A CHILD IS BORN
During the nine calendar months which equal ten lunar months, or two hundred and eighty days, innumerable changes take place in the embryo, very few of which we can observe from the outside. The increase in size is, within a few months, noticeable by the change of the mother’s figure, although the amount of fluid within the membranes may have much to do with this appearance. The heart has taken shape by four weeks and begins to beat, but it is months later before it can be heard. What is remarkable is the early age at which muscular movements start. An obstetrician of great experience tells me that he has felt them at sixteen weeks and it is not unusual to get them before he hears the heart beat of the child. May not this mean that nature has not as yet caught up with the gadget age and is still working on the assumption that man will continue to make an active use of his muscles?
The head, which is very large at eight weeks, continues until some time after birth to be bigger in diameter than the body. Do not take this as evidence of man’s great brain function. The only use of a head until long after birth is as an efficient dilator of the birth canal. One other organ which is active during life in the womb is the skin. You know that your own skin is always excreting grease. I think that it is even more active before birth, when the baby is covered with a thick, greasy, cheesy material called the vernix caseosa, which is Latin for “cheesy varnish.” When you consider what a few minutes of daily dish washing may do to the skin of hands, you will realize what might happen to the skin of a baby soaking for nine months without this protection.
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