Nurturing the Unborn Child

Why the Program Works

Our goals may be ambitious, but they are not farfetched. In fact, the research on which our book is based has recently given rise to a whole new discipline: pre- and perinatal psychology, the neurological and psychological study of babies before and during birth. This burgeoning medical specialty is already represented by its own professional, peer-reviewed journal (Pre-and Peri-Natal Psychology Journal), and its own societies (including the International Society for Prenatal and Perinatal Psychology and the Pre-and Perinatal Psychology Association of North America, or PPPANA). The floodgate of research is creating a totally new picture of the unborn.

Indeed, back in the days of Freud, experts believed that personality did not even begin to form until age two or three. During the 1960s, psychologists traced early emotional development to the hours and days after birth, formulating the concept of bonding -- in which mother and child establish attachment and communicate their love immediately after the baby emerges from the womb. But to most psychologists, the notion that elements of personality were actually formed by the experience of gestation seemed absurd. Until the moment of birth, experts held, the human fetus was a blank slate, lacking true sensation, emotional affect, or even the ability to feel pain.

Pre-and perinatal psychologists, however, have recently proven the existence of significant sensory capabilities in the womb. Thanks to clinical tools such as ultrasound, for instance, scientists peering into the womb have shown that by the fourth month after conception the unborn child has a well-developed sense of touch and taste. He will suck if his lips are stroked. If a bitter substance like iodine is introduced into the amniotic fluid, he will grimace and stop swallowing liquid. At the same age, the baby can perceive a bright light shining on the mother's abdomen; if the light is particularly bright, he will even lift his hands to shield his eyes.

At five months, the same child will react to a loud sound by raising his hands and covering his ears. In a series of remarkable studies conducted during the early eighties, moreover, University of North Carolina psychologist Anthony DeCasper showed that the unborn baby even has the capacity to perceive and remember sounds of speech, to recognize a story heard repeatedly in utero, and to recognize his own mother's voice.

In addition to these amazing sensory abilities, the baby in the womb may actually experience what we think of as "consciousness" -- a rudimentary awareness of himself and the world beyond. While it is impossible to pinpoint an unborn child's thoughts for certain, research conducted by neuroscientist Dominick Purpura of New York's Albert Einstein Medical College shows that the baby in the womb has formed the brain structures necessary for learning and even awareness sometime between the twenty-eighth and thirty-second weeks of development. To reach this conclusion, Purpura removed brains from premature infants born of miscarriage and studied them under the microscope. Editor of the highly respected journal Brain Research, Purpura found that the cerebral cortex -- the seat of thought -- is almost as developed during the eighth and ninth month of gestation as it is after birth.

Other researchers studying babies in the womb seem to bolster these findings. For instance, scientists measuring brain waves found that unborn children experience periods of wakefulness and periods of sleep. Further studies show that babies in the womb exhibit the physiological measurements associated with dream sleep. It is impossible, of course, to prove that the unborn child actually dreams. But the similarity in brain function between the unborn child and the adult suggests that our essential humanity may be with us very early.

It's no wonder, then, that prenatal psychologists see the very core of human personality forming not during the first three years of life, but, rather, in the womb. Studies show that this personality formation takes place through intensive communication between parents -- especially the mother -- and the unborn. In one telling study conducted by a pediatrician in Switzerland, for instance, it was found that babies literally absorbed the sleeping habits established by their mothers during pregnancy. Without any particular training, for instance, babies born to early-rising mothers invariably rose early; those born to late-rising mothers generally went to bed late.

In another study showing how signals from the mother influence the experience -- and perhaps the nature -- of the child in the womb, Austrian obstetrician Emil Reinold asked pregnant women to rest under an ultrasound machine for about thirty minutes. Responding to the mother's relaxed state, the babies began to relax too. At a certain point, each mother was told that her baby had stopped moving. (True, since the baby was so relaxed.) Of course, that information terrified the mothers, inducing a surge of adrenaline. Responding to the mothers' signals, the babies -- all in view on the ultrasound screen -- began kicking up a storm.

Obviously, part of the response was physiological. We all know that everything the mother eats, drinks, or inhales is passed through her bloodstream into the body of her baby. That is why smoking, drinking, and drugs should be avoided during pregnancy. But research like that conducted by Reinold proves that maternal emotions are transmitted physiologically as well. If a pregnant mother experiences acute or chronic stress, her body will manufacture stress hormones (including adrenaline and noradrenaline) that travel through her bloodstream to the womb, inducing the same stressful state in the unborn child. Though some stress during pregnancy is normal, our studies show that mothers under extreme and constant stress are more likely to have babies who are premature, lower than average in weight, hyperactive, irritable, and colicky. In extreme instances, these babies may be born with thumbs sucked raw or even with ulcers.

The babies in Reinold's experiments responded not just to their mothers' surge of adrenaline, however, but also most likely to the mothers' behavior. Behavioral communication takes place through the mother's activities -- when she pats her stomach, talks, sings, or dances, the unborn child knows that mother is actively there. (This level of communication may include the father and other family members as well.) The baby, in turn, responds by kicking and moving about. Just as the mother of a newborn quickly learns to distinguish the baby's cry of "Good morning, feed me," from, "Hey, get that pin out of my behind!" so the pregnant mother can learn to differentiate between happy and distressed kicking.

One instance of behavioral communication was discovered by audiologist Michele Clements, who hoped to convince a prospective father that his unborn child could truly hear. Clements asked the father to place his head up against his wife's pregnant abdomen and yell. Each time the father yelled, the unborn child expressed his extreme annoyance by sharply kicking the wall of the womb. In fact, if behavioral messages are loving and consistent, parents can establish a nurturing back-and-forth dialogue with the unborn that may continue long after birth.

Such communication, established through mothers' and fathers' behavior, is usually accompanied by interaction on the psychological plane. By psychological communication, we mean the baby's ability to respond to his or her mother's deepest feelings and thoughts. Babies pick up on the emotional charge carried by spoken language as well as unspoken attitudes and affects. When a mother strokes her baby through her abdomen, and says, "How are you, how is my wonderful baby," the baby senses that she is loved and that makes her feel good. We as adults thrive on love, praise, and respect. Children, born and unborn, do as well. In one recent study, for instance, women who deeply wanted their babies had the easiest pregnancies and healthiest offspring; those who did not want their babies had more medical problems as well as more instances of low birth weight and premature and emotionally disturbed infants. This study and others indicate that thoughts which infuse the developing baby with a sense of happiness or calm can set the stage for a balanced, happy, and serene disposition throughout life.

Profound parental and environmental influence also occurs during and immediately after birth. In anecdote after anecdote, the newborn seems to sense gentleness, softness, and a caring touch. He responds to these things far differently than he does to bright lights, electrical beeps, and the cold, impersonal atmosphere so often associated with medical birth.

In one dramatic example, a Seattle pediatrician was treating a desperately ill baby in his hospital's neonatal intensive care unit, or NICU. Hooked up to a battery of life-support machines, the baby was flooded with light and exposed to more sound than you might hear on Fifth Avenue at rush hour. The child was just not getting enough oxygen, and he was turning blue. The doctor decided the infant was going to die anyway, so he took him off life-support systems, shut off all the machines, and turned off the lights. Then he took the baby out of the crib and rocked him in his arms. Within a few minutes the baby turned pink, and his recovery was complete.

The experience of birth is so far-reaching, in fact, that recent studies link especially difficult or traumatic births to suicide and some forms of drug addiction. Psychologist Lee Salk, for instance, found that teenage suicide was more prevalent in those whose mothers lacked prenatal care or were chronically ill during pregnancy. Other research suggests the existence of bona fide birth memories. California obstetrician David B. Cheek has shown that people retain a muscle memory of the way their heads, shoulders, and arms moved as they entered the world. And psychologist David B. Chamberlain, also from California, has collected what he believes are detailed and literal memories of birth: Chamberlain's patients, in fact, report vivid, movielike recollections of doctors, delivery rooms, and conversations dating back to the first few minutes of life.

As the research shows, unborn and newborn children are sensitive, intuitive, emotive individuals. With significant perceptual and mental capabilities, they truly experience gestation, sustaining, in some sense, at least, a memory of in utero development and birth. These earliest experiences, research indicates, shape human personality as profoundly as subsequent life events. Therefore, if you do your best to remain calm during your pregnancy, if you communicate a sense of love to your unborn baby, and if you orchestrate a joyous, positive birth, you will be contributing immensely to the emotional and physical health of your child for the rest of his life.

Copyright © 1991 by Thomas Verny and Pamela Weintraub