Newborn babies have been
trying for centuries to convince us they are, like the rest of us,
sensing, feeling, thinking human beings. Struggling against thousands
of years of ignorant supposition that newborns are partly human,
sub-human, or not-yet human, the vast majority of babies arrive
in hospitals today, greeted by medical specialists who are still
skeptical as to whether they can actually see, feel pain, learn,
and remember what happens to them. Physicians, immersed in protocol,
employ painful procedures, confident no permanent impression, certainly
no lasting damage, will result from the manner in which babies are
received into this world.
The way "standard medicine" sees infants--by no means universally
shared by women or by the midwives who used to assist them at birth--has
taken on increasing importance in a country where more than 95% are
hospital born and a quarter of these surgically delivered. While this
radical change was occurring, the psychological aspects of birth were
little considered. In fact, for most of the century, medical beliefs
about the infant nervous system prevailed in psychology as well. However,
in the last three decades, research psychology has invested heavily
in infant studies and uncovered many previously hidden talents of
both the fetus and the newborn baby. The findings are surprising:
babies are more sensitive, more emotional, and more cognitive than
we used to believe. They are not what we thought. Babies are so different
that we must create new paradigms to accurately describe who they
are and what they can do.
Not long ago, experts in pediatrics and psychology
were teaching that babies were virtually blind, had no sense of color,
couldn't recognize their mothers, and heard in "echoes. They
believed babies cared little about sharp changes in temperature at
birth and had only a crude sense of smell and taste. Their pain was
"not like our pain," their cries not meaningful, their smiles
were "gas," and their emotions undeveloped. Worst of all,
most professionals believed babies were not equipped with enough brain
matter to permit them to remember, learn, or find meaning in their
experiences.
These false and unflattering views are still widely
spread among both professionals and the general public. No wonder
people find it hard to believe that a traumatic birth, whether cesarean
or vaginal, has significant, on-going effects.
Unfortunately, today these unfounded prejudices still
have the weight of "science" behind them, but the harmful
results to babies are hardly better than the rank superstitions of
the past. The restistance of "experts" who continue to see
infants in terms of their traditional incapacities may be the last
great obstacle for babies to leap over before being embraced for who
they really are. Old ideas are bound to die under the sheer weight
of new evidence, but not before millions of babies suffer unnecessarily
because their parents and their doctors do not know they are fully
human.
As the light of research reaches into the dark corners
of prejudice, we may thank those in the emerging field of prenatal/perinatal
psychology. Since this field is often an inter- professional collaboration
and does not fit conveniently to accepted academic departments, the
field is not yet recognized in the academic world by endowed chairs
or even by formal courses. At present only a few courses exist throughout
the world. Yet research teams have achieved a succession of breakthroughs
which challenge standard "scientific" ideas of human development.
Scholars in this field respect the full range of evidence
of infant capabilities, whether from personal reports contributed
by parents, revelations arising from therapeutic work, or from formal
experiments. Putting together all the bits and pieces of information
gathered from around the globe yields a fundamentally different picture
of a baby.
The main way information about sentient, conscious
babies has reached the public, especially pregnant parents, has been
via popular media: books, movies, magazine features, and television.
Among the most outstanding have been The Secret Life of the Unborn
Child by Canadian psychiatrist Thomas Verny (now in 25 languages),
movies like Look Who's Talking, and several talk shows, including
Oprah Winfrey, where a program on therapeutic treatment of womb and
birth traumas probably reached 25 million viewers in 25 countries.
Two scholarly journals are devoted entirely to prenatal/perinatal
psychology, one in North America which began in 1986, and one in Europe
beginning in 1989. The Association for Pre- and Perinatal Psychology
and Health (APPPAH) is a gathering place for people interested in
this field and who keep informed through newsletters, journals, and
conferences.
Evidence that babies are sensitive, cognitive, and
are affected by their birth experiences may come from various sources.
The oldest evidence is anecdotal and intuitive. Mothers are the principal
contributors to the idea of baby as a person, one you can talk to,
and one who can talk back as well. This process, potentially available
to any mother, is better explained in psychic terms than in word-based
language. This exchange of thoughts is probably telepathic rather
than linguistic.
Mothers who communicate with their infants know that
the baby is a person, mind and soul, with understanding, wisdom, and
purpose. This phenomenon is cross-cultural, probably universal, although
all mothers do not necessarily engage in this dialog. In an age of
"science," a mother's intuitive knowledge is too often dismissed.
What mothers know has not been considered as valid data. What mothers
say about their infants must be venal, self-serving, or imaginary,
and can never be equal to what is known by "experts" or
"scientists."
This prejudice extends into a second category of information
about babies, the evidence derived from clinical work. Although the
work of psychotherapy is usually done by formally educated, scientifically
trained, licensed persons who are considered expert in their field,
the information they listen to is anecdotal and their methods are
a blend of science and art.
Their testimony of infant intelligence, based on the
recollections of clients, is often compelling. Therapists are privy
to clients' surprising revelations, many of which show a direct connection
between traumas surrounding birth and later disabilities of heart
and mind. Although it is possible for these connections to be purely
imaginary, we know they are not when hospital records and eyewitness
reports confirm the validity of the memories. Obstetrician David Cheek,
using hypnosis with a series of subjects, discovered that they could
accurately report the full set of left and right turns and sequences
involved in their own deliveries. This is technical information which
no ordinary person would have unless his memories are accurate!
In my own work as a psychologist using hypnosis, I
found it necessary to test the reliability of memories people gave
me about their traumas during the birth process, memories which had
not previously been conscious. I hypnotized mother and child pairs
who said they had never spoken in any detail about that child's birth.
I received a detailed report of what happened from the now-adult child
which I compared with the mother's report, given also in hypnosis.
The reports dovetailed at many points and were clearly
reports of the same birth. By comparing one story with the other,
I could see when the adult child child was fantasizing, rather than
having accurate recall, but fantasy was rare. I concluded that these
birth memories were real memories, and were a reliable guide to what
had happened.
Some of the first indications that babies are sentient
came from the practice of psychoanalysis, stretching back to the beginning
of the century to the pioneering work of Sigmund Freud. Although Freud
himself was skeptical about the operation of the infant mind, his
clients kept bringing him information which seemed to link their anxieties
and fears to events surrounding their births. He theorized that birth
might be the original trauma upon which later anxiety was constructed.
Otto Rank, Freud's associate, was more certain that
birth traumas underlay many later neuroses, so he reorganized psychoanalysis
around the assumption of birth trauma. He was rewarded by the rapid
recovery of his clients who were "cured" in far less time
than was required for traditional psychoanalysis. In the second half
of the century, important advances have been made in resolving early
trauma and memories of trauma.
Hypnotherapy, primal therapy, psychedelic therapies,
various combinations of body work with breathing and sound stimulation,
sand tray therapy, and art work have all proved useful in accessing
important imprints, decisions, and memories stored by the infant mind.
If there had been no working mind in infancy, of course there would
be no need to return to it to heal bad impressions, change decisions,
and otherwise resolve mental and emotional problems.
A third burgeoning source of information about the
conscious nature of babies comes from scientific experiments and systematic
observations utilizing breakthrough technologies. In our culture,
with its preference for refined measurement and strict protocols,
these are the studies which get funding. And the results are surprising
from this contemporary line of empirical research.
We have learned so much about babies in the last twenty
years that most of what we thought we knew before is suspect, and
much of it is obsolete. I will highlight the new knowledge in three
sections: development of the physical senses, beginnings of self-expression,
and evidence of active mental life.
First, we have a much better idea of our physical
development, the process of embodiment from conception to birth. Our
focus here is on the senses and when they become available during
gestation. Touch is our first sense and perhaps our last. Sensitivity
to touch begins in our faces about seven weeks gestational age (g.a.).
Tactile sensitivity expands steadily to include most parts of the
fetal body by 17 weeks. In the normal womb, touch is never rough,
and temperature is relatively constant. At birth, this placid environment
ends with dramatic new experiences of touch which no baby can overlook.
By only 14 weeks gestational age (g.a.), the taste
buds are formed, and ultrasound shows both sucking and swallowing.
A fetus controls the frequency of swallowing amniotic fluid, and will
speed up or slow down in reaction to sweet and bitter tastes. Studies
show babies have a definite preference for sweet tastes. Hearing begins
earlier than anyone thought possible: at 16 weeks. The ear is not
complete until about 24 weeks, a fact revealing the complex nature
of listening, which includes reception of vibes through our skin,
skeleton, and vestibular system as well as the ear. Babies in the
womb are listening to maternal sounds and to the immediate environment
for almost six months. By birth, their hearing is about as good as
ours.
Our sense of sight also develops before birth, although
our eyelids remain fused from week 10 through 26. Nevertheless, babies
in the womb will react to a light flashed on the mother's abdomen.
By the time of birth, vision is well-advanced, though not yet perfect.
Babies have no trouble focusing at the intimate 16 inch distance where
the faces of mothers and fathers are usually found.
Mechanisms for pain perception like those for touch,
develop early. By about three month g.a., if babies are accidentally
struck by a needle inserted into the womb to withdraw fluid during
amniocentesis, they quickly twist away and try to escape from the
needle. Intrauterine surgery, a new aspect of fetal medicine made
possible in part by our new ability to see inside the womb, means
new opportunities for fetal pain.
Although surgeons have long denied prenates experience
pain, a recent experiment in London proved unborn babies feel pain.
Babies who were needled for intrauterine transfusions showed a 600%
increase in beta-endorphins, hormones generated to deal with stress.
In just ten minutes of needling, even 23 week old fetuses were mounting
a full-scale stress response. Needling at the intrahapatic vein provokes
vigorous body and breathing movements.
Finally, our muscle systems develop under buoyant
conditions in the fluid environment of the womb and are regularly
used in navigating the area. However, after birth, in the dry world
of normal gravity, our muscle systems look feeble. As everyone knows,
babies cannot walk, and they struggle, usually in vain, to hold up
their own heads. Because the muscles are still relatively undeveloped,
babies give a misleading appearance of incompetence. In truth, babies
have remarkably useful sensory equipment very much like our own.
A second category of evidence for baby consciousness
comes from empirical research on bodily movement in utero. Except
for the movement a mother and father could sometimes feel, we have
had almost no knowledge of the extent and variety of movement inside
the womb. This changed with the advent of real-time ultrasound imaging,
giving us moment by moment pictures of fetal activity.
One of the surprises is that movement commences between
eight and ten weeks gestational age. This has been determined with
the aid of the latest round of ultrasound improvements. Fetal movement
is voluntary, spontaneous, and graceful, not jerky and reflexive as
previously reported. By ten weeks, babies move their hands to their
heads, face, and mouth; they flex and extend their arms and legs;
they open and close their mouths; and they rotate longitudinally.
From 10 to 12 weeks onward, the repertoire of body language is largely
complete and continues throughout gestation. Periodic exercise alternates
with rest periods on a voluntary basis reflecting individual needs
and interests. Movement is self-expression, an expression of personality.
Twins viewed periodically via ultrasound during gestation
often show highly independent motor profiles, and, over time continue
to distinguish themselves through movement both inside and outside
the womb. They are expressing their individuality.
Close observation has brought many unexpected behaviors
to light. By 16 weeks g.a., male babies are having their first erections.
As soon as they have hands, they are busy exploring everywhere and
everything, feet, toes, mouth, and the umbilical cord: these are their
first toys.
By 30 weeks, babies have an intense dream life, spending
more time in the dream state of sleep than they ever do after they
are born. This is significant because dreaming is definitely a cognitive
activity, a creative exercise of the mind, and because it is a spontaneous
and personal activity.
Observations of the fetus also reveal a number of
reactions to conditions in the womb. Such reactions to provocative
circumstances is a further sign of selfhood. Consciousness of danger
and maneuvers of self-defense are visible in fetal reactions to amniocentesis.
Even when things go normally and babies are not struck by needles,
they react with wild variations of normal heart activity, alter their
breathing movements, may "hide" from the needle, and often
remain motionless for a time--suggesting fear and shock.
Babies react with alarm to loud noises, car accidents,
earthquakes, and even to their mother's watching terrifying scenes
on television. They swallow less when they do not like the taste of
amniotic fluid, and they stop their usual breathing movements when
their mothers drink alcohol or smoke cigarettes.
In a documented report of work via ultrasound, a baby
struck accidentally by a needle not only twisted away, but located
the needle barrel and hit it repeatedly--surely an aggressive and
angry behavior. Similarly, ultrasound experts have reported seeing
twins hitting each other, while others have seen twins playing together,
gently awakening one another, playing cheek-to-cheek, and and even
kissing. Such scenes, some at only 20 weeks g.a., were never anticipated
in developmental psychology. No one anticipated sociable behavior
nor emotional behavior until months after a baby's birth.
We can see emotion expressed in crying and smiling
long before 40 weeks, the usual time of birth. We see first smiles
on the faces of premature infants who are dreaming. Smiles and pleasant
looks, along with a variety of unhappy facial expressions, tell us
dreams have pleasant or unpleasant contents to which babies are reacting.
Mental activity is causing emotional activity. Audible crying has
been reported by 23 weeks g.a. in cases of abortion, revealing that
babies are experiencing very appropriate emotion by that time. Close
to the time of birth, medical personnel have documented crying from
within the womb, in association with obstetrical procedures which
have allowed air to enter the space around the fetal larynx.
Finally, a third source of evidence for infant consciousness
is the research which confirms various forms of learning and memory
both in the fetus and the newborn. Since infant consciousness was
considered impossible until recently, experts have had to accept a
growing body of experimental findings illustrating that babies learn
from their experiences. In studies that began in Europe in 1925 and
America in 1938, babies have demonstrated all the types of learning
formally recognized in psychology at the time: classical conditioning,
habituation, and reinforcement conditioning, both inside and outside
the womb.
In modern times, as learning has been understood more
broadly, experiments have shown a range of learning abilities. Immediately
after birth, babies show recognition of musical passages which they
have heard repeatedly before birth, whether it is the bassoon passage
in Peter and the Wolf, "Mary Had a Little Lamb," or the
theme music of a popular soap opera.
Language acquisition begins in the womb as babies
listen repeatedly to their mothers' intonations and learn their mother
tongue. As early as 25 weeks g.a., the recording of a baby's first
cry contains so many rhythms, intonations, and other features common
to their mother's speech that their spectrographs can be matched.
In experiments shortly after birth, babies recognize their mother's
voice and prefer her voice to other female voices. In the delivery
room, babies recognize their father's voice and recognize specific
sentences their fathers have spoken, especially if the babies have
heard these sentences frequently while they were in the womb. After
birth, babies show special regard for their native language, preferring
it to a foreign language.
Fetal learning and memory also includes stories that
are read aloud to them repeatedly before birth. At birth, babies will
alter their sucking behavior to obtain recordings of the familiar
stories. In a recent experiment, a French and American team had mothers
repeat a particular children's rhyme each day from week 33 to week
37 g.a. After four weeks of exposure, babies reacted to the target
rhymes and not to other rhymes, proving they recognize specific language
patterns while they are in the womb.
Newborn babies quickly learn to distinguish their
mother's face from other female faces,their mother's breast pads from
other breast pads, their mother's distinctive underarm odor, and their
mother's perfume if she has worn the same perfume consistently.
Premature babies learn from their unfortunate experiences
in neonatal intensive care units. One boy, who endured surgery paralyzed
with curare, but was given no pain-killing anesthetic, developed a
pervasive fear of doctors and hospitals which remains undiminished
in his teens. He also learned to fear the sound and sight of adhesive
bandages. This was in reaction to having some of his skin pulled off
with adhesive tape during his stay in the premature nursery.
Confirmation that early experiences of pain have serious
consequences later has come from recent studies of babies at the time
of first vaccinations. Researchers who studied infants being vaccinated
four to six months after birth discovered that babies who had experienced
the pain of circumcision had higher pain scores and cried longer.
The painful ordeal of circumcision had apparently conditioned them
to pain and set their pain threshold lower. This is an example of
learning from experience: perinatal pain.
Happily, there are other things to learn besides pain
and torture. The Prenatal Classroom is a popular program of prenatal
stimulation for parents who want to establish strong bonds of communication
with a baby in the womb. One of the many exercises is the "Kick
Game," which you play by responding to the child's kick by touching
the spot your baby just kicked, and saying "Kick, baby, kick!"
Babies quickly learn to respond to this kind of attention: they do
kick again and they learn to kick anywhere their parents touch. One
father taught his baby to kick in a complete circle.
Babies also remember consciously the big event of
birth itself, at least during the first years of their lives. Proof
of this comes from little children just learning to talk. Usually
around two or three years of age, when children are first able to
speak about their experiences, some spontaneously recall what their
birth was like. They tell what happened in plain language, sometimes
accompanied by pantomime, pointing and sound effects. They describe
water, black and red colors, the coming light, or dazzling light,
and the squeezing sensations. Cesarean babies tell about a door or
window suddenly opening, or a zipper that zipped open and let them
out. Some babies remember fear and danger. They also remember and
can reveal secrets.
One of my favorite stories of a secret birth memory
came from Cathy, a midwife's assistant. With the birth completed,
she found herself alone with a hungry, restless baby after her mother
had gone to bathe and the chief midwife was busy in another room.
Instinctively, Cathy offered the baby her own breast for a short time:
then she wondered if this were appropriate and stopped feeding the
infant without telling anyone what had happened. Years later, when
the little girl was almost four, Cathy was babysitting her. In a quiet
moment, she asked the child if she remembered her birth. The child
did, and volunteered various accurate details. Then, moving closer
to whisper a secret, she said "You held me and gave me titty
when I cried, and Mommy wasn't there." Cathy said to herself,
"Nobody can tell me babies don't remember their births!"
Is a baby a conscious and real person? To me it is
no longer appropriate to speculate. It is too late to speculate when
so much is known. The range of evidence now available in the form
of knowledge of the fetal sensory system, observations of fetal behavior
in the womb, and experimental proof of learning and memory--all of
this evidence--amply verifies what some mothers and fathers have sensed
from time immemorial, that a baby is a real person. The baby is real
in having a sense of self which can be seen in creative efforts to
adjust to or influence its environment. Babies show self-regulation
(as in restricting swallowing and breathing), self-defense (as in
retreating from invasive needles and strong light), self-assertion,
combat with a needle, or striking out at a bothersome twin!
Babies are like us in having clearly manifested feelings
in their reactions to assaults, injuries, irritations, or medically
inflicted pain. They smile, cry, and kick in protest, manifest fear,
anger, grief, pleasure, or displeasure in ways which seem entirely
appropriate in relation to their circumstances. Babies are cognitive
beings, thinking their own thoughts, dreaming their own dreams, learning
from their own experiences, and remembering their own experiences.
Because of all these capabilities, we know babies
remember at a very deep level of consciousness their primal journey,
the way they entered this world.
