The Prenatal Origins of Health
How Movement Shapes Development in Utero and Throughout Life

By Stephanie Mines, PhD | Prenatal Health

FETAL RESPONSIVENESS: STRUCTURAL IMPLICATIONS

By the second trimester a baby’s behavior patterns are very much like a young child’s. This means that the earliest periods of embryogenesis are crucial. The gestures and expressions of a young embryo are made in response to its experiences.

These gestures form the patterns of self-comforting and protection and therefore shape structure. Turning away, collapsing, turning towards, hiding, retreating, restricting breath, breathing deeply, giving up, over-efforting, compressing, becoming rigid, and countless other options shape formative prenatal bone, muscle, nerve, neurons and skin density.

FETAL MOVEMENT IN THE SECOND TRIMESTER

In the second trimester, fetal movement evolves into patterns. Ultimately these patterns form behavior. These patterns are based on themes of rest and activity. Absence of movement is abnormal.

The best way to assess movement is through the mother’s experience and not through ultra-sound technology which changes and influences movement dramatically. If movement is to be influenced, it should be stimulated through human awareness rather than machinery. If ultra sound has to be used, it should be only after the baby in utero has been informed of it and is prepared.

The prenatal baby develops her movements and behavior in response to her environment, and by the 20th week these are integrated into stable patterns that are coordinated with eye movement.

Movement does become more complex, including eye movement, as pregnancy proceeds, but the foundational behavioral patterns of both overall movement and eye movement are established by week 20 (Nijhuis, J, Neurobiology, 2003).

MOVEMENT, RELATIONSHIP AND COMMUNICATION

Warmth, loving connection, listening and responding all result in a proliferation of growth for the developing child, both in utero and postnatally. If this warm and loving contact is not available then growth is minimized, or occurs under duress. Prenatal difficulty, such as unwantedness, results in suboptimal development which has a broad spectrum of consequences, including increased risk for negative psychosocial development. This is well documented in the Prague Unwantedness Study (David, H.P., Reproductive Health, 2006).

Structural change and health consequences are less thoroughly investigated but we already know that structure is influenced by feelings of safety, welcoming, feeling wanted and encouraged, or the absence of these experiences. Even the way that conception occurs shapes the structure of the developing being.

The research of Dr. Alessandra Piontelli (Routledge, 1992) is a landmark longitudinal study. A psychoanalyst, Dr. Piontelli demonstrates the behavioral and psychological continuities between prenatal and postnatal life.