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Photos courtesy of Kim Hamrick.
Mary Cleveland and Kim Hamrick record a lullaby for a client at Heartstrings Creative Company.
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Photos courtesy of Kim Hamrick.
Using a Bluetooth stethoscope, Heartstrings Creative captures a recording of an infant’s heartbeat to pair with a lullaby.
As trained music therapists, Mary Cleveland and Kim Hamrick are familiar with matching music and heartbeats as a therapeutic tool. The Birmingham-based moms are now using that same idea to create personalized mementos to celebrate the birth of a child.
Their business, Heartstrings Creative Co., preserves a recording of an ultrasound or a newborn’s heartbeat and pairs it with a lullaby.
“The concept of putting music to the beat of a heartbeat is what music therapists do as an intervention in clinical settings, but we took the idea of pairing music to someone’s heartbeat, not necessarily as music therapy, but as a sweet product that people want and want to keep forever,” Cleveland said.
Cleveland and Hamrick, who lives in Eagle Point, both have degrees in music therapy from the University of Alabama and have worked together for a long time. Hamrick created the Heartbeat Project at University of Alabama at Birmingham’s Center for Palliative and Supportive Care.
The Heartbeat Project incorporated the heartbeats of terminally ill patients into songs, as a gift for the families after their loved one’s passing. That project was the inspiration for Heartstrings Creative Co. to create memorials of a more joyful stage of life.
Clients can choose to record the fetal heartbeat during an ultrasound and send the audio file to the Heartstrings team, or Cleveland or Hamrick can visit their home after the birth and use a Bluetooth stethoscope to record the newborn’s heartbeat.
“Bluetooth stethoscopes became a bigger thing as telehealth became more prevalent [a few years ago], but I still haven’t seen very many people using them,” Hamrick said.
Cleveland and Hamrick said the stethoscope recording produces a deeper, bass-like sound best enjoyed with headphones, while the ultrasound recording captures a soothing "whoosh" easily heard on any device.
They then take the recording and pair it with the parents’ chosen song, which can be picked from a standard list or a custom lullaby. Clients can also order a lyric print as a tangible version of the melody.
“We have gift packages because we thought this would be a great gift for a baby shower,” Hamrick said. “The package includes a custom lullaby paired with the heartbeat and lyric print. From the Bluetooth stethoscope, we can print out the EKG and add it to the lyric print, so they have the heartbeat written on the lyric sheet.”
Heartstring Creative Co. promises a quick turnaround, with clients receiving their personalized songs within three weeks. The company also works with the Babylist app so parents can add it to their registry.
“We believe [what we offer] is unique,” Hamrick said. “Some people do custom lullabies. We’ve seen people offer 4D ultrasounds with a heartbeat in a teddy bear, but we’ve never seen anyone else offer what we offer.”
For more information on Heartstrings Creative Co., visit hscreativeco.com.
