Amusing 9 Month–life in a Belly. Surprising Facts what Baby Does Inside a Womb
The first few days after you have found out that you are pregnant, you are beyond yourself. It is also normal, if you experience the whole spectrum of emotions and don’t know what emotions you should feel or how you should react. You can even feel like being a bundle of nerves, be scared or be amused and kept on thinking to yourself that you had been sent a small miracle, and the only thing you should is just to be patient and watch this miracle unfold.
First early ultrasound, which is usually done when your miracle is only 6 weeks old will show you a little heart beating (‘fetal cardiac activity’). From this day you will understand that your body is no longer just yours – it is your baby’s, too. The only thing you will be thinking about during the ultrasound procedure is to give your baby a life. Your baby will be shown as a flickering little bundle of joy on the ultrasound screen, and you will realize that starting from that moment your actions affect your little one, a tiny little life form inside of your uterus.
Uniqueness starts with fingerprints! 13th gestational week can be considered as bringing vivid alterations, because on your baby’s tiny fingertips there are forming fingerprints, your baby’s veins and organs are clearly visible through the still–thin skin, and your baby’s body is starting to catch up with his/her head – which makes up just a third of his/her body size. In just a two–week time, the main mystery would be revealed! 15th or 16th gestational week will be excessively vivid for you, because the clinician, using the ultrasound, can detect the scans which answer your main question is it a girl or is it a boy? Your baby is no longer an “it.” Your baby is a ‘she’ or is a ‘he’. You may not know the details of your little one’s face yet, but hey, he/she is a miracle, right? And miracles are gorgeously beautiful.
Ultimately, when the baby is born, it will alter your life dramatically and show you a type of love you haven’t experienced before. Holding that small, warm bundle for the first time, breathing in the sweet scent of his/her wispy blonde baby hair and staring into his/her brilliant eyes and understanding that this warm bundle completely redefines the meaning of love, you will definitely think that all previous things, which were associated with your taught nerves, medical procedures and unbearable pain are just a part of your past, a part of your story. Embracing your miracle, you can even thank him/her for being the most beautiful thing in your life.
15 Surprising facts what baby does inside a womb:
1. Delicate ballet baby movements (cuddling up, twisting, stretching, kicking) in the water, which you can’t feel till 16th–18th or till 20th week
Baby ‘dances’ inside your womb, starting from the 11th gestational week, but it is too early for you to feel it. Being just the size of a fig, starting from the 11th gestational week, your baby is almost fully formed, and this is the time when fetal movements start. Your baby’s hands will soon open and close into fists, tiny tooth buds are beginning to appear, and some of her bones are beginning to harden. Although you can’t feel any fetal activity yet, your baby is constantly practicing the delicate ‘dance’ movements, particularly he/she is cuddling up, twisting, stretching, kicking inside your uterus and even hiccupping as his/her diaphragm develops. These movements are so weak, that it looks more like delicate ballet under the water or in the water, than something what is really occurs inside your womb and something what you will feel later.
Just in one week [12th week of gestation], being the size of a lime and weighing half an ounce, your baby has the reflexes. His/her fingers will soon begin to open and close, his/her toes will curl, and his/her eye muscles will clench. If you gently fondle or poke your tummy, your baby will feel it inside, though you won’t feel his/her movements yet.
2. Baby’s ‘dance’ movements from 16th week: cuddling up, twisting, stretching, kicking become more intensive and more resemble ‘Paso Doble’, ‘Tango’ or ‘Samba’ if measured by the feeling left after
Starting from the 16th week, your baby is about the size of an avocado, weighs 3 1/2 ounces and is about 4 1/2 inches long from head to bottom. Usually, this is the ‘a gold time–standard’ for first ‘feeling the baby’s dance’ inside.
One of the most wonderful moments of pregnancy are those when you are feeling your baby move inside your tummy. You will experience baby’s ‘quickening’ at ‘gold timeline’ between 16th and 20th week. Those gentle flutterings you have been feeling will soon turn into intensive kicking and strong shoving. Soon, these moments will be the most vivid remembrances about your pregnancy, which you will recollect into your mind with a warm feeling inside your soul.
Feeling how your baby cuddles up, twists, turns, stretches and kicks inside for the very first time will be one of the most emotional–inspiring, most beautiful, most unforgettable moment. The little kicks will be adorable and unique, you should not be afraid of them. This first experience you should be able to have by the 16th gestational week or 18th gestational week. Growing during pregnancy, baby may occasionally twist and turn in the womb repositioning itself more comfortably. You may feel kicking or wiggling every time when the baby is twisting and turning around inside. Totally amazing that a baby knocks by small palms and feet a lot of that right out from under you. Soon this kicking or wiggling will become stronger and you might notice a pattern of when your baby moves the most. You may notice that your baby has the most preferable position and a favorite day–time or night–time to be most active.
3. Hiccupping in the womb: is it real or postulated?
Fetal hiccups start in the early first trimester (11th week), but you cannot feel them, because fetal hiccupping in the first trimester is like tiny blobs. The hiccupping starts in babies only after the complete Central Nervous System is produced which equips the babies to breathe. These hiccups are the resultant reactions of the fetus breathing entirely in the amniotic acid. After the production of the Central Nervous System, the amniotic acid flows in and out of the fetus’s lungs making the diaphragm to contract involuntarily and in excess. This results in the fetal hiccups.
If you start feeling tiny jumping contractions, a long rhythmic movement or a spasm in your belly, be sure to laugh aloud and know that your little one has started hiccupping already. Don’t worry, these hiccups are the ultimate signal to a baby’s healthy and growing respiratory system functions.
In some emergency clinical cases, fetal hiccups are closely associated to be linked to umbilical cord compression. This is the most serious medical condition which, if neglected or ignored, can lead to inevitable negative consequences including fetal death and fetus’s stillbirth. Being in the womb, your baby she surrounded by amniotic fluid, and his/her lungs are not accustomed to air, because the oxygen he/she needs, he/she gets through the umbilical cord. Consequently, the umbilical cord is of vital importance, and if something is wrong with it, including entailing and knotting of the umbilical cord, or the umbilical cord twisting puts your fetus’s life in danger. It occurs because of the limited or no air supply to your baby due to the congestion and wrapping around of the umbilical cord around the neck. This results in the uneven increase in the heart supply and subsequent reduction of its blood flow to the fetus, therefore if you second or third trimester pregnant and feel the irregularity, reduced intensity or duration in the fetus’s hiccups or normal kicking, then you must immediately schedule an appointment with your obstetrician and other clinicians or experts in prenatal care, including the urgent scheduled appointment with ultrasonography specialists.
4. Baby has the regular sleeping patterns: he/she is sleeping and waking at regular time–intervals
Second and third trimester (14th – 40th gestational week) ‘sparkles’ with additional ‘options’, basically, your baby is sleeping and waking at regular time–intervals, which unfortunately, may be absolutely different from yours.
Babies sleeps in the womb around 16–17 hours a day, usually for periods of around 40–50 minutes at a time. Despite it was scientifically proved that baby (fetus) spends most of its time in a womb asleep, the mystery of baby’s (fetal) sleeping phenomenon has not been revealed yet.
When you are asleep at night, do not moving a whole lot (except tossing and turning), therefore, babies tend to be very active this time. They cuddle up, twist, turn, roll, kick, stretch, shove, hold onto the umbilical cord, turn and walk up and down the amniotic sac wall on the inside and so on. Still, every little kick, punch, flip, or dance move baby is cranking out in there reminds you that he/she an actual and real, and it’s incredible. Night–time activity is thought to be one of the determinants, which predisposes newborns’ days and nights mixing up and explains why the neonates love motion so much after they are born. Some scientists suppose that unborn babies [fetuses] have vivid dreams while they are sleeping! Just like neonates after birth, they probably dream about the sensations they feel in the womb.
5. Yawning phenomenon inside the womb: how do the babies yawning?
Fetal yawning phenomenon is just as mysterious and intriguing as phenomenon of fetal sleeping. Yawning is an act, characterized by gaping of the mouth accompanied by a long inspiration of air or fluid, followed by a brief acme and a short expiration. Your baby has his/her own yawning patterns, which are present in their full extent during the second half of pregnancy. Fetuses do not yawn because they are sleepy, exhausted or sick. The essence of the yawning has not been inclusively investigated. Fetuses frequently yawn, but what predisposes the incidence of ‘fetal yawning’ is still considered to be a highly–debated perplexity with inconclusive theories. Researchers have postulated that yawning can be a sign that the fetus is developing normally (a medical indicator that and the frequency of fetal yawning in the womb maybe in close correlation with maturing of the brain early in gestation.
6. Baby senses the light and can turn away, hiding from it or may cuddle up with the hands near face
It is unimaginable to visualize in your mind, but 15–week baby can sense the light and turn away, hiding from it. Your baby’s eyelids are still fused shut on 15th week of gestation, but he/she can sense light. For instance, if you shine your mobile’s flashlight on your tummy, he/she will move away from the beam, or even cuddle up with his/her hands near (or covering) his/her face.
7. Being in the womb, baby opens and closes his/her eyes, starting from 27th – 28th week
Baby’s brilliant eyes, full of depth, will be opened on 28th week. Until this ‘glancing around’ time, the baby’s eyelids remain closed. If your baby is 8 weeks, his/her eyelids almost cover his/her eyes. In one week (9th week), your baby’s eyes are fully formed, but her eyelids are fused shut and won’t open until 27 weeks. Ultimately, starting from the 28th week of gestation your baby can blink his/her eyes and open the eyes, and glance at the amniotic fluid floating around and umbilical cord, which can be touched by the little fingers or taken into the small hands. With his/her eyesight developing, he/she may be able to see the light that filters in through your womb. By 33th week, your baby can start seeing dim shapes because pupils of his/her eyes are able to constrict and dilate.
There is one astonishing fact about multiple pregnancy, particularly about identical twins that share a single placenta and are therefore called Monochorionic Twins (MC). The word “Chorion” has the Latin origin and refers to the placenta, while the word “amnion” refers to the sac, or “membranes” that surround each fetus. If you have twins, as soon as your two little bundles of joy open their eyes, they can not only glance at each other, but also hold hands, cuddle up to each other or embrace each other tightly. While fraternal twins (2 eggs and 2 sperm) are always surrounded in their own gestational sacs and have their own individual placentas, therefore the above–mentioned things about holding hands, cuddling up or embracing each other tightly are not possible.
After the birth, your baby’s brilliant eyes cannot immediately reflect the perfect images of what he/she sees around, because vision is the last sense to develop in a baby while in the womb, that is why when your baby comes out ‘into the real world’ everything is actually a little fuzzy.
8. Being in the womb, your baby can do two incredible things such as crying and smiling
One of the most intricate breakthrough is the ultrasound images of the ‘smiling’ fetus inside the womb. It indicates that unborn babies are practicing the basic aspects of emotional connotations. Scientists at Durham and Lancaster Universities by observing 4D scans of fetuses have found that by 24 weeks, unborn babies could achieve “two dimensional” facial expressions such as curling their mouth in a gorgeous smile. It is supposed that babies express their contentment through the smile.
Current scientific investigations in prenatal dimension show that fetuses may learn to express their discontent by crying silently (unfortunately, there is no valid information about crying with or without tears) while still in the womb as early as in the 28th week of pregnancy. The crying baby resembles ‘a bundle of nerves’ and the baby’s crying looks like slight trembling, opening their mouths, depressing their tongues, lower lip quivering and gasping irregularly or and letting out a single short breath followed by a deep inhalation and exhalation. Usually, unborn babies appeared to cry in the womb in response to the disruption.
By 36 weeks, unborn babies could achieve more complex facial expressions including “pain” though lowered eyebrows, wrinkled nose, and stretched mouth.
9. Being in the womb, your baby not only feels, but also anticipates your touch and actively responses
Most of all babies anticipate your touch in any form: when you run a finger on your belly, while lying on your bed, when you cuddle up with your belly to your beloved, when you sit and delicately fondle your belly, when you embrace your belly with your hands or when your beloved embraces your belly and fondles it accurately.
If you touch, fondle or hold your belly being on your 7th 8th or 9th month of pregnancy, you will be given a powerful response from inside. During these months your baby also move around more, rearranging his/her positions inside the womb (feeling your baby kick, twist, wriggle, punch and hiccup) and show more self–touch — touch his/her hands, touch his/her tummy or touch his/her face — when you are touching you belly. It can be even thrilling to play with your unborn baby. Sometimes if baby kicks and you push back, he/she will kick again or will start to kick and reposition himself/herself inside! But if it’s a strong touch, the baby may move away and stick out her/his arm(s).
10. Your baby curls himself/herself up into a ball in the womb
As the months of your pregnancy go on and instead of an accurate tummy you will have an accurate belly, these alterations seem that there will be less space inside your uterus for your growing baby to twist and turn around or practice ‘ballet’ movements with ease inside ‘the unbroken follow’ of amniotic fluid. Incredibly, but these space–alterations don’t cause negative consequences for your baby and you should not trouble about it.
One of the most intricate thing, which your baby is able to perform perfectly without complicacies in such situation –– is to curl up on one side or curl himself/herself up into a ball and fall asleep in the womb! Your baby is made to curl up and be all cute and squished (where the saying “fetal position” comes from!)
11. You baby breaths into your womb
Being the principal connection between the fetus and the placenta, the umbilical cord provides the oxygen, nutrients and fluids necessary for fetus’s life in utero. The cord and its constituent tissues, an outer layer of amnion, porous Wharton jelly, two arteries, and one vein, are designed to provide and maintain the blood flow to the developing fetus. Although the umbilical cord provides the oxygen to your baby during all time of pregnancy, your baby is still busy practicing breathing. Being only nine weeks, nearly an inch long (about the size of a grape) and weighing just a fraction of an ounce, your miniature bundle of joy starts practicing breathing and perfecting it!
12. Your baby can get startled and scared inside the womb
Many mums–to–be have experienced a sudden severe jolt or jolts from their baby. It could be one quick kick or a sensation almost as if baby was just startled out of his/her sleepy dreamland. If all is quiet and suddenly you turn on the phone rings, music starts blaring, or more noises, you may notice your baby “jump” in the womb. Your baby is being startled, whether he/she was just relaxing or asleep. Either way, outside stimuli can surprise your baby and you get to feel the reaction! It feels like he/she is trying to jump out of your belly (convulsions or shaking)! This startling phenomenon in unborn babies seems to occur closer to the end of the pregnancy. Once born, you baby will have a startling reflex, that perhaps they brought with them from the womb.
13. Your baby recognizes tastes as your food flavour alters the flavour of amniotic fluid
By the second trimester (13 to 15 gestational weeks), your fetus’s taste buds have developed and are ready to functionate. Therefore, when you eat something, the amniotic fluid surrounding your baby alters its flavor. From as early as 15 weeks, the baby will show a preference for sweet flavor by swallowing more amniotic fluid and less when it’s bitter. Surely, surrounded by amniotic fluid, your baby only tastes molecules from your bloodstream (molecules give foods their unique tastes) and doesn’t have the sense of smell yet to amplify those flavors. But even with this blunted sense of taste, your baby will start to recognize different foods. For example, the amniotic fluid can carry the odour of curry, chocolate, persimmon, date, fig, almond, hazelnut, coconut, grapes, lemon, milk, honey, anise or vanilla etc. Eat something spicy and you might even feel his/her hiccups!
Furthermore, after being born, your neonate may prefer, for instance, your milk with honey or chocolate flavor (after you have eaten honey or chocolate, your milk carries appropriate flavour), because during the pregnancy you did like to eat honey and chocolate, that is why, among a variety of flavors with extreme taste–sweet, sour, or bitter, your baby has preference to milk with honey or chocolate.
14. Your baby hears the sounds which come from inside and outside
Baby’s ears are starting to take shape, when he/she is only 6th weeks old. Despite it is impossible to visualize the ears using the ultrasound scans, the complex maze of tubes that make up the inner ears are starting to pinch off from the rest of the cells inside the head. In three gestational weeks, by the 9th week, small indents will appear on the sides of your baby’s neck — although they’re not in their final location yet, they will gradually move up and become the tiny, curled up, cute–as–a–button ears. Around 16th week of pregnancy, your baby will start detecting some limited noises from inside. Ultimately, being 23 weeks old, your baby’s ears are getting better at picking up sounds. By the time the third trimester begins, your baby hears sounds perfectly, especially the sounds from the inside: your heart pulsating, the blood whooshing through your veins, etc. And more surprising thing: your baby also starts hearing more clearly sounds and noises from outside: your coffee cup has just fallen, your mobile phone has just rung, your ring has just fallen loudly, your music is playing, you are in conversation with someone, but the way he/she hears the outside sounds is different: the sounds he/she hears, being in a womb are muffled, because there’s amniotic fluid surrounding him/her, plus all the layers of your body and their amniotic sac, between him/her and the world outside.
15. Your baby being in a womb is constantly bonding with you
Every pregnancy is unique phenomenon and every fetus is also unique. The utmost thing is that being in a womb, your baby is bonding closely with you through hearing your voice. You may find that your bundle of joy actively responds to the sound of your voice, and begins kicking and nudging you as you are talking. Your baby is also preparing himself/herself to recognize your voice as soon as he/she is born by carefully listening to your voice, especially during the last ten weeks of your pregnancy. When your baby is born, he/she will recognize your voice and turn towards you whenever he/she hears it.
Bonding with your unborn baby starts with your constant communication, including listening to gentle music, whispering his/her name, talking with him/her or nudging back. If you want to communicate with your baby, the first recommendation for you is to sit down and after that start talking to him/her and hugging your belly. You can start with the words: ‘I am here to tell you that I absolutely love every second of you growing inside my belly. I mean, yeah, there are days when I’m excessively exhausted, deeply frustrated, utmost depressed, in pain, or crying, but still, every little kick, punch, flip, or dance move you are doing inside reminds me that you are an actual, real, little miracle, and it’s incredible feeling. I feel your affection and the only thing I can do for you now is keeping you healthy until your big debut. You are going to be perfect, I just know I’.
The usual respond from your baby will be kicks, bumps and nudges. Play with your baby by responding to his/her movements, gently poke back when he/she nudges you, and see what he/she does. When you feel the baby kick, bump or nudge, you can also ask your beloved to put his hands over your tummy, so that he can feel the baby’s movements too, and let him respond by rubbing your bump in the same spot.