You know how everyone is always singing at pregnant women's tummies? The reason for that is interactions like singing and talking can help a baby's natural cognitive development in utero, but listen up, ladies, because now there's an alternate way to fill your womb with sound without your partner putting their head between your thighs and shouting the saxophone melody from "Careless Whisper." Behold: the Babypod.Doing exactly what it sounds like it does, Babypod is basically a tampon-cum-mp3 player. It's a speaker that can be inserted into the vagina to allow your fetus to listen to Fleetwood Mac or FKA twigs or whatever tunes you want your unborn child bumping before it shoots out of your body and straight into a part-time job writing reviews for Pitchfork.The device connects to your smartphone and plays music at 54 decibels—the equivalent to the volume of a hushed conversation or listening to Aphex Twin's Selected Ambient Works being played by your downstairs neighbor. According to the Babypod website, the device “stimulates the vocalization of babies before birth through music and encourages their neural development.” This invention comes weeks after a Spanish study suggested fetuses in the womb are capable of responding to music as early as 16 weeks, and its developers claim that after studying hundreds of ultrasound scans, most babies are found to react with body, mouth and tongue movements when listening to music through the device.Babypod doesn't have a Bluetooth feature, so don't expect your embryo to start WhatsApping you corresponding flame emoji responses to the new Freddie Gibbs album or anything, but you will have a cable trailing out of your fanny like a smart car at a charging station. So that's quite cool, isn't it?If you thought I was going to stop there, because where else could this story possibly go, you're in for another treat! Over Christmas, 2009 Eurovision singer Soraya Arnela performed the world's first ever "concert for fetuses" using the Babypod, serenading ten pregnant women with Christmas carols. You can watch the video below, which features a moment where an unborn baby supposedly sang along.Follow Emma on Twitter.
Advertisement