Our Baby listens...

Here are some interesting facts from studies:

• By nine weeks, a developing fetus can hiccup and react to loud noises. By the end of the second trimester it can hear.

• Whether or not a fetus can taste, there's little question that it can hear. A very premature baby entering the world at 24 or 25 weeks responds to the sounds around it, observes Als, so its auditory apparatus must already have been functioning in the womb. Many pregnant women report a fetal jerk or sudden kick just after a door slams or a car backfires.

  Even without such intrusions, the womb is not a silent place. Researchers who have inserted a hydrophone into the uterus of a pregnant woman have picked up a noise level "akin to the background noise in an apartment," according to DiPietro. Sounds include the whooshing of blood in the mother's vessels, the gurgling and rumbling of her stomach and intestines, as well as the tones of her voice filtered through tissues, bones, and fluid, and the voices of other people coming through the amniotic wall. Fifer has found that fetal heart rate slows when the mother is speaking, suggesting that the fetus not only hears and recognizes the sound, but is calmed by it.

  This was from an Article written in Psychology Today, October 1998, by Janet L. Hopson.

  
  

  When I used to have morning sickness (around my first trimester and beginning of second trimester), I was worried that I had to go to college. Can you imagine going out of class in the middle of a discussion? ...while your Law professor stares at you when you walk back in, wondering why you had to visit the toilet for almost every 15mins.

  I really thought this scenario would happen to me in college, since every time after lunch at the office, I would go to the toilet and throw up... some times, I even wish I would have never gone to work.

  One day, I went to college (despite having morning sickness) while I was walking, I was feeling nauseous, I entered the class, I had to sit next to my friend (wearing this REALLY strong perfume), I know for sure right then and there I might just embarrass myself in class by throwing up.

  When our Law professor started his lecture, I just sat there and listened. Trying to ignore the perfume smell (that I think even the last row could smell) and just listened to the lecture. And to my surprise, I stopped feeling nauseous. The whole time sitting in the lecture hall, even with the smell that makes me feel dizzy, and yet, I didn't feel uncomfortable.

  Several times this has happened, and all those times during the lectures, I didn't feel my morning sickness coming in, as like when I'm at work. See, the thing is, it's not that I moved around in the office... most of the time, I'm just sitting in front of the computer. And yet, I only feel comfortable when I'm at lectures.

  The thought came into my head, maybe, our baby's also listening to the lectures. He must have also enjoyed listening to what my Law professor had to say about Hart's Theory in Jurisprudence or about the Brussels 1 regime in Conflicts of Law.

  He may not understand, but he could have just been listening.

  I told my husband about this and from then on, we try to talk to him. Like, in the morning when we wake up, he would say good morning to the baby and kiss him.

  Our baby's been healthy and active, Praise God.