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»Page 18 Cassiar Courier

June’ 1990

Life in the womb is no longer a mystery. We can now witness all the
movements and moods of the baby during the last weeks of pregnancy.

The Fascinating World of the Unborn

Reprinted from Reader’s Digest,
December 1989

BY HENCI GOER

For eight months he hes
floated in his private ocean.
This morning he awakens, apens
his eyes, yawns and kicks vigor-

ously several times. His umbili-
cal cord drifts by his guesting
fingers. He plays with if brief—
ly, brings his hands up toa his
mouth and sucks his thumb. Over
his mother’s heartbeat and the
gurgles of her digestive tract he

can hear her talking with his
father. Interested, he stops
sucking to listen. She begins to
walk, and the motion rocks him
gently back to sleep.

Until 1983 we could not

speculate on what life was like
for an unborn baby. Then, major
advances in ultrasound scanning
opened a window to the womb; doc
tors cauld view every movement of
the baby on a televisicon—-like
screen. The pictures show unborn
babies yawning, sucking, grasp-
ing, stretching, blinking and
making faces —- in short, all the
things they will do after birth.

In the womb, a baby lives in
a sea of sound. Researchers have
eavesdropped on him be inserting
a tiny microphone vaginally into
the uterus. Daphne and Charles
Maurer, authors of The World of
the Newborn, describe the racket
the baby hears from his mother’s
heart, intestines and lungs: "In
engineering terms, these are a
pulsating pump with flap valves,
a seven - and - a —- half ~— metre
—- long sludge pump and a double
bellaws."

Dr. Jeffrey Phelan, director
of maternal—fetal medicine at

Queen af the Valley Hospital in
West Corvina, Calif.,. played
tapes ta a pregnant woman of

everything from birdsongs toa a
passing train. A microphone in

her uterus picked up almost every

sound. mts unbelievable!"
Phelan said upon hearing the
Playback. "The sanctity and

peace af the womb do nat exist."
Sound intensity is a matter
ef cancern to Phelan. When he
played back a tape of how an arg-
ument sounded in the womb, he
found it uncomfortably loud. He
wonders about the passible injur-
ious effects of warking amid ex-
cessive noise. "A&A woman guiding
jets at an airport wears ear pro-

tectors. Is her baby’s hearing
protected?"
Hith one foot he enxplores

the texture of the silken pillow
of his placenta, to which he is
moored by his upbilical cord like
a boat to 2a dack. He drinks some
of his amniotic fluid, which re-
semiles seanater. The swallowing
triggers 2 bout af hiccups, which
his mother feels as 2 series of
small, rhythmic jumping motions.
The hiccups stop and he set-
tles himself into his feavorite
position — battow tucked under
his mother’s ribs, and back along
her left side — for another nap.

The unborn baby trains for
life after birth like an athlete
Preparing for a meet. He doesn’t

need to breathe, yet his dia-
phragm practises breathing
motions. He doesn’t need to eat.
or drink, yet he drinks his
amniotic fluid.

The amniotic sac, the fluid—

filled bubble that encloses him,
cushions him from shock and tem-—
perature changes. Its lubrica-—
tion allows him free and easy
movements, essential for proper
development of bones and muscle.
The placenta, long believed
to be a protective barrier be-
tween the baby and the mother, is
nothing of the kind. The poisons
in cigarette smoke, alcohol and
drugs, as well as stress-related
hormones, all pass from the
mother’s bloodstream through the

Placenta and umbilical cord ta
the baby. Diseases that are
harmless to the mother, such as
rubella (German measles) or taxo—

Plasmosis (caused by an organism
sometimes found in cat feces and
raw meat), can threaten a baby’s
health or development - and sa
can many chemicals in the hame or
workplace.

Normally an unborn baby nev—
er experiences hunger or thirst.
But if a mother does not consume
sufficient nutrients, the baby’s
diet will not be adequate either.
When a fetus.is severely malnour—
ished —- for instance, because its
mother’s heavy smoking restricts
blood flow ta the placenta — Dr.
Jason Birnholz, an ultrasound ex-
pert,
baby cry, its chest and throat
making crying motions.

4 radio startles him aveke.
He &links' and grimaces at the nen
sensation, but then becomes in—
terested in the music. He turns
his head to bring his ear cliaoser
to the outside world.
the pressure of the book his
pother ais resting on her belly.
He kicks a€ if. Her laugh comes
to him as a dull, echoing rumble.
She pets the spot he kicked and,
entering into the spirit of the
game, he kicks Back. They play
several rounds before he loses
interest and falls asleep.

By the last few weeks of
pregnancy the baby can use all af
his senses. Vision is perhaps
the least important within the
wamb.  Noanetheless, when a bright
light is shone on the mother’s
bare belly, a fetus with its eyes
open will turn its face towards
the light. He sees a faint glow,
like a flashlight shining through
your hand.

Taste buds are well develop-—
ed by the end of pregnancy, and
the baby prefers a sweet taste.
A dectar injected saccharin anda
dye into the wombs of women with
excessive amounts of amniotic
fluid. He hoped the fetus would
drink more, passing the excess
liquid into the mother’s circula—
tian. It worked —- as more dye
appeared in the mother’s urine
when the amniotic fluid was sweet
—- But only until the baby became

believes he has seen the

He notices -

sated with the sweet taste and
stopped drinking.

Does an unborn baby know his
mother’s voice? Anthony DeCasp—
er, professor of psychology at
the University of North Carolina
at Greensboro, devised an ingeni-
ous experiment to find out. He
Placed padded earphones over a
newborn’s ears and gave him a
bottle nipple attached to a clo-—
sed rubber tube. Changes in
Pressure in the tube switched
channels on a tape recorder. If
the baby paused extra long be-
tween bursts of sucking, he heard
one channel; if he paused shorter
than average, he heard the other.
The baby now had the ability, if
effect, toa change channels.

DeCasper found that newborns
choose the recording of their
mother’s voice and heartbeat over
that of another woman's. The
baby has no innate interest in
his father’s voice, however ,
which is heard in the womb only
now and again, while the mother’s
voice is’ ever present. Within
two weeks after birth, on the
other hand, the baby can recog-
nize Dad’s voice tac.

A newborn is even attuned to
the cadence and rhythm of his
Native language. In a French
study using a setup similar ta
DeCasper ’s, babies given the
choice between French or Russian
words chose the sound of French.

Brian Satt, a research spec—
ialist in clinical psychology in
California, has parents sing a
lullaby-like “womb song" to their
baby. The unborn baby often de-
velops a specific, consistent
movement pattern when its song is
sung. According toa Satt, most
parents can calm a fussy newborn
with the song most of the time, a
prize worth more than rubies.

He is roused by 2 heavy
Jolt. His mother has tripped and
fallen on one hip. He is much too
well-cushioned to experience any
injury, but her pain and the fear
that she way have hurt him floods
both their bodies with adrenaline
and other stress-related hormon-—

es. He cries and kicks vigorous-—
ly, 2 cry never heard because
there is no eir to make sound.

As he recovers, the stress hor-
pones €bb away and he clams doun
too.

Can a mother’s stress, an-—-
ger, shock or grief harm her
baby? No. The normal stresses

and strains of life won’t hurt
him. As the Maurers put it, such
periods are the womb equivalent
of a spell of "bad weather."

Ups and downs may even be
beneficial because change stim-—
ulates the unborn. Fetuses are
startled when they are exposed ta
a series of loud buzzes, but some
then turn an ear to listen.

Severe, unremitting stress
may be another story. It remains
unclear whether the stress itself
causes problems or whether it is
the poor nutrition or the smok—
ing, drinking or drug-taking

Continued on page 19

Continued from page 18

likely to accompany it. In any

case the baby is affected.

For the past feu wonths he
has been feeling his little home
tighten around him, as if his
pother were hugging hin. Today
hugs are coming more frequently
and growing stronger. The rhyth—
mic massage continues and there
is growing pressure around his
head.

Suddenly that pressure Is
released as his head is born.
The rest of his body emerges.

Assaulted by the light, cold
and lack of constriction, he lets
out a wail, arms and legs flail—
ing, eyes tightly shut.

The timing of labour is not
something forced on an unwilling
baby by the mother, nor is it a
arbitrary event. It is a culmin—
ation of a dance in which, for
the most part, the baby leads.
Changes in his body contribute to
preparing her uterus and cervix
for labour, while changes in hers
help him prepare for life outside
the womb.

Embedded in Western psychol—
ogy is the belief that birth is
traumatic for the baby, but it is
unlikely that babies find labour
painful. Sensors taped to the
fetus during labour show that
"massage" is an accurate descrip—
tian of the experience.

Stress during labour comes
from the periodic reduction in
oxygen supply when the pressure
of the contraction stops blocd
flow through the placenta.

But for a healthy, full-term

“‘Cassiar Courier * June -1990 ‘Page 19

baby this is not a problem. In
fact, the stress of labour pre-—-
pares the unborn for life in the
outside world. Adrenaline in the
fetus shunts blood towards vital
internal organs that may be dam—
aged by a reduction in oxygen
supply. Adrenaline also causes
absorption of liquid in the lungs

and a surge in the production of
surfactants, chemicals that make
the lungs easy to inflate.

This adrenaline rush helps
produce the quiet-alert, wide—
eyed state of a baby after birth.
As Dr. Marshall Klaus, co-author
of The 4mazing Newborn, says "It
is as though newborns had rehear-—
sed the perfect approach to’ the
first meeting with their par-
ents.”

His distress is short-lived,
He finds himself Iying 2n 2 Warm,
soft surface gently rising and
falling beneath hin. Hands are
stroking and cradling hip. Eyes
still shut, he can heer his

mother’s soothing familiar heart—

beat, as well as her familiar
voice, much closer and clearer
than it ever was.

His body relaxes. After a2
while he begins to blink, and
finally opens his eyes, IlIaoking

about him with 2a wide, shiny-eyed
gaze. Above him, just within his
limited ability to focus, is 2
buman face. Fascinated, he
struggles toa keep his wandering
eyes an it, frowning from his
efforts. Then he realizes that
the voice he knowns s0 well is
coping from that face, and his
oun face flowers into an expres—

Sion of wonder.

His mother spiles donn
Hin.
tle wan,” she says softly.

mts

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