I read in one of my weekly pregnancy update emails that this week the baby has started to form the bones inside it’s ear and soon it will be able to hear noises from the outside world. And since reading is a skill very close to my heart, I have begun reading aloud to my tummy. My goal is to read Oh, Baby, the Places You’ll Go! daily. It’s only been a week of this routine and I almost have the book memorized. I have a feeling I will end up bored reading the same rhymes over and over again and just may pull my hair out by the end. We are already getting the rhymes stuck in our head after each reading. Circus McGurkus McLurkus…Mc… ahhhh, get it out of my head.
Annoyingly unending rhyming aside, this may actually be beneficial for the baby. A study on Prenatal Memory and Learning found that when mothers read the Cat in the Hat to their unborn babies, they later remembered the stories as infants. Maybe once the baby is born this book will be my easy way to calm him/her. It’s interesting to think about and I’m willing to give it a try. I’ve also started reading my books that I normally read at night aloud. The only problem is that I usually find my throat gets dry and voice goes out long before I am done reading. Maybe I’ll read all the classics aloud and then have a brilliant literary scholar upon birth…