What is your tiny human doing in there?
Your baby’s sense of touch begins to develop in a predictable order. The first to come on board is touch. By about eight weeks of pregnancy, your tiny human responds to touch around his lips and cheeks, and by 11 wks she/he has begun exploring his own body and his warm dark nest with his mouth, hands and feet. Ultrasound scans show babies “touching their body parts, holding onto the umbilical cord, turning and walking up and down the amniotic sac wall on the inside,“They are not passively quiet in the womb.”
In the nearly weightless, fluid-filled environment of the amniotic sac, It is believed the fetus uses touch to both soothe and teach himself. Fetuses are laying down their own cortical networks in the brain,
The unborn child reacts strongly to his mother’s movements as well. Most moms notice that when they touch their belly, the baby kicks back or responds in some way, Research shows that unborn infants respond to more than just physical touch—they respond to their mother’s emotional state as well. When mothers watch sad films, babies move less. But when a mother laughs, ultrasound images show that “the baby kind of trampoline bounces.” When she laughs harder, the baby bounces even more exuberantly. It’s fascinating. There’s such an interaction between mother and child on all levels. Message to Mom: The atmosphere in your womb is perfect for your baby to explore and learn, But since babies clearly react to their mothers’ moods, it’s good to try to keep stress levels to a minimum. If you have a high-stress job or are at a particularly hairy point in your life, you might want to take up meditation or some other activity that helps you regain your calm.
Baby’s taste recognition
Whether your child grows up to be a cookie monster or adores curry may have something to do with what you eat during your pregnancy By the second trimester, your soon to be earthlings taste buds look just like those of a mature adult, and the amniotic fluid surrounding her can carry the odour of curry, garlic, anise or vanilla, for example.
Infants will respond differently to a flavour they experienced in amniotic fluid as well as in the mother’s milk. A randomly assigned a group of mothers to either drink carrot juice regularly during pregnancy or lactation or to avoid carrots, she found that the babies who had experienced the flavour of carrots either in amniotic fluid or in mother’s milk were more accepting of that food at weaning. Other studies have found that babies make less negative faces in response to the smell of foods like garlic or anise if their mothers ate the food while pregnant.
During the last trimester, a fetus swallows up to a litre of amniotic fluid a day, The fluid flows over the olfactory receptors in their noses and the taste buds in their mouths, and may act as a “flavour bridge” to breastmilk, and then to table food.
That doesn’t mean your infant’s sense of taste is fully developed before birth. Although doctors have noted that a 35-week-old preemie will suck harder on a sweetened nipple than on a plain rubber one, babies are born unable to detect the taste of salt. That particular taste experience doesn’t become known to them until about four months after they are born. It’s the brain that is perceiving this. The sense of taste continues to develop throughout childhood and adolescence.
Message to Mom: You’re definitely eating for two and your baby is learning about your food choices, so try to eat a healthy diet. But don’t stress unduly if you can’t bring yourself to choke down some spinach. Our biology is not necessarily our destiny, Don’t worry, a child can learn to like green vegetables
I hear you!
Your fetus’s ears begin to function while he’s still firmly ensconced in your womb. Ears are well developed at about 20 weeks gestation,
By 26 or 27 wks little sprout will respond to sound and vibration applied to mom’s belly. By 30 to 32 they generally hear “airborne” noise, such as voices or music — you might notice they kick or startle to a door slamming or a car backfiring. In addition, they become accustomed to the soundscape of the womb — the steady thump of mom’s heartbeat, the whooshing of blood through her blood vessels, the rumbling of her stomach and, most importantly, the tones of her voice filtered through tissues, bones and fluid. Research on newborn infants shows that they will turn their head when they hear their mother’s voice more often than when they hear the voice of a female stranger.
What’s more, infants seem to remember what they hear in the womb, preferring familiar pieces of music or books. In one famous experiment, a group of mothers read the Dr. Seuss story The Cat in the Hat out loud regularly during their pregnancy. At birth, their babies were hooked up to recordings which they could “select” by sucking on a non-nutritive nipple. After a few trials, babies learned to suck at whatever speed was necessary to obtain their mother’s voice reading the familiar story. They wouldn’t understand the meaning of the words, but they like the mood and the familiar rhythms of the music or the words.
There’s even evidence that the roots of bilingualism go as far back as the womb. A study published last year by the University of British Columbia psychology professor Janet Werker and her colleagues found that the rhythm of a mother’s language helps prepare her infant for language development once the baby is born. Newborns sucked more on a pacifier hooked up to a computer when they heard their mother’s native tongue, the researchers noted, indicating that they were paying attention. If their mother spoke two languages, the newborns showed equal interest in both, but if the mother spoke only one, they ignored the unfamiliar language.
Can your tiny human see in the womb?
Yes, it is dark in there. An unborn infant is basically peering through a fog of amniotic fluid into a dark cave. It’s possible that bright light might filter through to the womb but, to the infant, it probably means the difference between dim and dimmer.
Although your tiny human is not seeing much, she is developing and perfecting the “equipment” she needs to see. By 23 to 25 wks a baby’s eyeballs are formed and she begins to blink. Another five weeks or so and her pupils have begun to contract in response to bright light. The infant begins to exercise those visual muscles in preparation for a time when she will see. They have a lot of eye movements and those movements have been found to be very important for visual brain development.