FAQs

The real question is, “Why wouldn’t you use BabyPlus?” It is safe, based on principles of neuroscience, and has been used by parents around the world for many years. Most importantly, the benefits are remarkable.

In order to give your child every advantage, you already take special care while you’re pregnant: eating right, taking a prenatal vitamin, avoiding toxins, and making conscientious dietary choices on behalf of your baby. Your child’s brain development begins during these very same earliest months and deserves the same attention and prenatal care as you give to her physical development.

Yes it is. The volume level of our prenatal system is controlled, safe and cannot be made too loud.

From reading aloud to playing music for babies in the womb, parents have been offering various forms of prenatal stimulation to their children for hundreds of years. BabyPlus simply represents the evolution of this sound and auditory enrichment during pregnancy with a proven curriculum that provides the most measurable cognitive advantages for a child.

Decibel (dB) Ratings and Hazardous Time Exposures of Common Noises
Typical Decibel Example of Sounds
0 Lowest sound audible to the human ear
10 Normal breathing
20 Whispering at 5 feet
30 Quiet library, soft whisper
40 Living room, quiet office, bedroom away from traffic
50 Light traffic at a distance, refrigerator, gentle breeze
45-60 BabyPlus when it reaches the prenatal child through the maternal abdomen
60 Air conditioner at 20 feet, conversation, sewing machine
70 Busy traffic, office tabulator, noisy restaurant. At this decibel level, noise may begin to affect your hearing if you’re exposed to it constantly
The Hazardous Zone
80 Subway, heavy city traffic, alarm clock at two feet, motorboats (85 to 115 dBA), factory noise. These noises are dangerous if you are exposed to them for more than eight hours.
90 Truck traffic, motorcycles (95 to 120 dBA), snowmobiles (99 dBA), noisy home appliances, shop tools, lawn mower. As loudness increases, the “safe” time exposure decreases; damage can occur in less than eight hours.
95 The womb’s continuous maternal bloodpulse sound level
100 Chain saw, stereo headphones (105 to 120 dBA), pneumatic drill. Even two hours of exposure can be dangerous at 100 dBA, and with each 5 dBA increase, the “safe time” is cut in half.
110 Video arcades can be this high.
120 Rock band concert in front of speakers, health clubs, aerobic studios, sandblasting, thunderclaps, movie theaters (up to 118 dBA), sporting events (up to 127 dBA). The danger is immediate: at 120 dBA mere exposure can injure your ears.
130 Children’s toys that emit sounds (135 to 150 dBA), percussion section at a symphony, stock car races, jackhammer, power drill
140 Gunshot (150 to 167 dBA), airplane taking off, “Boom Cars” (140 dBA and beyond), bicycle horn. Any length of exposure time is dangerous; noise at 140 dB may cause actual pain in the ear.
150 Jet engine taking off, firecrackers (range from 125 to 155 dBA at an average distance of 10 feet), cap gun, balloon pop
160 fireworks (at 3 feet), rifle shot, handgun
170 Shotgun
180 Rocket launching pad. Without ear protection, noise at this level causes irreversible damage: hearing loss is inevitable.
Information provided by the American Academy of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery Inc., Washington, D.C. and League for the Hard of Hearing..

You may begin using the BabyPlus lessons any time after 18 weeks of pregnancy. The following chart is a guide to help you determine your start date and the corresponding schedule of the lessons. Please reference the chart below only once when you begin using BabyPlus. Your start date will determine the number of days you should use each lesson before you advance to the next lesson.

Find your week of pregnancy on the day you begin to use BabyPlus.
This will be the number of days you will use each lesson (just an hour each day)
This will be the number of days you use each lesson before going on to the next lesson
18th week of pregnancy Use each lesson 9 days
19th week of pregnancy Use each lesson 9 days
20th week of pregnancy Use each lesson 9 days
21st week of pregnancy Use each lesson 8 days
22nd week of pregnancy Use each lesson 8 days
23rd week of pregnancy Use each lesson 7 days
24th week of pregnancy Use each lesson 7 days
25th week of pregnancy Use each lesson 6 days
26th week of pregnancy Use each lesson 6 days
27th week of pregnancy Use each lesson 5 days
28th week of pregnancy Use each lesson 5 days
29th week of pregnancy Use each lesson 5 days
30th week of pregnancy Use each lesson 4 days
31st week of pregnancy Use each lesson 4 days
32nd week of pregnancy Use each lesson 3 days
33rd week of pregnancy Use each lesson 3 days
34th week of pregnancy Use each lesson 3 days
35th week of pregnancy Use each lesson 2 days

No. The sounds of BabyPlus are designed to play at a safe and comfortable level. Your baby may respond by movement or kicking depending on their temperament. This is a normal response to any kind of stimulation, including prenatal music, and can create an enjoyable, bonding routine for both baby and mother.

The BabyPlus sound lessons are created in the very language of the prenatal time period. The only natural and consistent environment sound heard by a developing baby is the maternal heartbeat. It is genuinely the ‘language’ of a prenatal child. By introducing to him sounds which closely resemble the maternal heartbeat, but which vary in subtly increasing ways, parents can help their child and promote one of the most basic skills of all: comparing and contrasting. It is a very similar enrichment to language immersion later in life. This auditory exercise, over time, strengthens early cognitive development.

Both sounds are occurring at the same time. It is as if a child is listening to two different rhythms being played simultaneously on two sets of instruments. He or she can listen selectively to one or the other and clearly hear the difference. Again, this process is very similar to language immersion and has a very similar benefit.

The sound of the maternal heartbeat is the single driving and consistent ‘language’ of a baby’s prenatal environment. The auditory surroundings of a baby during these months of development are now known to be very influential, but the sounds need to be ‘relative’ or similar to his or her early natural surroundings.

There are two primary ways in which using BabyPlus enhances bonding between a pregnant mother and her prenatal child. First, the physical act of stimulation occurring daily (particularly if provided at the same time of day) becomes a consistent routine that encourages and fosters bonding.

A mother’s stress level is reduced as she takes this time each day to truly focus on her developing baby. Naturally, while such bonding is most common between a mother and her baby, a father, siblings, and extended family can also share in this rewarding bonding time.

Every prenatal child experiences a sonic environment – outside voices, television, music, etc. – all passing through the abdominal wall (which lowers their volume by about 35 decibels, and muffles these sounds, much like listening underwater), but the most dominant prenatal sound is mother’s blood pulsing constantly past the womb at 95 decibels, as loud as a rock band. Even so, the baby still sleeps about 80 percent of each day.

Researchers note that to promote our beginning pattern recognition, such basic stimuli must be very simple and repetitive, something which neither speech nor music for the womb can accomplish. Even nursery tunes designed for use as music for babies in womb – let alone Mozart – are simply too complex to register, and standard comparative clinical trials do verify.

The BabyPlus tones increase in speed and tonal complexity by increments, with what is called a curriculum (that which all age-appropriate education is based upon), and nothing except these slight changes in the maternal blood pulse can appropriately provide the most elementary patterns at this early stage. Pattern recognition is especially important since all information after a full-term birth will never be acquired through the same comprehensive process as BabyPlus utilizes.

In short, all babies are exposed to speech and prenatal music, but these pass by them as white noise, with no longer-term cognitive impact. This has been repeatedly verified in independent testing when compared with BabyPlus and a control group. This breakthrough discovery is reported fully in peer-reviewed academic journals, as BabyPlus has become the only effective and safe way to enrich your prenatal child’s forming cognitive and critical learning skills.

It is recommended that BabyPlus is played for just one hour a day. Also, using BabyPlus at a consistent time each day helps create and reinforce dedicated bonding time between a mother and her little one. Playing BabyPlus more than one hour a day will not add more benefits.

The BabyPlus unit is a very reliable prenatal sound system. Occasionally a problem can occur, and it is usually a battery issue.

There are several remedies you may want to try. First, be sure you have a fresh set of batteries. The BabyPlus player requires new batteries every 7-10 days to operate at optimum performance. Even batteries purchased new at the store could be old. Always check the date to ensure freshness. We recommend a high quality, name brand battery, such as the Duracell brand, for optimum performance. We do NOT recommend rechargeable batteries.

You can also check the battery contacts. If they are no longer a tight fit, you can remove the batteries and gently pull the contacts a bit with a tweezers or paperclip to create a tighter fit. Also, look for any corrosion, and clean if needed. A “b” on the LCD screen is an indication of low battery life and means that the batteries should be changed. The system may even show a flashing “b” and reset to Lesson 1. This is also an indicator to change the batteries. Remember, always store any electronic device with the batteries removed.

If your player is still not working properly, please go to our warranty and return information page.

Both of these factors indicate that your batteries are getting too low. When the battery life is this low, a small “b” can be seen on the left of the LCD screen and many times the player will also reset to Lesson “01” with this low battery life. Simply replace your batteries and always use a high quality battery such as Duracell. Rechargeable batteries are NOT recommended.

If you have adjusted your comfort pouch to the smallest size and it is still not small enough, you can simply work the adjuster over the seam that joins the elastic to the webbing. It will take a bit of manipulating, but once it is over the seam it will have the ability to adjust the belt as small as 31”. Be sure to work the seam through both openings in the adjusters.

Take care to store your BabyPlus System in a dry location at room temperature. Be sure to remove batteries before storing for an extended period of time (ie: between pregnancies). This will prevent batteries from corroding the contacts.