My Experiences Bringing Music to a Neonatal Unit as a New Mother.

Hi, my name is Melanie Draisey and I am a hospital musician for Pulse Arts. I am also a new mother who spent a short time in a Neonatal Unit with my own son Roman.

Pulse Arts is a Music in Healthcare organisation, that delivers person centred music practice in healthcare settings in London and East Anglia. We have recently finished a Youth Music Funded project in the Neonatal Unit at the Evelina hospital. Working with these babies, their families and the incredible staff has been a massive privilege and a real learning experience. Pregnancy and the birth of a new child can be exciting and joyful for families, but can also be incredibly overwhelming when a baby is born prematurely, with associated complications and medical issues. This means the precious early moments of life can turn into a stressful and traumatic experience, negatively affecting both the babies and their parents. As music in healthcare specialists we provide a “soundtrack” for the space based on our initial assessment of the environment. The often improvised music is tailored to the environment and functions to elicit senses of reflection, connection, and containment of emotion.

The Neonatal unit isn’t just a place for calming and soothing music. Scientific research shows that a foetus starts to hear at about 24 weeks of gestation, as neurons migrate to—and form connections in—the auditory cortex, a brain region that processes sound. Once the auditory cortex starts to function, a foetus normally hears mostly low-frequency sounds—its mother’s heartbeat, for example, and the melody and rhythm of her voice. Higher frequency tones made outside of the mother's body, such as consonants, are largely drowned out. Researchers believe that this introduction to the melody and rhythm of speech, prior to hearing individual words, may be a key part of early language acquisition that gets disrupted when a baby is born too soon.15 months ago I was bringing music to the children’s wards at the Broomfield and Evelina hospitals with my unborn son listening in. 11 months ago he was born in the Whittington Hospital and spent his first day of life in the neonatal unit there, something I was not prepared for. Having a baby in the neonatal unit myself has really enabled me to connect with the parents and their babies on another level. It has made me a more emotional and vulnerable practitioner, which at times means I need to take a deep breath and compose myself as we play a lullaby whilst a new mother tries to steady herself to breastfeed her tiny baby for the very first time, or whilst a father tries to compose himself to hold his baby.

Before having a baby, I knew what a privilege it was to be allowed to bring music to these new lives and the people who love them, now having had a baby myself I can fully understand the emotional impact for the parents. For myself, watching a distressed baby relax into his mother to in response to the music we create, is one of the most rewarding gifts I have ever given or received. Back in February I built on my Opus Music training when I attended a Stepping Notes course on “Teaching Music through the Body and the Voice”. It was invaluable to get a greater understanding of how the position of your body can impact the effect of the music on those you are playing for and with. Beyond that, it really struck me how you can make wonderful music without even needing words, just by building on the sounds that babies make themselves. I must say that due to various repertoire days my canon of nursery rhymes and lullabies has vastly increased since my work on the neonatal unit.

The neonatal unit is a place of firsts. First meeting, first holding, first breathing, first breastfeeding and first moments as a family. This makes it such a special place to be a part of, the babies are hearing music outside of the womb for the very time and the impact on both them and their families is dramatic. Many of them are also hearing their own mothers sing to them with our support, for the very first time. A parent’s voice, especially when involved in singing, promotes positive interactions between the babies and parents and supports the babies psychological stability. The singing and music seems to trigger some kind of primal, pre-linguistic connection we all remember in the recesses of our early infancy.  Pulse Arts is working hard to continue bringing these transformative firsts to many more families and tiny babies. I know that it would have made a massive difference to me had music been brought into the intense and challenging experiences I had in NICU after the birth of my own baby.