Featured Review: BabyPlus Prenatal Education System
You want to give your unborn baby a good start. You eat the right foods, get plenty of exercise and rest, take your vitamins, etc… But what about starting their education early? Many people play music or read to their baby, which is wonderful, but what else can you do for them?
The BabyPlus Prenatal Education System ($149) was created by Dr. Brent Logan, a developmental psychologist who directs the Prenatal Institute in Seattle, WA. "Dr. Logan’s 25 years of research have demonstrated that prenatal stimulation using heartbeat-based sounds of increasing complexity is the most effective means of communicating with your developing child."
According to their website, the program is described as "a series of 16 scientifically designed sounds that resemble a mother’s heartbeat. The rhythm of the sounds increases incrementally as the pregnancy progresses. The BabyPlus sonic pattern introduces your child to a sequential learning process, built upon the natural rhythms of their own environment."
Celeb moms Gwen Stefani, Nicole Ari Parker Kodjoe (she used the Baby Plus while pregnant with her second child) and Ali Landry are all fans.
New Mom Trista Sutter was gifted with the BabyPlus at her shower. Before son Maxwell Alston was born, Trista Sutter, sent Carey Hart, BabyPlus’s Spokesperson a thank you note.
Carey-
Thank you so much for thinking of me & our soon-
to-be new arrival in sending the BabyPlus Prenatal
Education System. I have been using it for the past
week and look forward to our baby benefiting from
its use! Thanks again & all my best!
Trista Sutter"
I found it very easy to use. You are supposed to use it twice a day for an hour at a time, which may be hard for some mommies (especially second time mommies like me) to find the time. I found that I was using it after Ben went to sleep and then right before bedtime. Sometimes I even strapped it on during Ben’s nap and relaxed myself. The heartbeat sound was very soothing.
Dr. Logan recommends you begin using it between weeks 18- 32 and continue for the remainder of your pregnancy. As of press time, I haven’t felt my baby moving yet, but the company says, "They (the babies) frequently respond with soft, repeated movements accompanying the rhythmic patterns. Mothers report this to be comforting, and have confirmed that their babies anticipate, recognize, and seem to enjoy this activity."
As an educator, I applaud this device. I think we should do as much as possible to give our babies the best advantages even before they are born. This isn’t stories or music though. According to the website, "Our prenatal curriculum introduces your developing baby to learning in the only true language of the prenatal environment, the maternal heartbeat. The spoken word is too difficult for the developing child to understand and music is too complex."
Then they go on to say, "Your baby can very clearly hear these patterns. She/he learns to discriminate between the sound coming from the mother and those from BabyPlus. In other words, learning has begun. Your baby accelerates the rate at which he or she compares and contrasts information. This process builds your baby’s memory for greater capacity and function throughout life."
I highly recommend using it during your pregnancy. Why not give your child every advantage you can?
To get the BabyPlus for yourself or a pregnant friend or relative, find a list of retailers here or click here to shop online.
August 8th, 2007 at 3:57 pm
As a developmental psychologist, I am very disappointed that this site is endorsing the BabyPlus product. I use this product in the Developmental course I teach to MA students as an example of how marketing can twist science and manipulate parents into buying something that is potentially harmful to the child (similar to what happened with the Baby Einstein phenomenon).
There is no reason at all for expectant mothers to use or buy this product–we do not yet know the effects of having infants exposed to unnatural sounds in the womb (unnatural in that the child would not ordinarily be exposed to heart-beat sounds from a machine strapped on the mother’s stomach). Babies hear plenty of natural sounds from inside the womb and from their environments outside of the womb (parents’ voices, etc.)
Infants receive adequate stimulation in the womb–there is no reason to give them this kind of extra input; it may increase their arousal level, which might be harmful to the developing infant’s sensory organs-we do not yet have enough information to be certain. See the example of the bobwhite quails for an example of how giving unnatural input prenatally can have adverse consequences (”Prenatally Elevated Physiological Arousal Interferes With Perceptual Learning in Bobwhite Quail (Colinus virginianus) Embryos” -it can be found on pubmed). Please visit the babyplus website and look at the research that ’supports’ the use of this machine. Notice who the author is–yes, it is Logan himself.
Please–be very mindful of the information given to parents by this site.