A Boston hospital is using music as a type of medicine for babies who are born prematurely. A familiar lullaby was played for 8-week-old baby Arlo, but this musical moment isn’t happening at home just yet. It’s in the NICU center at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.”So Arlo was due Dec. 8, then all of a sudden, out of the blue, he was ready to come Oct. 12,” said Arlo’s mother Holly Barron. “I woke up at 1 a.m. and the water had broke and he arrived three hours later. It all happened really quick.”Born two months early at three pounds 14 ounces, Arlo still has a ways to go.”He was in the ICU unit before and now he’s in the Growth and Development Unit. So we’re focusing on getting him bigger, feeding and growing. He’s now five pounds 14 ounces. He’s gained two pounds in one month, he’s doing so good,” Barron said.It’s a stressful time for Barron and Arlo’s father, Matt Olsen, but they say music therapy has been a huge help. “He’s just so calm whenever we sing and play music, and Kim talks about the vibrations in our voices when I’m holding him or Matt’s holding him and how that could be really soothing for him,” Barron said.”Sometimes I’ll hum and you can see he reacts to it and is a little calm,” Olsen said.Dr. Carmina Erdei is a neonatologist and the director of the Growth and Development Unit at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. “It’s a vulnerable process, to begin with, and it’s even harder in the NICU,” Erdei said.Erdei is leading the music therapy program and said they’re seeing real benefits, especially in babies born prematurely. “The babies are more readily soothed, they are able to organize their state better, they mature better. Their vital signs, their breathing rate, respiratory rate, their oxygenation all of those number that we watch on monitors are more stable when they experience music,” she said.Erdei said the benefit is really for the entire family. “Their experiences are very different from what they would otherwise be experiencing at home if they were healthy and being able to be with their family. So the goal is to bring some of those positive experiences to support the baby’s brain and overall physical development in their family unit,” she said.”We don’t get to be with our baby 24/7 and the bonding experience can be harder and the music helps with that,” Olsen said.Arlo was able to go home this week.Barron and Olsen say they’ll be continuing the music therapy at home as well. Olsen has a ukulele ready to go.