Jenny interviewed in the New York Times

On March 9, 2021, Jenny was interviewed in the New York Times for “I Sang Through Labor to Manage the Pain” by Jessica Delfino.

”Jenny Mercein, 47, an actor and head of the undergraduate acting program at Tulane University in New Orleans, said that she used the melodic voice exercises she learned in her training as an actress to modulate her breath and ride the waves of contractions during the birth of her daughter in 2016. “I sang ‘ha humma’ and moved through the scales on that,” she said. “Sometimes I’d intersperse a four-letter word in there, too. I sang the whole time.” According to Mercein, medical staff at her hospital dubbed her “The Singing Mother.”

Mercein later teamed up with Kris Danford, 40, an associate professor of voice and speech at the Penn State School of Theatre (who had also relied on voice techniques during her own child’s birth), to explore the role the voice may play in managing the pain and stress of childbirth.

Together, they published a qualitative, anecdotal study in 2017, which detailed the experiences of several mothers, one of whom recalled that doing something relaxing and unrelated to labor, such as singing, took her mind off her labor pain.”