Smiling From the Womb

[Blitz]

Pioneering scanning techniques have produced astonishing images from inside the womb which show babies apparently smiling and crying.

Experts believe the breakthrough could lead to advances in baby health for a whole range of conditions, including Down's Syndrome.


The pictures offer a new insight into foetal behaviour.

The ultra-sound scanning techniques capture images which show the foetuses yawn, blink, suck their fingers and seem to cry and smile.

Up to now, doctors did not think infants made such expressions until after birth and believed they learned to smile by copying their mother.

more:

http://www.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,30000-12773312,00.html

[StandWatie]

1. I think someone is absolutely insane

I think it was five months before I ever saw my son smile and I've never seen a newborn smile so what happens? They forget how? Or is it way more likely this is some idiot anthropomorphizing the actions of a fetus and seeing what they want to see.

[Robin Hood]

4. Ok, Let's get this straight.

Nature in all her wisdom did not form conciousnes in humans for months after birth, perhaps as many as six months. Why? Because it adapted to save us pain and hardship from the fact that most babies didn't make it past six months out of wonb.

It is only in the last hundred or so years that technology has given us significantly better odds of sustaining babies and their mothers before and after birth. If anyone disagrees with this theory, I have only one request for you. Share with me your memory of the womb, or the first six months of your life.

[SuffragetteSal]

7. if you believe this

then I bet we could xray 'sperm' and see a big smile on it's wiggly face!

and if this follows then 'the right' also believes (as their politics seem to dictate) that the unborn smile of a fetus is more important than the real live tears of those children who go hungry and in need of health care, education and opportunity. If 'they' care about 'the children' then they should stop prohibiting monies for the above care of those that are here already and ALIVE!

[Robin Hood]

8. That's right.

Keep your hands off your pecker or you'll kill millions of potential babies. How ridiculous does this have to get?

[Tansy_Gold]

5. Well, let's see, it's Sky news, so that's Murdoch, correct?

Ah, right wing propaganda at its best.

How can fetuses yawn or cry when they can't breathe? Many babies don't even cry tears until they are weeks or months old; the tear ducts aren't fully developed. What would they cry about -- not getting their diapers changed? When my first child was born, a nurse told me babies are so accustomed to being totally wet in the womb that they don't even notice a wet diaper unless they get a rash.

Give me a f***ing break.

[DemBones DemBones]

14. I had a pediatrician who told me breast feeding "doesn't work" for

American women. It only works for women in China or India, according to this genius M.D. (on the staff of a university teaching hospital yet!)

I got a new pediatrician ASAP and proved him wrong.

My point is that nurses and doctors say a lot of things that reflect their own biases and are not true, thought they may believe them to be true.

"Babies don't smile." Not true for all babies. Don't know why some don't.

"Newborns are used to being wet." Newborns have come from a temperature-controlled watery environment in the uterus. When their diapers are wet, they soon get cold. Some don't mind, others do. But it's silly to suggest they never notice the difference between warm and dry and cold and wet.

American women can't breast feed. Definitely not true.

[booksenkatz]

18. In a way, BF doesn't work for most American women

because our culture teaches that our breasts belong to our husbands. I BF my son until he was almost 3, he has never had a serious illness, not even a single ear infection. Anytime he gets a cold or cough, he is over it in less than 2 days. The benefits of BF for the health of a child are astounding! It's so sad that our culture shames women about it. Most women I know make little half-hearted attempts to BF in the early weeks, then complain it's too hard, too painful, or the baby "just won't latch on," so they give up and throw some slop into a bottle and feed it to their babies. If they had lived 100 years ago, I suppose they would've just let their babies die because lil Junior just wouldn't latch on, right?? Maybe laziness is a part of it, I don't know.

[joycep]

6. I didn't think about that at first

Babies don't smile until later do they? It's been a long time since I had a baby!

[lumpy]

10. My children smiled within one week

after birth and it wasn't gas. I have known many newborns and have witnessed many smiles. Some babies are slower to respond to their new world and appear to be wide eyed about it all. Personalities are are effected by genetics and experience. Maybe past lives affect their response to the world they have been thrust into.

[papau]

21. New Born smile are automatic if stomach feels filled - say gas

Not an "expression" of joy or anything else.

But would the media say this fact?

Guess not.

peace

:-)

[lumpy]

22. Unless you have had intimacy

with a new born that you have carried for nine months, helped to bring into the world, and nurtured with the deepest of love, how could you possibly interpret each little expression they exhibit to the world about them ? There is a big difference between 'gas smiles' and a smile that comes naturally in response to the face that hovers above them. But would a fact that science declares to be true be accepted by those who believe the brain of a human offspring is no more developed than that of an animal of the lower species?
Guess not.
peace

[Kemet]

2. thank you for this post

It really makes my day.
How refreshing to finally see that we don't have to learn how to smile (wich is what i'm doing right now).
:)

[Blitz]

3. Happy to make your day

It certainly is interesting, isn't it? Science continues to surprise and amaze.

[Judi Lynn]

9. Additional information your expert offers

in "Saved by Sonogram" in Christianity Today:

(snip) Sonograms quicken a mother's emotional attachment to her unborn child, experts say. Before sonograms, maternal-fetal bonding often occurred after the 15th week of pregnancy, when the mother senses fetal movement for the first time. But with sonograms, bonding is possible within the first 13 weeks, according to British researchers Stuart Campbell and Judith Lumley. (snip)

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2003/003/10.21.html

Conventional belief has always pointed at something different from "bliss" or "love" in explaining the smile of newly born babies:

(snip) The best way to burp any baby, especially one with gas, is to rub upward on the left side (where her stomach is) using the heel of your palm. If after five minutes baby hasn’t given you a burp, put her down. If she starts to pant, squirm, roll her eyes and make an expression that resembles a smile, she has gas.

http://www.parentsplace.com/babies/physical/articles/0,,166661_254536,00.html?arrivalSA=1&arrival_freqCap=1&pba=adid=6184896

Don't you think it's time some people got their heads from between women's thighs, staring at something that doesn't concern them?

Learning to control yourself is a life-long challenge, and obligation. Trying to control others is simply wrong.

[DemBones DemBones]

15. There's no evidence here of anyone trying to control anybody.

Why would anyone object to pregnant women bonding with their unborn child through seeing sonagrams? Not all pregnant women resent being pregnant or want to abort. Many are thrilled to be pregnant and the sonagram helps make it all more real to them.

And, sure, babies "smile" when they have gas but babies also really smile and respond to others -- and some do this much earlier than the books say they will. Parents should, I think, pay more attention to their babies than to baby books.

[Blitz]

25. "your expert"

Why do you assume that anyone is "(my) expert" or that I am trying to control anyone? I saw what I thought was an interesting scientific article and posted it (as I had with other interesting scientific articles in the past).

Are you sure you're not projecting just a tad? This level of defensiveness is a disturbing thing. Perhaps you should consider that not absolutely everything is about your politics.

P.S. Want to take a wild guess as to my views on reproductive rights, abortion, etc., or would you prefer to just go through life comforted by your assumptions?

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

11. This isn't exactly a new field of study...my ex is an OBGYN

There are studies that demonstrate that breech babies may have some motor problems and the like...there is study on fetal behaviors hoever, like the picture in the article, they are LATE term studies so should really have no bearing on the abortion debate.

The article does seem to be projecting a bit as far as emotions goes.

[pfitz59]

12. Latest right-to-life fundie ploy.......

Mandatory ultrasounds before each and every abortion! How about free condoms from middle school on! (A lot cheaper in the long run!)

[DemBones DemBones]

13. How dare those little brats "yawn, blink, suck their fingers and

seem to cry and smile." Don't they know that could hurt the "pro-choice" cause?

Look, gang, Rupert Murdoch's having an agenda does not mean that fetuses don't act like babies do after birth. Photos of fetuses doing these things existed twenty-five years ago, if not earlier, and that was well before Photo Shop and all the computer techniques of altering images that exist today. And it wasn't Murdoch or any RW or even pro-life group that discovered this. It's a wonderful, exciting thing to see how fetuses behave in the womb. Sometimes it seems, from the tone of your arguments, that pro-choicers hate babies, before and after birth. The slogan is about "right to choose," not "undesirability of pregnancy and childbearing in any circumstance" but too often the rhetoric seems to advocate the latter.

Are pro-choicers today still holding onto the outdated assertions that an embryo/ fetus is just a blob of tissue, (not really "human", not really "alive")? I thought sonagrams and intrauterine photos had put that, er, misconception to rest. By the time a woman knows she is pregnant and gets an abortion, the embryo/ fetus is beyond the "few cells" stage.

The argument you should make is that the woman owns her body and her rights trump those of any child she conceives. At this point, little is known about fetal consciousness (or infant consciousness, for that matter) so you can adopt Peter Singer's stance that it's permissible to kill humans that aren't fully sentient, though I'm guessing most of you don't agree with Singer that it's morally permissible to kill a baby anytime from birth until after its second birthday. He takes it too far, seeing no sentient behavior in toddlers, but that doesn't mean consciousness isn't something to be considered.

I wouldn't argue that an embryo has consciousness up to three months, (though I suspect consciousness develops in the second trimester) so it's fortunate that the majority of abortions are performed then. (At least, I suppose that nothing has changed recently, that most abortions are still first trimester abortions.) Most spontaneous abortions (AKA miscarriages) occur in the first trimester as well.

Someday, maybe we can get beyond the "sides" and help women (and men) avoid unplanned pregnancies, thus eliminating most of the need for abortion at any stage. You know, really make abortion "safe, legal, and rare" rather than "safe, legal, and common." That would be progress that would save many women from having to undergo a potentially dangeous, often costly procedure. It would also prevent both fetal deaths through abortion and maternal hardships that would result from continuing an unplanned pregnancy. It seems like a win-win solution to me.

DB DB

[Fish Eye]

20. Last Paragraph...Wow!

"Someday, maybe we can get beyond the "sides" and help women (and men) avoid unplanned pregnancies, thus eliminating most of the need for abortion at any stage. You know, really make abortion "safe, legal, and rare" rather than "safe, legal, and common." That would be progress that would save many women from having to undergo a potentially dangeous, often costly procedure. It would also prevent both fetal deaths through abortion and maternal hardships that would result from continuing an unplanned pregnancy. It seems like a win-win solution to me."

Excellent way to put it!

[Judi Lynn]

16. Your article was featured in republicanresources.com

Do you think we Democrats need to keep rehashing it? We already KNOW what we believe.

http://www.republicanresources.com/whatsnew4.shtml

[Whoa_Nelly]

17. So that smile

I saw on my son's face at age 2 weeks really wasn't gas :-)

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

19. Oral Roberts University research discovers twin fetuses playing

cards in womb. Further research is ongoing to determine what game is being played.



Feel safe.
Ashcroft watches over us all.

[Doug Decker]

24. Thanks for changing that. It was....

kinda freakin me out.

:hi:

[maha]

23. How can you cry if you aren't breathing?

Well, never mind. Generally infants don't produce a real "social" smile, meaning smiling in response to something, until they are six-eight weeks old, but I've seen younger ones smiling when they are asleep.

I remember back in the 1960s Life magazine had a series of fetal photographs that showed them sucking on their thumbs and yawning. So what's new?

Most abortions occur in the first trimester, and at that point the embryo/fetus doesn't have the neural connections for anything resembling brain function.

Well, come to think of it, most anti-choice zealots don't have anything resembling brain function, either.