You didn't hear it from her, but your newborn's been listening to you. She's heard the steady beat of your heart, the rush of your blood as it flowed through your body. And that was before she was born.
She recognises your voice, knows it by heart. Its sound comforts her. Babies arrive programmed to pay attention to human voices because people are their caretakers. She's glad to hear a familiar one welcoming her.  Loud and Clear
Crying and Cooing
Babbling and Talking
Music and Mozart
Loud and Clear Though a newborn's hearing has been functioning well in the three months before birth, it's a bit muffled at birth. That's because there's amniotic fluid in the middle ear, and this takes several days to be absorbed.
Your new baby is quieted by the rhythmic beating of your heart now that she is in your arms. When you speak, she moves her eyes toward the sound of your voice. Babies prefer the sounds of human voices to other sounds and react more to high-pitched, female voices than to deeper, masculine ones. Researchers theorise that this is due in part to a baby's prenatal experience of hearing mostly Mum's voice. But don't worry, Dad. Just talk it up to your appreciative audience, and she'll soon recognise your lower-pitched tones.
A newborn's hearing threshold is some 40 to 50 decibels higher than an adult's. This means that babies can't really hear quiet sounds around them. But they can hear loud ones, and in response to them they may startle, blink, cry, catch their breath, or even pause during feeding.
The sound of music appeals to all babies, soothing them. They respond emotionally, just as adults do. There's evidence to prove that the calming lullabies you sang to your baby before birth-or to his brother and sister-are both calming and familiar to him when he hears them now. Crying and Cooing Your baby's first language contains no words at all. He lets you know what's what by crying. If you're breastfeeding, his cries will promote your milk letdown. Soon you'll be able to hear the difference among his cries: this one for hunger, that one for discomfort or pain. He knows you hear him because you respond by changing or feeding him, which is soothing. By your response, he learns that his communication matters. That makes him a happy baby.
By 4 weeks, your baby is taking another step toward conversation. He'll be cooing, and you'll be cooing right back at her. At about this time, too, your baby begins to react to a greater variety of sounds. He still startles when something crashes, and he's still soothed by lullabies, but sounds in the middle range-not too quiet, not too loud-begin to penetrate.
Between 4 and 6 weeks, your baby begins to coordinate two of his senses, hearing and sight. He starts by linking the sound of your voice to the sight of your talking face. You've probably noticed that he's begun to smile just at the sound of your approaching voice. Now if you watch him, you'll see he smiles at you as you talk to him. In a few weeks' time, he'll just be smiling at your face, even if you aren't making a sound. Such is the power of your voice: He anticipates its sound and its effect. Babbling and Talking Your baby is born with an ear for rhythm. Adult speech rhythms set her little body in motion. She's sensitive as well to melody or intonation. By 3 months, she's also hearing high-pitched sounds that she couldn't distinguish before. This helps your baby to better distinguish your voice from background sounds, especially if you're talking to her in that high, singsong voice that mums (and dads and friends, and even children) instinctively use with babies. Don't be embarrassed. This kind of speech, sometimes called "motherese," helps your baby hear you and helps her discern syllables.
It is her ability to hear different syllables-and to pick out even smaller units of speech called phonemes-that makes her truly international. Babies are primed for language, and as newborns they can detect many more speech sounds than an adult can. So before your baby utters one word, she's been babbling phonemes found in Japanese, for example, or Swedish or Urdu.
This remarkable ability is lost by the end of her first year. Its loss is due to her increasing familiarity with her native language, because that's what she hears most. Hearing it will help her master it, and this is a baby's ultimate goal: communication with Mum and the wide world.
(Hearing is key to communication. Fortunately, only very few babies are born with hearing loss. Those babies at higher risk for hearing problems such as those of deaf parents, those born very preterm or with major birth complications should be tested professionally before she is three months old) Music and Mozart Have you heard the one about Mozart? Play his music to your baby, and he'll excel in math. Well...not exactly. But in one interesting study, children 3 and 4 years old listened to Mozart's music, and some of them were also given six months or more of keyboard instruction. The children's spatial-temporal abilities, which relate to mathematics skills, were measured at the beginning and the end of the study; it turned out that only those children who had been given keyboard training showed an improvement. Still, no one knows whether these findings are applicable to babies. What is known, however, is that music affects your mood and your baby's. A slow melody soothes him and will help him get ready for sleep. A lively tune will inspire you to dance with your baby in your arms, and you'll both have a great time.
Because your baby was born with a well-developed sense of hearing, he's able to appreciate the more complex sounds of music. And because the sound patterns and rhythms of classical music are closer than other types of music to the melody of the human voice, babies prefer it. Whether music will make him into a rocket scientist is anyone's guess. But it will please him.
Something else that pleases: talking to him. It's also good for him. He loves to hear your voice and learns about language with each word you speak. You two have important things to say to each other. You always will.
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