The tampon-like apparatus lets pregnant women play music to their unborn babies
The vagina sound system is here – and after vagina emojis and vagina diversity, this shouldn’t really come as a surprise. But who the hell would want Justin Bieber or Drake blasting out of their lady parts? The answer is: pregnant women, apparently. Spanish company Babypod has invented what’s basically a silicone tampon equipped with a speaker that plays music to unborn babies via a smartphone.
This may be an unconventional twist on those scenes in films where the baby bump is played music through headphones, but according to Babypod, the layers of soft tissue distort the music played through the abdomen and the sound that reaches the unborn baby is muffled – so this leaves the vagina as the most obvious solution.
“Gynaecologists had never observed foetuses react to external noises or the voice of the mother during ultrasounds,” explains Babypod CEO, Luís Pallarès. “Therefore, we thought that maybe the foetuses didn’t hear it. This is how we decided that we had to bring them closer to the source of sound – we had to bring the music into the uterus. Then I had the idea of inserting a speaker into the vagina.”
The product’s release comes weeks after Spanish research showed that foetuses in the womb are capable of reacting to music as early as 16-weeks-old. Most babies respond to music with mouth and tongue movements, which is how they start learning to speak and apparently during scans babies have been seen “dancing” and “singing” along to the music played to them through Babypod.
“Music stimulates language learning,” says Pallarès. “Gynaecologists were used to seeing the foetus as a passive subject, but now with Babypod, we’ve seen that we can wake them up and make the sessions shorter by inducing foetal movements.”
“We were pleasantly surprised to see the excitement of parents during ultrasound sessions and to see the spectacular images of the face, tongue and mouth movements of their babies,” he adds. “Most patients decided to repeat the experience and we were surprised by the flood of requests to participate.”
Babypod has been gynaecological approved by the Institut Marquès in Barcelona and the company promises that the £90,94 device is safe for both baby and mother – the device transports music into the womb at 54 decibels, the equivalent to hushed tones. It can also “help reduce maternal stress” by letting the mother listen along to the music played in the uterus through the provided auxiliary earphones.
Though let’s face it, the device is slightly inconvenient. I mean it can’t be much fun walking around with what is basically a headphone cord hanging out of your vagina, right? So does it have any other perks, like doubling as a sex toy? Babypod have hinted that this definite improvement may be in the works.