Fetal sonication through the vagina - what's wrong?
It's just a small, skin-colored ball. But she has already brought us the laugh of the year.
The gynecological clinic Institut Marquès in Barcelona has developed a loudspeaker that pregnant women can insert into the vagina. Via an app for the smartphone, the mothers can play music to the fetuses in their stomach and thus "stimulate" them.
It sounds like a joke, but in fact you can already buy the "baby pod" for about 150 euros, in Germany as well as in China.
Music should promote communication skills
And what should the vagina-dumpling bring? According to the Marquès physicians, experiments showed that the music in the fetuses activated "the stimulation centers of speech and communication" and led to a "response in the form of articulation movements".
Meaning: The fetuses stuck out their tongues and fidgeted. The Spanish researchers believe that they learn to speak in the stomach. "Baby babies begin to articulate in the uterus."
This reaction would have shown the fetuses only when the music was played through the vagina. Speakers on the stomach, however, had no effect.
Rest is nice
"Absurd" finds Jana Friedrich the product. The experienced midwife blogger and author tells ChroniquesDuVasteMonde MOM, "Why put in a device to put a son to play with? I think it's nice to play music to the child, especially talk to him." But you could also do that, over the stomach, without cables in the vagina.
In their opinion, the children already get sufficient stimuli through the abdominal wall. "I can not judge whether the vaginal sonication is more harmful or more useful to the child," says Friedrich. "But I'm wondering what it can do to bring more stimuli to a baby even earlier, so maybe we'll soon have babies with ADDs - or even more prodigies - but do we need them?"
It would be nice to have some rest from time to time.
And who knows, maybe the fetuses wanted to express that with their outstretched tongue.
