Labor of Love

Labor & Parenthood Playlist: Music for New Mamas

Music, like birth, is an enigma. Neuroscientists can’t pin down a specific part of the brain that is dedicated to music. Music moves like an apparition through our brain, lighting up neural circuits here, disappearing, then reappearing elsewhere to work its magic. Similarly, we can’t seem to come up with a scientific way to predict how a birth will unfold. Part of the miracle of childbirth is that it is always a surprise. Like childbirth, music’s impact is far-reaching. Music touches our physical bodies, stirs our emotions, and awakens our spirits. Birth and music are deeply connected by their ability to transform us long after their tunes have been played.

I’ve been a student of music for most of my life, and when I found out I was pregnant, one of the first things I did was to create a playlist for my iPod. It was the only way I could express the enormous joy, fear, and anticipation I felt. Words fell short, but music offered a means to express the complex brew of emotions stirring within. The songs I chose were jubilant (“To Zion,” by Lauryn Hill), contemplative (“Swirling Beyond Belief,” by Dean Evenson), and profound (“Landslide,” as performed by Fleetwood Mac).

About midway through the pregnancy, I began working on my labor playlist, as I was sure that music would play an important role in Ayla’s home birth. I worked at it for months, listening to my old favorites as well as following others’ recommendations into undiscovered musical territory, and eventually settled on a soundscape befitting an experience as profound as childbirth. I chose otherworldly instruments—singing bowls, harmonium, flutes—and female singers with ethereal voices: Snatam Kaur, Morgan Doctor, Hayley Westenra. During labor, each song on the playlist helped me release my grasp on the outside world so I could listen to my body and tune in to my daughter’s spirit. Music led me within, to the place where I had the strength and courage to birth my daughter, and myself as a new mother. (Scroll down to see my various playlists...)

Scientific research is divided on the topic of music and childbirth. The introduction of music into childbirth education is believed to prepare mothers and fathers for childbirth, but so far the effects are considered not quantitative but qualitative—that is, unmeasurable. (See “References” for studies by Caryl Ann Browning and M. E. Clark et al.) Similarly, researchers who have studied the use of music during childbirth overwhelmingly agree that music offers effective relief of pain and stress, but the devices used to record changes in a woman’s heart rate, blood pressure, and other vital signs have produced statistically insignificant data. Do we need better science and more precise measurement tools? Or are we to conclude that music, like childbirth, can’t be precisely measured by science?

As a childbirth educator, I’ve coached women before, during, and after childbirth. I have a wealth of anecdotal evidence demonstrating that music can have a powerful and positive effect on childbirth. One of my clients, Sarah, who had chosen to birth in a hospital but wanted a natural childbirth, had, on the advice of her doula, packed in her hospital bag an iPod filled with calming music. She was “overdue” and was therefore advised to stay at the hospital and receive prostaglandin treatments to ripen her cervix. During the first two treatments, she nervously chatted on the phone with friends, paced the hospital corridors, and took short walks with her husband. Feeling frustrated that the drugs weren’t working, she turned to her iPod for help. After Sarah had listened to violin concertos for several hours, she spontaneously dilated to four centimeters. While the prostaglandins certainly played a role in advancing labor, Sarah felt that they worked better when she was more relaxed and psychologically open to going into labor. In this regard, music was as important to Sarah as the drugs.

Another of my clients, Willa, explained that listening to the guttural chanting of Tibetan monks during childbirth gave her permission to make her own primal sounds. Nancy, who gave birth last month, found that music helped her to quickly establish a rhythm for managing each surge or contraction. Even after a distracting cab ride, hearing music helped Nancy reestablish her laboring rhythm in the new environment of a hospital labor room.

Most childbirth practitioners have had similar experiences with their clients. Music can calm a woman’s nerves during an uneasy pregnancy. It can help soothe her fears when the first contractions hit. It can coax her into labor at moments when drugs and words fail. Even during the transition phase, when the outside world has largely dissolved and she is exclusively focused on birthing, music can slip through the cracks in her consciousness and quietly allay her deepest fears.

My own experience with laboring women echoes the findings of a small body of research that I find fascinating: the use of music during the postpartum phase. I, too, have discovered countless ways in which music can help ease the transition to motherhood. In my own life, music helped me manage physical pain, calm my child and myself, and establish my own rhythm of parenting.

There were several scenarios in which music helped me cross a difficult threshold. The first occurred in the first weeks of my daughter’s life. There were countless moments when she was unsoothable: Diaper changes, nursing, bouncing or walking in a sling—nothing offered comfort. Each time one of my calming techniques failed, I grew more impatient. Finally, in tears, I put aside my checklist of baby-soothing techniques. I breathed deeply, then spontaneously began to sing. I chanted “Om.” I sang “Kum Ba Yah.” I hummed Vivaldi’s Spring concerto. I felt myself relax. And just as in the in-flight oxygen-mask scenario—first you put on your own mask, then you put a mask on your child—I sang myself into a state of calm in which I was capable of soothing my newborn.

Another personal experience with music therapy unfolded as I suffered through a prolonged period of blocked milk ducts. Listening to music while nursing helped me transcend the physical pain and focus instead on the life-giving exchange taking place. When I nursed without music, I found myself oscillating between crying from the pain and worrying that I couldn’t breastfeed. Music helped me rise above my pain and my fears to a place where I could envision my ducts slowly opening. For the first 12 weeks of Ayla’s life, I used one hand to cup her head in nursing position and the other to hold the remote control for the stereo. When the music flowed, so did my milk.

A third experiment began once Ayla had begun to settle as a baby and I had emerged from the bliss bubble of new motherhood. The calls of the outside world were urgent—friends wanting to catch up, unanswered e-mails, grant proposals waiting to be written—and distracted me from mothering Ayla. On some days, instead of mothering Ayla, I felt as if I were merely managing her with the aid of such devices as her bouncy chair. When I felt myself drift away from her, music helped bring me back. African folk songs, Celtic lullabies, and the gentle sounds of Zen flutes and waterfalls became the soundtrack to our playtime. Music helped me tune in to my daughter rather than being distracted by the noise of everyday life.

Oliver Sacks has published scientific papers and popular articles and books about music and the brain. In his book Musicophilia, he writes of music’s capacity to unlock our creativity and intuition. Although I aspire to parent intuitively, as a thinking person, I’m susceptible to the seductive “answers” offered by parenting books. Here again, I’ve found that music is an important enabler. When Ayla’s behavior baffles me and I’m not sure what to do, music helps set the tone for intuitive exploration. With a soothing tune playing in the background, I try this, then that, without succumbing to anger or frustration. Eventually, I do something that works. My daughter ceases to make dissonant sounds. She laughs. My heart sings with joy. And in this way, we make music together.

TAZ’S LABOR PLAYLIST
Snatam Kaur: “Ek Ong Kaar,” from Shanti
Morgan Doctor: “Drolma-La,” from Is This Home
Dean Evenson: “Swirling Beyond Belief,” from Healing Waters
Krishna Das: “Om Namah Shivaya,” from Heart Full of Soul
Caitlin: “Om Mani Padme Hum,” from Sacred Mantras
Ali Farka Touré & Toumani Diabaté: In the Heart of the Moon
Various Artists: Dream Therapy
SoundScapes: River

TAZ’S BREASTFEEDING PLAYLIST
Michael Maxwell: The Elegance of Pachelbel
Kikujiro: Original Soundtrack (Various Artists)
Putumayo Presents: French Café
Ry Cooder & V. M. Bhatt: A Meeting by the River
Everything But the Girl: Amplified Heart
Ismael Lo: Iso

TAZ’S POSTPARTUM PLAYLIST
Putumayo Presents: Dreamland: World Lullabies & Soothing Songs
Louis Armstrong: The Best of the Decca Years
Les Nubians: Princesses Nubiennes
Dean Evenson: Healing Waters
Van Morrison: Days Like This
Gotan Project: La Revancha del Tango

REFERENCES
    Caryl Ann Browning, BEd, BMusTh, MTA, CD (DONA), “Using Music During Childbirth,” Birth 27, no. 4 (December 2000): 272–276.
    M. E. Clark, R. R. McCorkle, and S. B. Williams, “Music Therapy-assisted Labor and Delivery,” Journal of Music Therapy 18, no. 2 (Summer 1981): 88–100.
    Lynn Durham, RN, and Mike Collins, EHD, “The Effect of Music as a Conditioning Aid in Prepared Childbirth Education,” Journal of Obstetric, Gynecologic & Neonatal Nursing 15, no. 3 (May 1986): 203–274.
    Sharon L. Olson, RN, PhD, “Bedside Musical Care: Applications in Pregnancy, Childbirth, and Neonatal Care,” Journal of Obstetric, Gynecologic & Neonatal Nursing 27, no. 5 (September 1998): 569–575.
    Elizabeth A. Geden, PhD, RN et al., “Effects of Music and Imagery on Physiologic and Self-Report of Analogued Labor Pain,” Nursing Research 38, no. 1 (January–February 1989): 37–41.
    Oliver Sacks, Musicophilia (New York: Vintage, 2008).

Taz Tagore is a mother to Ayla (17 months); the founder of the Reciprocity Foundation, an award-winning nonprofit; and author of a music and mothering blog, “Labor of Love”.

Mama Einstein

I love Baby Einstein DVDs.  After watching one with Ayla, I often find myself humming the episode’s theme song for hours afterward.  Ayla will hear it and slap her thighs with pleasure.

But as much as she and I enjoy the DVDs, I know that watching them is not an IQ enhancing experience.  While I laud the Baby Einstein puppets, the classical jingles and the picturesque nature clips, it doesn’t take an Einstein to figure out that Ayla isn’t any smarter afterwards. 

The New Yorker reported that the Baby DVD industry is a scam.  Other journalists and parent groups agree that it’s impossible to make a newborn (who incidentally has nary any short term memory…) any smarter by putting colorful shapes or animals in front of them. Researchers have yet to find an intelligence boosting content in the DVDs.  So why do we watch them?  For the same reason that parents buy cartoons and Disney movies and coloring books—distraction.  Sometimes we need a break so that we can talk on the phone uninterrupted or do the dishes or to lie in bed to catch our breath.

But after watching Baby Mozart, Baby Bach and Baby Beethoven many times, I can verify that for the first time in my life, I can tell the difference between a Mozart, Bach and Beethoven composition.  Perhaps they should re-name the series Mama Einstein and embed all sorts of things that Mommy-Brained mamas can’t seem to remember. 

Daycare Decision

I’ve decided.  I’m going to do it.  Ayla will be in part-time daycare after she turns one.  It was a big decision for me.  I had planned to stay at home for a couple of years.  But since I’m a work-at-home mom (WAHM), I simply find it too difficult to squeeze in writing a new book, editing articles and my blog, running a nonprofit and leading childbirth workshops while she’s napping.  Even when she’s super sleepy, it’s still too much for one mortal mommy to pull off. 

Daycare.  Big deal, right? Everyone does it.  Kids make new friends.  They learn to play collaboratively.  They’re exposed to new toys.   They adapt to new caregivers.  It’s easy. You put your name on a waitlist.  You wait until your name is called.  Then you write a check and voila, you’ve got all this free time.  Except for one problem: Distance. 

Dr. Sears writes eloquently about the problem of distancing ourselves from our children.  He says that we often make micro-decisions—stroller instead of baby-wearing, bottle instead of nursing, crib instead of co-sleeping—that gradually add up to feeling too little intimacy with our children.  It’s not that we stop loving them or taking care of them, it’s just that we become less sensitive to their little voices the busier we allow ourselves to be.  And starting Ayla in daycare feels like the slippery slope to a more distanced relationship between mother and child.

Right now, Ayla is my primary focus.  Her needs come first.  Work comes second.  But what happens when I’ve got five whole hours a day to work? Well, knowing me, I’ll take on more.  Then a little more.  And then I’ll get really engrossed in a new project and maybe my work will cut into a little chunk of our non-daycare playtime.  It could happen.

So you see, I’m not afraid of daycare per se.  I’m afraid of myself.  I’m afraid that daycare provides a little bit of rope that I’ll figure out how to extend and extend.  And then twenty years from now, Ayla will be grown up and completely independent, and all I’ll have is a successful book or blog.  And I’ll look in the rear-view mirror, and remember the day I decided to put her into daycare, and regret that I ever took the very first step away from her…

 

Let the Music Play!

I found a somewhat obscure study that was published in Taiwan about the effect of music on women having a Cesarean section.  As you have all figured out by now, I’m a music lover, but I’m also intrigued by the concept of music therapy. 

Isn’t it amazing that music gives us pleasure but can heal our bodies too?  Music can awaken us from a coma.  Music can light the spark of the human spirit in deeply ill patients (see Oliver Sacks’ book, and the motion picture, Awakenings).  It can help us cope with the pain of childbirth.  And even when we’re rushed into the OR for a C-Section, music can make a birth plan turned upside down, feel good too.

Once again, I’ve got some research to prove it.  The study is called, Effects of music therapy on women's physiologic measures, anxiety, and satisfaction during cesarean delivery (Research in Nursing & Health, P. 453 – 461 Nov 2005). 

Now the scientists in the room are going to object.  They would say: It’s a small study.  It was published online rather than in a scholarly journal.  It was based in Taiwan rather than the United States or Europe. 

And I would say: But so few people in the west are studying women, or childbirth, let alone examining gentle, non-invasive therapies that make women feel comfortable, empowered and happy about childbirth and motherhood.  

For those of you that are still reading my blog, here’s what they did.  They gathered sixty-four women who were planning to have a Cesarean delivery. The experimental group received routine care and music therapy, whereas the control group received routine care only.  The experimental group listened to calming music in their labor rooms and in the Operating Room.  Imagine that! These women listened to Chopin or Enya or even the sounds of the ocean while undergoing surgery!

You can probably guess the outcome.  The experimental group had significantly lower anxiety and a higher level of satisfaction regarding the cesarean experience. 

I say, let’s tell our over-stressed doctors and nurses and healthcare administrators to invest in a little boom box for every Operating Room and Labor Room and Waiting Room.  And since they seem to share the cost of everything with consumers, we’ll provide the music.  I bet we can gather enough CD’s filled with beautiful, soothing music that every hospital in America can offer music therapy 24/7.

What do you say?

I say, Let the music play!

Labor Playlist: The Story of my "Labor Trance" Dance

I’ve danced in the hot desert while watching 3-story sculptures burn to the ground.  I’ve been to raves where I danced amidst towering sand dunes.  I’ve danced in the wilderness.  On a mountaintop.  By the sea. I’ve attended parties where I was blindfolded and “free-danced” all night.  And yet, nothing scared me more than the doing the “Labor Trance” dance.

Entering the “Labor Trance” is something that nearly every woman experiences.  Billions have done it.  And it overwhelmingly leads to the birth of a healthy baby.  And yet, the prospect of going in labor—entering this unknown realm that promises physical pain and gut-wrenching screams—is enough to make any woman wish that her baby would find another way out.

Contending with the act of birth is so difficult because we have to surrender to a greater force.  When labor starts, we cannot stop it.  Sure, we can slow it down—with our fears and anxiety—but only for a short time.  We can’t make it go away. Once the process is set in motion, our only choice is to give in, to flow with it…to agree to go wherever it takes us.  Once our contractions become regular, we have to succumb to entering a “Labor Trance” and staying in this strange, otherworldly realm until our baby is born. 

Once I begrudgingly accepted the necessity of labor, I knew that music would play a big role in the experience. What else could I rely on to make the experience a trifle less scary? Music seemed to offer a soothing balm to all of my third-trimester fears. But when I sat down to create a Labor Playlist, I was absolutely baffled.  Would electronic beats, played softly, do the trick? Or should I play lullabies to calm my baby?  Or maybe music sung in a different language—world music from Zimbabwe or Tahiti?  Then I thought I should go the ancestral route and play Indian chants (and perhaps call upon the spirits of my grandmother who had birthed 12 children!)  It’s easy to forget about Zen—but wouldn’t bamboo flutes and soft chimes be gentle enough to ease a new babe into the world?

After much deliberation, I settled for western musicians playing Indian-inspired mantra and Zen.  Snatam Kaur. Krishna Das.  Deva Premal.  Caitlin.  Jane Winther.  Dean Evenson.  The instruments were otherworldly: singing bowls, the santoor, delicate flutes, and the harmonium.   During early labor, the music helped me find my center and regulate my breathing and stay in the present moment.  But as the contractions grew in intensity, my carefully selected playlist, ceased to matter. 

In the end, it was the sound of my baby’s heartbeat, the rhythm of my contractions and my primal moans that became the only soundtrack of note.  It turns out, we make our own music during labor.  It is created spontaneously, with every contraction, we find a new way to release the pain with sound.

And when I had sounded every note on the scale, from guttural grunts to high pitched squeals, Ayla crowned.  This time, I held my breath.  Silence.  I pushed once more and her tiny body slithered out of me.  I held my breath again.  Another beat of silence.  Then Ayla took her first breath.  The sound of life—my firstborn baby’s life—turned out to be the sweetest song I’d ever heard. 

Taz's Labor Playlist

Movements by Blue Sky Black Death

Drolma La by Morgan Doctor

Ek Ong Kar by Snatam Kaur Khalsa

Comptine d'un autre été by Yann Tiersen (from the Amelie soundtrack)

Is it Love? by Wah!

He Ma Durga by Donna De Lory

Paradise by Vieux Farka Toure

Spirit of Water by Dean Evenson

Tracks 1 and 2 from the Jala Compilation by Shiva Rea

Hanuman Chaleesa by Krishna Das

Pachelbel Serenade by Michael Maxwell

I Found a Reason by Cat Power

Sushila Raman and Vas are two female vocalists whose otherworldly music worked at various points during labor

1-2-3: DISCO!

One of my fondest memories from childhood is the pre-parties that my parents convened in our formal living room.  It was mind-blowing that my mother actually allowed us in this forbidden part of the house.  But that we got to do something in the formal living room, without fear of getting an arm-pinch as punishment, well it seemed a little too good to be true.  The pre-parties were my mother’s invention.  She loves music and dancing.  And when my parents went to a “dancing party,” she wanted my father to warm up a little so that he was mentally prepared for a long, long, long night of boogie-woogie.  For my sister and I, the pre-parties were the closest we’d get to an adult party for at least a decade.