Pregnancy Week 19 – Are You Bonding With Your Unborn?

I did the anatomy scan this week and everything is going great!!! Tummy still flat but baby has plenty of space and is healthy and kickin’!

18 weeks pregnant

What is  happening this week?

• Baby’s crown to rump length is 15 cm or 6 inches. Baby weighs about 250 grams or 8.5 ounces.
• Baby is sucking and swallowing.
• Try talking to your baby. Baby can hear you.
• Baby may assume favorite positions.
• On the pads of the fingers the ridged pattern of the baby’s fingerprints, his personal badge of identity, is becoming apparent.
• Baby’s eyes make random movements under the still-closed lids.
• A little fat started to cover the baby’s body but it still looks very skinny and his head appears too large for his fragile neck.
• Baby’s ears have moved up from the jaw line to their final position on the side of the head. The eyes too are now in their final position, and face forward.
• Moms may have white vaginal discharge known as leukorrhea.
• Moms may experience bleeding gums when brushing teeth.

I also read another book: The Mind of Your Newborn Baby
– I must say that if you were to read only one book about bonding with your unborn baby – this should be it.

Although the information found in the first part can also be found in other books on the subject, the second part, which describes the memories of people’s birth is absolutely mind-blowing.

Let me quote a few interesting things from the first part:

• “After only minutes of exposure to its mother’s face after birth, a baby can pick her out from a gallery of photos.”
• “Babies recognize the gender of other babies, even when cross-dressed, provided they are moving.”
• “Generation after generation, an unlucky majority of American male babies have been subjected to circumcision for dubious medical, religious, cultural and cosmetic reasons. I can only assume that parents have tolerated this in the mistaken belief that the baby will not know he is being tortured. He will.”
• “Newborn also listen intently to their mothers reading stories and prefer to hear again those heard weeks before birth”
• “From its mother the baby receives antibodies to ward off infections, as well as individual attention not available in a nursery. Lying next to mother helps the baby regulate its own body temperature, metabolic rate, hormone and enzyme levels, heart rate, and breathing. Separation of mothers and newborns is a physical deprivation and emotional trial.”

• “Babies need to know their mothers are all right.”
• “If you could reach in and touch your unborn, you would find that virtually all parts of the body respond to light touch by seventeen weeks.”
• “If you stand on your head or go dancing, your baby will sense the changes in position, speed, and direction and attempts to stabilize itself. If you are jumping around, your baby will be jumping around, too, whether it likes it or not.”
• “Virtually all movements of the mother cause a movement of the fetus.”
• “If you have fever, your baby will have one, too.”
• “Researchers believe babies begin hearing as early as the 18th week of pregnancy.”
• “Prenates may become sound-deprived in the womb if their mothers are mute, deaf, or quiet and withdrawn.”
• “Given a choice of targets, newborns usually looked more at patterned than plain colored surfaces, at complex rather than simple patterns, at curved rather than straight lines, at color rather than black and white, at three-dimensional rather than two-dimensional objects, and at faces rather than other objects.”
• “Today you may be asked why you are NOT talking to your preborn.”
• “Babies appear to enjoy learning and thrive on stimulation.”
• “Your preborn listens carefully to your voice and learns certain characteristics of your speech.”
• “Lullabies you sing in pregnancy may have unusual power to calm your child after birth.”
• “When you hold your baby, the baby will mold itself to you and learn your contours.”
• “Your breast-fed newborn will learn your unique breast and underarm odors in the first week.”
• “In your womb the baby listens to familiar and novel aspects of your humming and singing, the ambiance of your home, the stories you read out loud. If you live in a noisy area, your baby will get used to noise.”
• “Even small amounts of extra attention around the time of birth can make a significant difference in health, growth and learning. Stimulation can be offered in many forms, but the first and primary stimulation should be in the bosom of mother and family: keeping your newborn at your side after birth, holding, cuddling and breast-feeding, exposure to music, color, things to see and touch, and a normal environment of adult activity and conversation.”
• “Infants who had as little as fifteen minutes with their mothers after birth, compare to those immediately taken off to a nursery, were found to smile more and cry less during observations three months later.”
• “Children who had that extra early contact with their mothers scored consistently higher on IQ tests and showed better language comprehension, vocabulary, and expressive ability.”
• “Massage and regular physical activity, rather than isolation, are now recommended for all babies.”
• “Babies like to be picked up and put down, rocked, and wheeled in strollers.”
• “Babies born underwater may hold the record for smiling at birth.”
• “When a baby smiles it is a very personal message of vital importance.”
• “Babies actually give more generous smiles to their mothers than to strangers.”
• “Your baby is especially attracted to YOUR voice.”
• “When given a choice between male and female voices, babies generally choose the female voice.”
• “A baby’s cry at birth is a distress signal and plea for help.”
• “If a mother picks up a crying infant within 90 seconds, the infant will usually quiet down within 5 seconds. If the baby is not picked up within 90 seconds, the disruption may go on for 50 seconds more.”

And from part two of the book:

• “The words said at one’s birth seem to be unusually potent.”

and the author lists various birth experiences of how words uplifted or damaged newborns.

Here’s the birth story that made the biggest impression on me: “Nobody’s talking to me. They’re talking about me, I think but not TO me. They act like they know I’m there, but like I don’t now I’m there. The nurse kind of wiped…washed me. Then they brought me over next to my mother. She wasn’t crying but something like that. She’s the first one that talked to me. She said, “Hi!” Nobody else seemed to think that I was really there. Then she talked to the doctor a little bit and they took me away again.”