How is Life in the Womb
We know that the way we treat our babies and toddlers has an impact on how they develop physically, emotionally and intellectually into teenagers and adults. We know as well that parents and close family members are also key to how societies behave. Nowadays scientific research reveals that unborn babies are as vulnerable to their environment inside the womb as they are later on, outside the womb.
Unborn babies are conscious, and sensitive beings. When exactly this consciousness starts, we do not know, but amazing research in this field is being done in Japan by obstetrician Akira Ikegawa, a pioneer on "Prenatal Memory" research, an incredible breakthrough, in which children starting from age 3 recall memories of their conception, their time in the womb.
The Prenatal Memory Education Association in Japan states nine different categories of "Memory in the Womb and Beyond":
1. Prenatal memory – Memory from Embryo up to Birth
2. Birth Memory – Memory of Being Born
3. Newborn / Infant /Toddler Memory – Memory from birth to mid toddlerhood
4. Fertilization Memory – Memory of Being Conceived
5. Sperm Memory – Memory of being a sperm
6. Ovum Memory – Memory of being an egg
7. Life-Between-Life Memory – Memory of the time between the end of a previous life and being conceived in this lifetime.
8. Past Life Memory – Memory of being someone else in a different life
9. Duplicate Memory – Any combination of the memories from #1 to #8
It is important to say that the memories these children recall are corroborated by their parents, as situations that did happen during conception, pregnancy or labor, and that had never been mentioned to them before.
According to Yuko Igarashi, the founder of the Prenatal Memory Global Project, "Recent research shows that babies remember their time in the womb as information contained within a "Light" form of elementary particles, and they recorded it. In the womb, the five senses are not fully developed. Babies remember this information as a whole and they cannot differentiate it into five senses as recognized by adults. After the baby is born, various sensors go through the body, and it is believed that the information from the 5 senses is linked to superimposed memories from the womb. This is how the baby can recognize the voice of the father or image of the father linked to the perception the baby had in the womb."
We know that a pregnant mother’s physical, emotional and mental state influences the development of the baby, and so does the way she perceives her environment. Each of her reactions introduces the outside world to the baby who perceives what he or she should prepared for.
The science of epigenetics confirms that we are not merely victims of our genetic makeup: genes are not randomly activated, they are switched on or off by an environmental trigger. And this trigger can be nutrition, a toxin, a good or bad emotional impact, stress. Furthermore, this environmental triger can lead to a definitive modification of a gene!
Geneticist Bruce Lipton states:
“The activation of the programs of the genes is controlled by the atmosphere of the environment. More precisely by the perception, the organism has of this atmosphere... Maternal emotions as anxiety or anger or on the contrary love and hope influence biochemically the selection and the rewriting of the genetic code of the child in utero with very profound evolutionary consequences on future generations. Parents-to-be are real ‘genetic engineers.’ It is urgent for them to be informed.”
The unconscious transmission of old patterns through the family tree is studied by psycho-genealogy. Accidents, failure, illnesses, unprocessed emotions, can be recurring throughout generations of a family line. As your baby deserves the best start in life, it is best for you to take a close look into your own inner world, and free yourself and the next generations from such repeating situations.
We now realize how important is the way a mother takes care of herself physically and emotionally during pregnancy, as what she experiences and feels contributes significantly to the formation of her baby’s vital organs and neurophysiology.
During pregnancy, the baby knows whether he is loved or not, through the hormones of the mother that affect his endocrine system and create the same feelings as the mother’s. A prenate needs to feel connected, accepted and loved. Parents can help the baby by bonding from conception onward and strengthening this bonding throughout pregnancy, communicating with and accepting their baby’s sensitive awareness from the very start. Good attachment is only possible when the parents have been securely attached in their own past or if they were able to reprogram their psyche and neutralize negative impacts from a lesser bonding and connection.
A baby in womb needs to feel connected, accepted and loved. Parents can meet this need by bonding from conception onward, talk to him as to a normal human being, letting him know that he is loved. This will set the foundations for the baby’s sense of self-worth, self-love, capacity for connection and trust, for his or her beliefs, attitudes, defense mechanisms, and aptitude to commit to relationships.
Barbara Findeisen, a founding member of APPPAH – Association for Prenatal & Perinatal Psychology and Health said: “There's something wonderful about people who have an original undamaged connection to themselves, from proper bonding and a good womb and birth experience. They have trust in life at a deep level. When there's a crisis they fall back to that sense of self and trust in the universe. Their context is trust and love.”
For 4 decades scientific research has been done in the field of prenatal and perinatal psychology and has shown the tremendous importance the pregnancy and the first years of the baby’s life, have later on either on the physical but also on the psyche level. For example, hormones of stress created by the mother can disturb the normal development of organs in the baby in the womb and can have lifelong consequences on the physical health of the baby after birth.
This information puts a tremendous responsibility on the parents, but can also be seen as a great opportunity to influence and give their baby the best start. During pregnancy we should give time for the mothers to love, nurture and share positive thoughts and feelings with their baby, inspiring the new universe inside her. We should be able to come up with good supporting teams who would help them face and reduce as much as possible ongoing stresses and conflicts.
Parenting starts before conception and educating new parents about the great responsibility of conceiving, gestating, birthing and educating a child is a step in the right direction, a paramount step we owe to the next generations.
About the Author
Susana Lopes is the Founder and Secretary-General of Prenatal Alliance, an advocate for World Pregnancy Day – March 22, a Prenatal and Postnatal Yoga Teacher, a Pilates Teacher, a Humanized Pregnancy and Birth Advocate, Speaker, and the author of “Yoga e Maternidade”. Her present work includes guiding women to effectively release stress and anxiety from their body and improve their overall health and connection with their baby.