Article: Burgie Ireland from Your Pregnancy magazine

Highly sophisticated sonographs have given us a peek into the dark and mysterious confines of the womb, allowing us to watch baby grow and move. Studies have shown that by as early as the fifth week, your unborn baby is developing a complex repertoire of reflex actions. By the eighth week (even though you are oblivious to movement) your baby is not only moving his head, arms and trunk, he has already converted these movements into a primitive body language – expressing his likes and dislikes with jerks and kicks! For example, if he particularly dislikes being poked at, you'll see him quickly squirm away on a scan screen.

The first three weeks of life in the womb are known as the pre-embryonic period and the embryonic period lasts from the fourth to the eighth week. It is during this time that major organs develop and the baby looks more human-like with the appearance of a brain, limbs, ears, eyes and nose. The period from nine weeks until your baby is born is known as the foetal period.

Basic instincts
From 4 months onwards, your unborn baby can frown, squint and grimace. Basic survival reflexes develop along with the sense of taste, touch and sound. Neurologists at the Albert Einstein Medical College in New York City experimented with taste by injecting saccharin into the amniotic fluid. They found that the baby's swallowing rate doubled. When a foul-tasting iodine-like oil called Lipidol was added, not only did those rates drop, but the baby grimaced too!

Tuning in
Is it a mere co-incidence that when your baby's hearing develops from 16 weeks onwards that you may well feel movement for the first time? Instinctively you put your hand over your swelling belly to connect with your baby. Was that little flutter new life? Irrespective of where you are and what you are doing at the time, it becomes a magical moment that you'll never forget.

Your baby's world is filled with sound, particularly the intense rhythmic thumping of your heartbeat. This sound will remain a source of comfort for the rest of his life (just listen to the pulsating throb of a teenager's music and you'll know what I mean!) As far back as the 1920s, Dr Liley, a research neurologist from Germany, found that from 25 weeks onwards, a baby would literally jump in rhythm to the beat of an orchestra drum! Today mothers are encouraged to play soothing music to their unborn babies, particularly in times of stress. Remarkably, after the birth, babies are able to identify with the music that has conditioned them to calm down, and mothers are able to use music, rather than medication, to help their babies sleep.

And tuning out
Now that your baby is listening, he associates himself with the pitch and timbre of your voice. He also perceives that these noises are coming from him. It takes a long time for a baby to learn that he is a separate entity from his mother – self-actualisation only begins from the fourth month of life outside the womb onwards.

In the noisy confines of the womb, your baby learns through unconscious memory to tune into the sounds he wants to hear and to switch out unnecessary interference. Perhaps that's why we are rarely distracted by the noises of our environment and able to subconsciously "switch off" what we don't want to hear! It's certainly one of the reasons why some babies prefer to sleep where it's noisy rather than where it's quiet.

Touchy feely
By the fifth month the baby is as sensitive to touch as any 1 year old. Researchers observed that when the eyelids were stroked, a baby squinted instead of jerking his entire body back the way he did earlier. When his lips were stroked, he started sucking (your baby is drinking the amniotic fluid and urinating now that his kidneys are functioning). When cold water was injected into the amniotic fluid, the baby strongly protested by kicking – clearly indicating that babies are also sensitive to temperature.

Although your unborn baby is sensitive to light from 16 weeks onwards, his vision is not particularly acute at birth. It has been estimated that he only has 20/500 vision, or is able to focus within the distance of 5-30cms (the distance between your face and your breast). This sense improves with time, and before his first birthday, your baby's visual acuity can be measured at 20/50.

According to Dr Liley, these shortcomings play an important role in developing a baby's sense of perception based on intuition rather than sight; an important skill for life.

Dream on
By the end of the second trimester, the neural circuits of your unborn baby's brain are just as advanced as a newborn's. The brain is particularly large at birth (head and chest circumference are equal) but the first few weeks of your baby's extra-uterine life are preoccupied with survival rather than intellectual performances. During the seventh month, brain waves become distinct and a mother is able to distinguish between her unborn child's sleeping and waking states. From 32 weeks onwards, brain wave tests can pick up periods of REM sleep, and it is thought that a baby may even be able to tune into the thoughts and dreams of his mother so that her dreams become his dreams too!

Setting the scene
Years of painstaking research into the earliest stages of a baby's life have convinced society that a developing foetus is more than a "cluster of cells". While we are well aware of the overwhelming evidence that an unborn baby needs to be protected from substance abuse, alcohol, toxins and viruses, today we understand how an unborn baby is affected by his mother's emotions, and that bonding begins long before birth. Study after study has shown that happy, contented women are far more likely to have bright, outgoing children and that a child will have difficulty bonding with a mother who is seething with anxiety or frustration.

That is not to say that a woman should not become distraught during her pregnancy, only that intense or continued maternal anxiety can be hazardous to her unborn baby's health. It was probably for these reasons that primitive cultures have restrictions on pregnant women and warn them to stay away from frightening events. So whatever your circumstances, try to do whatever you can to allow yourself moments during the day when you are calm and baby-focused. It will be good for you and for your developing baby.

Image: Nick Bolton/ True Love magazine