Birth Imprints
When a woman is pregnant, mom is the babies entire world for 9 months.
Baby is a conscious being, that is listening, learning, remembering, and preparing itself for the world that it has yet to explore. These experiences shape their physiology (how their body works) and their psychology (how their mind works), creating the personality they will showcase once they are born.
As baby is in mom’s belly, they are learning about the world around them. The thoughts, conversations, actions, and emotions felt by mom plays an essential role in babies development.
These experiences are ingrained in the baby, and are referred to as “Birth Imprints.”
Mom’s Thoughts
Constant thoughts shape your mind. Repetition trains your nervous system to develop neural pathways to strengthen your thoughts.
The same goes for moms thoughts and babies neural development.
Excitement, nervousness, anxiety, love, joy, and fear… They are all felt by baby. It prepares them what to expect once they are born.
How would feel if the baby consistently heard words of love, excitement, and joy? How beautiful would it be to have a baby that is born into a world that knows what love feels like?
Conversations with Mom
By week 16, in utero, baby can hear, respond, and form memories. This is where baby starts to shape their perception on the world based on the conversations around them.
Do they hear conversations of love, respect, and trust? Or are they surrounded by stress, anger, and anxiety? Both experiences are going to widely shape their personality as they enter the world.
Moms voice is the loudest to baby because it travels through water conduction, through her body, to allow baby to hear. It is essential for mom to talk to baby, and tell them about how loved they are, the things that she is experiencing in her day-to-day life, and how excited she is to meet them.
For baby to form connections with loved ones, it takes a little bit more work. The voice has to travel through air conduction before it reaches baby. By having your hand on moms stomach, or shoulder, helps to transfer your voice to water conduction easier, allowing baby to hear you more clearly.
Loving Actions
Have you noticed that when a woman is pregnant she instinctively rubs her belly? Ever wonder why that occurs?
It turns out that midway through the first trimester the baby begins to grow sensory receptors that can pick up sensations placed on the womb.
By the beginning of the 3rd trimester, babies entire body is fully capable of feeling strokes to the belly, and can sense a loving touch. By providing a physical contact to baby (through the momma’s belly), it teaches baby what moms touch feels like (or who is participating in rubbing moms belly), fostering the trust and bond from the baby.
Emotions
Something that is even more important than just normal conversation with baby, is mom explaining how she regulates her stress and takes care of herself.
Stressful situations happen! As nice as it would be to frolic in a meadow during your entire pregnancy, it just is not realistic!
What you can do after a stressful situation is to sit down, rub your belly, and explain to baby 3 things.
What happened (they can’t see what’s going on in your world).
Why it caused you stress.
How you are taking care of yourself now to calm your nervous system.
This teaches baby that stressful situations occur, that it is okay, and how to regulate their nervous system.
You may be wondering, “Okay, but what is the importance of all of this?”
.By taking care of our mother’s, it teaches baby about the world. While providing them with tools on how to regulate their nervous system, prior to exploring the world on their own.
