Last updated on August 18th, 2023 at 03:37 pm
As you get used to the idea of the baby growing inside you, you might start talking to her, crooning lullabies and encouraging your partner to chat with your belly.
Your baby can detect sounds from outside your body beginning in the second trimester of pregnancy. In fact, the voices, tunes, and noises she hears in utero help her get used to the environment she’ll enter at birth.
When can babies hear in the womb?
Babies can start hearing in the womb as early as 18 weeks gestation. By the time they are born, they can recognise their mother’s voice. Hearing is an important sense for babies as it helps them develop language skills.
Your baby can start hearing limited noises around week 18 of pregnancy when the structures inside their ear are well-established. You might not notice some of these sounds yourself — the gurgle of your stomach and whoosh of air in and out of your lungs. In the next few weeks, your baby will start hearing more and more of the outside world. Between weeks 27 and 30, babies react in response to voices and noises that filter into the womb.
What does it sound like in the womb?
The reason you can hear someone yelling more easily in an open field than when your head is underwater in a pool is that sounds travel best through open space. This sentence is saying that your baby is protected from the outside world while she is growing inside of you. There is the amniotic fluid surrounding her, which protects her from harm, plus all the layers of her body and the amniotic sac, which act as a barrier between her and the world. Even though her ears are fully developed, the sounds she hears in utero are muffled.
