单选题
For eight months he has floated in his private ocean. This morning he awakens, opens his eyes, yawns and kicks vigorously several times. His umbilical cord drifts by his questing fingers. He plays with it briefly, brings his hands up to his mouth and sucks his thumb. Over his mother" s heartbeat and the gurgles of her digestive tract, he can hear her talking with his father. Interested, he stops sucking to listen.
Until recent years, we could only speculate on what life was like for an unborn baby. Then, major advances in
ultrasound scanning
began opening a window to the womb; doctors could view every movement of the baby on a television—like screen. The pictures show unborn babies yawning, sucking, grasping, stretching, blinking and making faces—in short, all the things they will do after birth.
Normally an unborn baby never experiences hunger or thirst. But if a mother does not consume sufficient nutrients, the baby" s diet will not be adequate either. When an unborn baby is severely malnourished—for instance, because his mother" s heavy smoking restricts blood flow to the placenta—Dr, Jason Birnholz, an ultrasound expert, believes he has seen the baby" s chest and throat making crying motions.
A radio startles him awake. He blinks and grimaces at the new sensation, but then becomes interested in the music. He turns his head to bring his ear closer to the outside world. He notices the pressure of the book his mother is resting on her belly. He kicks at it, her laugh comes to him as a dull, echoing rumble. She pats the spot he kicked and, entering into the spirit of the game, he kicks back. They play several rounds before he loses interest and falls asleep.
Can a mother" s stress, anger, shock or grief harm her baby? No. The normal stresses and strains of life won" t hurt him. As the expert Maurers put it, such periods are the womb equivalent of having a spell of " bad weather". Some are startled when exposed to a series of loud buzzes, but some then turn an ear to listen.
Severe continuous stress may be another story. It remains unclear whether problems arise from the stress itself or from the poor nutrition, smoking, drinking or drug taking that likely accompany it. In any case the baby is affected.