Windows to the Womb (eBook)

Interactive, Social Movement in the Womb

Although traditional psychological theory looked for the beginnings of social behavior long after birth, you may already realize how intimate and relational your life inside mother really is. Can a human being ever be closer than this--woven into her body, your lifelines linked, tucked under her variable heartbeat, memorizing her rising and falling vocal productions? How could you avoid something so close? You live in layered space, not in solitude. Your mother breaks into song! Or tears. Happily or unhappily, she moves through space and you move right along with her. The womb is not an isolation tank.

In the course of growing, you encounter more and more of her richness and rhythm, first the inside sounds, then the blend of sounds outside of her including the recurring sounds of other voices nearby like your father, siblings, or household pets, voices directed toward you. Noises from farther out eventually add to the impersonal cacophony of the world of storms, traffic, sirens, or explosions. Babies don't ignore these provocations, they get curious and interested, and participate. They are social creatures.

Mothers and fathers are social too: they have their own curiosity and start experimenting with how to communicate with you a few layers down. They may blurt things out spontaneously in their usual adult language, although if they stop to think about it, they tell themselves this is a little crazy because you haven't yet had time to learn any language. At certain times of day they may sing to you or read stories--something slightly less crazy, but possibly entertaining. Dads think up their own weird experiments. One dad used to announce from time to time in a commanding voice, 'This is your father speaking!' With repetition it started to mean something. When he made that statement at birth, the baby immediately turned his head and searched for that voice. They were continuing a relationship established long before birth.

Parents using the prenatal enrichment program created by obstetrician F. Rene Van de Carr like learning how to play the kick game. First they have to notice that you have started to kick somewhere. When that is happening, they touch the abdomen where you are already kicking and say, 'Kick, baby, kick!' Babies catch on, and the game progresses as baby kicks in new places being touched. Some parents have even discovered that if they touch in a circle pattern, babies soon learn to kick in a circle! Of course the whole purpose of this is to play together and be social--all within the natural abilities of the baby in the womb.

Van de Carr reports an examination he was doing under ultrasound, as Beethoven's Fifth Symphony was playing in the background. He observed that the thirty-three-week-old baby was breathing in time with the music. When he stopped the music, the breathing pattern stopped as well. When the music started again, breathing started again, but not in time with the beat. However, after skipping a breath, the baby was again back in cadence with the music.

A colleague of mine, by profession a doctor and by hobby a folksinger, often entertained her baby during pregnancy by singing folk songs. She noticed the baby kicked a lot when she hit the low notes, so she would deliberately invent more low notes. Mother and baby were having a relationship, no doubt of that, but it was not the one she assumed. Clarification came about three years after birth when the baby boy finally had words to explain that he was kicking because he did not like hearing those low notes!

Consider the heretofore 'secret' life of twins. With the help of ultrasound, we have...