Current mood:

contemplative

my own private meeting
There's a chapter of ICAN that meets up in my area. Given that I already know I'd prefer to avoid a cesarian if reasonable, and I've read up on and am taking steps in that direction, I don't have much interest in that topic. But the woman who runs the local chapter tends to pick interesting topics, and tonight my doula was scheduled to be there to talk, so I decided to drop in.

As it turned out, it was just the organizer; Suzanne, my doula; Sandy, and myself ;) And even funnier, I learned that Suzanne is now assisting my midwife; Rosanna, and will likely be there for my delivery ;)



The title of this meeting was "birth from the baby's perspective." I was skeptical, as I do not think its something we can know at this point. However, the main focus of what Sandy was talking about was much more in line with my thoughts and interests.

Basically, that babies are sentient and responsive even in utero, and that DNA development is not set in stone from the point an egg and sperm unite. As she explained, some of the DNA gets set according to environmental stimulation aka, things crossing the placental barrier from mom.

I've been over studies about this in my psych class and elsewhere, and Sandy mentioned a few more.

One interesting study she mentioned: they had mom's read to the baby during pregnancy from a Dr. Seuss book. After birth they had the babies suck on special pacifiers. They had two voice recordings, one of the mom reading, and one of someone else reading. Sucking would turn on the recordings and babies had to modify their sucking a certain way to get the mom's voice to come on. All of the newborns quickly modified their sucking to hear their mom's voice.

She also touched on one that was related to some of my child psych studies, about how if the care giver responds within 90 seconds of the baby's first sound indications that it wants to be picked up, the babies tend to be more independent and secure later in life. (this was important because it contradicts a recent popular idea that not responding immediately to a baby's cries makes them less demanding: in studies it has been shown that babies who are not responded to quickly tend to cry more loudly more quickly and to have a harder time calming themselves down)

Another topic was about how the baby can hear from about 16 weeks, and is apparently already trying to make vocal cord simulations of the voices its hearing.

And that when mom gets stress hormones and goes into fight or flight mode, the same hormones go to the baby, and apparently there are studies showing that it responds in utero the same way: blood going to the extremities and the reptilian response part of the brain more so than the frontal lobes.

As Sandy said, its probably not a big deal if this happens on occasion: especially since pregnant women are almost all prone to rather extreme emotional swings, but it probably makes a difference in development for women with prolonged stress, such as those living in war torn areas. And she also made the excellent point that what the baby responds to is not the mother's environment, but rather, how she responds to that environment. (because the messages the baby is going to get most strongly are those sent via hormones across the placenta)

I don't know to what degree the mother's mental state effects the baby's development, but I don't doubt that it does.



If nothing else, the meeting was a good reminder for me that I wish to continue my efforts to direct my mental state the way I desire, and a wake-up call that now is indeed a very good time for some serious conscious effort in that direction.

And its always nice to have excuses to do what I want ;) Basically, my intention is to continue with even more consciousness working on minimizing stress by working on removing internal and external pressures. I've been being hard on myself lately about procrastinating all the time, and as a result have been procrastinating even more than usual ;)

But I think I'm going to try to change my perspective to it being my top priority to self-sooth, and to try to consider it productive to just be reading or playing solitaire on the computer or whatever otherwise non-productive venture I feel like engaging in ;) I just don't have the energy for a whole lot else right now, and trying to push myself is draining rather than empowering.



One amusing thought with all the talk of mom's emotions crossing over to baby and associations: Tovar is going to love his daddy :)