About Us
I am the founder and CEO of
Lullaby Babies and I want to thank
you for dropping by.
We specialise in the creation and production of personalised, audio products for babies and young children.
Lullaby babies is essentially a family-run business which I believe is reflected in the wholesome, high-quality nature of the products and services we offer. I hope you find our website easy to use and I trust you'll enjoy our luxury range of unique baby gifts.
Background
Before I launched the company, I was a professional singer, songwriter and musician and I enjoyed some great successes both here in the UK and internationally. After several years, however, I began to grow tired of life on the road and I started thinking carefully about a change in career direction.
I have always been astounded by the sheer power of music and its ability to lift and energise the emotional state of the listener. Conversely, I have also found the calming and relaxing ability of certain pieces of music fascinating. I knew I wanted to create a business that could utilize this great power but I did not know how it could be done.
It was actually on-stage that the answer came to me. One summer evening in Majorca, I was performing in a concert to an audience of over four thousand. For the penultimate song in the set, the band spontaneously invited the children in the audience to join us on stage. It was for an up-tempo number and thus was fairly effortless for me to make the song visually entertaining as the kids were quite content to jump around and dance along with the music.
What the band and I did not anticipate however, was that a few of the children would quickly acquire a a taste for the limelight and refuse to leave the stage for the next song! Unfortunately, the last song in the set that evening was a ballad and therefore was far too slow a tempo for the kids to dance to. I knew the song wouldn't hold their attention and I became concerned that the stage would quickly deteriorate into a playground. The song was the Barry Manilow/Westlife hit, 'Mandy' and on the spur of the moment, I decided to change the lyrics in the chorus to include the first names of the children who were still on stage (instead of Mandy's). To my delight, this was met with emphatic applause and cheers from the audience and I will never forget the look on the faces of the children and their parents as we performed the song for them. I remember thinking, "If I could bottle this, I'd have my business!"
Before my career in music began, I attended the University of Manchester and acquired a strong degree in Biology. Even though my passion for science somewhat dissipated over the years, to this day I am still being sent copies of the latest research projects.
Shortly after the 'Mandy' episode, I was sent a very interesting report that detailed a study that was conducted into the effects of playing lullabies to babies. Little did I know this study was going to provide the other half of the inspiration for my business!
Parents have long been aware of the soothing effects that lullabies can have on babies but I remember being surprised that the study I had been sent was able to prove this scientifically. Even more impressive however, were the range of positive physical and psychological advantages that the lullabies were shown to have on the babies in the study. Published in the International Journal of Arts Medicine, this study described how babies in a newborn intensive-care unit showed significant improvements when they were exposed to four days of a simple music medicine regimen. They had reduced heart rates, increased oxygen saturation and reduced stress behaviours. They also showed long-term progress and were healthy enough to leave the hospital an average of nearly three days earlier than babies in the control group.
More research is needed into why playing lullabies to babies can have such positive effects. It has been suggested the slow, rhythmic melodies encourage the brainwave activity found during REM sleep. However, cynics argue that the positive effects in the aforementioned study were more likely due to the lullaby CD blocking out the disturbing and noisy hustle and bustle of the hospital, allowing those babies to get a better quality of sleep and thus recover more quickly.
Regardless of the reasons why lullabies can help aid sleeping, the important fact is that they do. Now, I'm not saying that lullabies instantly put every baby to sleep every single time, but they definitely can help. I would actually be very concerned about the potential dangers of any product, audio or otherwise, that was powerful enough to induce sleeping every time because babies have essential night-time needs that should never be suppressed. For me, therefore, lullabies are one of the only safe but effective ways of helping babies sleep.
In March 2007 I was awarded first place in a prestigious international song-writing competition. However, I decided that I wanted to use my unique abilities to do something original, rather than committing to a career in commercial song-writing. I decided to write a selection of original lullabies to build a business around. I developed the music in accordance with the known scientific theories about what components (rhythm, timing, pitch etc.) were most effective at safely helping to aid a baby's sleeping patterns.
I thought back to that one summer's evening in Majorca and recalled the immense joy on the parents' faces as I sang to their children on stage. I decided that the lullabies I was designing could potentially elicit the same response if they were personalized for each baby. I knew they would therefore make wonderful gifts for any of the numerous baby-related gifting occasions as well as making effective sleeping aids. After a great deal of hard work in product development, the lullabies were eventually finished and I had a business and a product range that I was very proud of.
The aforementioned research study referred to the babies that were not in the control group as ‘The Lullaby Babies’ and, because they were my inspiration, I named the company after them.
I hope you have enjoyed reading about the background of Lullaby Babies and the origins of our personalized music for babies. If you decide to order one of our lullabies, I hope it brings warmth and happiness to all who hear it.
Kind regards
Richard Jenkinson
CEO Lullaby Babies
