Perinatality

Music fosters the development of premature babies

The only methods currently used to alleviate acute pain in premature babies are giving them pacifiers or sucrose, or “kangaroo care,” in which the baby is placed on the mother’s chest. However, Isabelle Tremblay, a doctoral student in the Department of Psychology at the Université de Montréal, believes that music and lullabies could relieve preemies’ pain.
The concept is based on research showing that music therapy and lullabies have beneficial effects on the global development of premature babies. Among other things, music has been observed to make sleep-waking cycles more stable, promote weight gain, reduce stress, and reduce the length of hospital stays. Music and lullabies appear to promote oxygen inhalation and regulate the heartbeat.

“We know that music relieves pain related to all sorts of surgery, childbirth, and cancer in adults,” Tremblay adds.  This specific effect has never been measured in preemies, however, and Tremblay recently set up the first North American study on the subject. Her hypothesis is that babies who are played a lullaby for about 20 minutes before, during, and after having blood taken should feel less pain, be more stable in physiological terms, and recover more quickly than those in the control group, as indicated by a swifter resumption of normal heartbeat and breathing patterns.  Procedures are also being filmed so that researchers can evaluate facial expressions that indicate pain.

It was long believed that premature newborns did not feel pain because their nervous systems were not fully developed. “On the contrary, premature babies are extremely sensitive to pain,” Tremblay says.

American researchers who observed 54 babies born at between 23 and 42 weeks’ gestation counted a total of 3,000 painful procedures in the babies’ first week of life, with blood tests, intravenous catheters, and endotracheal suctions topping the list. The more premature the babies, the higher the number of painful interventions they had to undergo. “Pain is a major problem in neonatology,” Tremblay says. 

Even diaper changes and excessive exposure to light can become stress factors. Bodies that are subjected to stressful or painful stimuli consume much more energy for recovery; as a result, premature babies who have to face these situations have less energy left for growth and development.

Tremblay has begun to collect data, but for the moment the information is too piecemeal to indicate trends, with only 15 babies enrolled in the protocol – her target is 75.

Why use lullabies rather than simple tunes? “Mothers sing lullabies to their baby in every culture and the songs have a calming effect. Research has shown that newborns prefer lullabies to more playful songs. Lullabies help put babies to sleep, an effect that has been attributed to the slow tempo, repetitive structure, descending intensity, and emotional nature of the song,” says Tremblay. The study is co-supervised by Michael Sullivan, a professor in the Department of Psychology at the UdeM, and Celeste Johnston of  McGill University.