Best Way to Understand Foetal Awareness

It is now known that the process of birth is not the trigger for your baby’s consciousness. The switch is not suddenly turned on at nine months to give full illumination, but may be likened more to a dimmer switch, with awareness gradually increasing throughout the time in utero.

Hearing your voice

At six months your baby can hear your voice and also responds unmistakably to loud sounds. At the Paris V University inFrance, Dr Marie-Claire Busnel, Head of Research in the Department of Genetics, Neurogenesis and Behaviour, is investigating foetal hearing. Her find­ings suggest that unborn babies can distinguish between two syllables and between male and female voices. Further research at theUniversityofNorth Carolinafound foetuses were even able to recognise a story read aloud by their mothers every day for six weeks. Findings such as these have prompted some bizarre attempts to accelerate the rate at which a baby learns. Loudspeakers strapped to the mother’s abdomen relaying music, the alphabet and foreign languages have been devised. These devices have not been shown to have any benefits, but may actually be harmful, since over-stimulation of some of your baby’s developing senses may inhibit the development of others.

Reacting to stress

While there is no doubt that your unborn baby has capabilities and a level of awareness with which it was not previously credited, that awareness almost certainly develops best in a normal, healthy, loving, stress-free environment. Dr Vivette Glover, a research scientist inLondon’sQueenCharlotteHospitalwrites, ‘Exposure to stress in utero has long-term implications for brain development.’ She has shown that babies who have a foetal blood transfusion through their abdomen (as opposed to through the placental cord where there is no nerve supply) show high rises in stress hormones.

Stress for the foetus may also be generated by many of the screening and diagnostic procedures which are used routinely. The Foresight Newsletter (Autumn 1997) reports thatSan Diegopsychol­ogist Dr David Chamberlain, president of the Association for Pre and Perinatal Psychology and Health, is continually amazed by foetal behaviour. ‘When you do ultrasounds you can see twins relating to each other and during amniocentesis the foetus often guides the needle away. It’s an astonishing thing to observe,’ he says. He believes there can now be no question that foetuses learn and remember during their time in the womb. This new understanding, that the foetus has an awareness of noise, stress, anxiety, sorrow and pain, makes it even more imperative that your baby’s life in utero is free of as many phys­ical and emotional stressors as possible. While isolated stressful or unhappy events are unlikely to have long-lasting effects, there is now no doubt that constant exposure to physical or mental stress in utero will adversely affect your baby’s development. This knowledge simply reinforces the need for a better pregnancy which contains an abun­dance of all the helpful factors.

First steps

At seven months your baby opens his eyes and the world takes on a warm red glow. His fingernails look like tiny seashells. Those tentative stepping movements he makes by pressing a foot against your uterus now help him turn upside down in readiness for his journey down the birth canal. During the last weeks before the birth your baby starts to get plump and you feel very large and very full of baby indeed!