: the Baby Plus prenatal education system ($149.99) and the Bellysonic ($79.99).
“When our daughter was born, her eyes were almost always open, she seemed extra alert and taking in her environment,” Darren says.
“People in the hospital commented on how unusual this was. Another thing is that she loves music and dancing. When you put on music she starts to wiggle her butt, move her hands and arms and has a big smile. She just loves dancing!”
The baby blasters
Several products on the marketplace aim to aurally
connect parents to their unborn babies.
Here are a few of them:
* The Deluxe Bebesounds Prenatal Heart Listener, $19.99,
at target.com
* The Ritmo Pregnancy Sound System, $129.99,
at nuvo-group.com
* Bellybuds, $49.99, at bellybuds.com