SingingWomb — Preliminary results

In this study, while being exploratory, the results suggest that the pregnant women who experienced prenatal singing with vocal exercises designed to achieve a type of phonation with an increased subglottic resonance, developed changes in their phonation type towards this goal. This increase of subglottic resonance seams to result in a timbre that may be understood by the mothers as a richer vibroacoustic experience that better connects them with their foetus. This result explains, therefore, the strong positive correlation found between the maternal timbre and the maternal-foetal bond, while though this bond has had a bigger increase, according to the MAAS scale, in the group that experienced the music therapy sessions, the MTG. In this last group, a more intimist voice directed to the “imaginary baby” led the mothers to a diminish in their subglottic sound intensity, explaining the negative correlation found for this group between maternal-foetal bond and the subglottic sound intensity. While without any significant differences between groups neither pre- nor post-intervention, by the EADS scale it was observed an increase of the anxiety and stress levels for the VTG participants, possibly related to an increase in self-awareness of what would be a good voice quality for a better bonding with the foetus. In an opposite direction, it was observed a decrease of the same levels for the MTG and the CG. As for the depression levels, it was observed a decrease for both VTG and MTG participants, with a more pronounced decrease noticed in the last group.
While not being observed significant differences between the groups for the cardiac variability of the foetus, neither pre- and nor post-intervention, it was observed a bigger cardiac variation of the foetus of the VTG and MTG during the maternal voice exposition periods comparatively to the silence periods. For the foetus of the VTG was observed as being more responsive to the maternal singing (humming, vocal toning and singing a lullaby) and the free communication with the foetus periods, while for the MTG was observed a bigger responsivity during the reading of the tale and the maternal singing periods.
The newborns of VTG and MTG, while without any significant differences between them, shown higher values of the amplitude of scale states of the NBAS comparatively to the CG.