I feel that not many people actually realise what babies and children are capable of. When I speak about how babies feel anger, fear or joy, I am often faced with blank or puzzled expressions as to the fact that babies can think and feel at all. The way I see babies, whether newborn or older, is as little adults. Just because they cannot communicate as we do, does not mean they should be ignored or treated as different. They can feel, think, experience and learn just as much as we can, if not more. As they have not had all the layers of societal conditioning placed on them, I believe that they are far more perceptive, intuitive and open to what is happening around them. Yet, I still have very surprised responses when I speak about what I can feel whilst working on them. Babies are misunderstood and underestimated and after reading this and possibly researching more about what I have written, I really hope you are more open-minded as to what these amazing, awesome beings are about.

Whilst thinking how I would put this article together, I came across this amazing book called The Mind of Your Newborn Baby by David Chamberlain. Dr David Chamberlain is a psychologist who has had his work praised by various key individuals. He has gathered important facts from a wide range of literature to show what really happens in babies' minds. Feeling that I wanted to include documented factual information for this particular topic, I have combined information I have extracted from his book with experiences of my own. I have also included a very special story about one of my own little clients at the end.

To understand how awesome and intricate a baby's development and intelligence is, let's briefly take a look at what happens whilst a baby is in mom's tummy.

In the beginning, as we all know (I hope), the sperm meets the egg and in twenty-four hours, this fertilised cell divides into two. Further division takes place until several hundred billion cells have organised themselves to eventually take the form of the bodily structures and organs of the baby. Within ten days of conception, this tiny cluster of multiplying cells travels down to the womb and after only three weeks, the embryo has a head and a tail. The beginnings of the heart, blood circulation and digestive tract have begun to grow in the fourth week. The arms and legs start budding out during the fifth week.  The brain, eyes, liver and ears are developing in week six and during the seventh week the face, eyes, nose and tongue are quite visible. The fingers and hands are well defined, toes very clear and muscle movement begins by the eighth week. By the tenth week, all the basic structures of the body are in place.    

What I want to look at, in particular though, is the baby's nervous system. A baby's nervous system is already developed at only eight week's of gestation. Neuroscientists have discovered that at eight weeks babies are aware of touch. A baby will react to strokes of a fine hair around its cheeks by moving away from the hair, and from the time of this first reaction on the cheek, sensitivity in all parts of the body progress. In America, proof of these sensitivities has been available since scientists at the University of Pittsburgh began recording them in motion pictures.

Less than two months after conception, the part of the baby's nervous system that has to do with balance and gravity begins to form. This is the vestibular system, which ensures that a baby can readjust itself in the womb, no matter what a mother's position is. Facial expressions have been filmed at fourteen weeks after conception, in response to invasive disturbances of the womb. From fourteen weeks, babies can also taste. Audible crying has also been recorded as early as the sixth month with puckering of the lips, scowling and muscle tension around the eyes.

The foetus grows rapidly after the basic structures are laid down. Three months after conception, the skeleton is clearly defined, eyes and ears are in position, hands are brought together and some babies even suck their thumbs. At four months there is a fully formed mouth and lips and the baby is breathing in amniotic fluid. This liquid breathing ensures that when the liquid is replaced with air, the respiratory muscles will be well developed and capable of the work they will need to do when born. The tiny sacs that store air in the lungs will grow in number and in size throughout pregnancy and for the first eight years of a child's life, which is one of the reasons why children need lots of fresh air when growing. By the twentieth week, a baby's sense of hearing is functioning. A father may be able to hear their baby's heartbeat at this stage and there are sure to be little kicks, jumps and turns. In the months leading up to birth, the baby becomes heavier and develops a layer of fat to help keep it warm after birth. Eventually when the baby is ready to enter the world, she sends a hormone signal to mom's body to activate the uterine contractions in order for the birth process to begin.

There are myths about babies not being able to think and feel. Some nurses and doctors are still telling mothers that their babies don't really feel things; that they will not suffer during medical procedures or feel the separation when taken away from their mothers, yet babies are being traumatised and I have felt this. I have felt it when a baby or child is angry or sad, insecure or frightened. It permeates through their body. Exploration has indicated that babies do a lot of thinking, with or without language. Next time you come in contact with a baby, should you not have one of your own, notice how they get this inquisitive look on their face at times; frown or scream about something, or gurgle away happily. The fact that they are responding at all must show that there is something going on behind those eyes. And talking about eyes, there is that popular saying, 'The eyes are the window of the soul.' They are, because you can tell a lot from looking into a baby's eyes.

I have thought long and hard about how come the myth developed about babies not feeling or being able to think. I was once a baby and so were you. I can think and regard myself as being quite intelligent so if I am intelligent now and I can feel now, then how could I not be able to feel and think when I was so small. Did I just all of a sudden start to feel when I grew up? No, I had to have felt right from the moment when my senses were activated through the growth of the nervous system. If this system was developed whilst still in the womb, then logically all babies are aware of things around them, i.e. they can feel, think, etc, from that moment on.

When I hear people say that babies do not need their mothers, it can hit a nerve or two. Babies lie in their mother's womb for nine months of their life, growing with her, experiencing with her; feeling her love, comfort and support and then, in some cases, whipped away from mom to be placed into a nursery. I am aware that the trend seems to be changing as a lot more hospitals are allowing the baby to be with mom after birth, but for anyone to believe that babies do not need their mothers, I feel is preposterous. When a special and intimate relationship between girlfriend and boyfriend comes to an end, is it not painful? Then how would it be different with a baby and her mother? Research has shown that when a baby lies next to mom after being born, it helps to regulate the baby's own body temperature, metabolic rate, hormone and enzyme level, heart rate and breathing. Babies have heard their mom's voice for most of the pregnancy and need to hear her voice when born, to learn from her sleep cycles, to recognise her body odours (which they incidentally learn in the first week), and facial expressions. They need mom's comfort and love, because even though they can think, feel and experience, they might not understand what is happening around them. They need to be guided and spoken to; to have things explained and shown. They also need to know that mom is alright.

Going back to an infant being able to learn and remember, babies can remember loads of things from before they were even born. In Thomas Verny's book called 'The Secret Life of Your Unborn Child', he recounts the story of a conductor named Boris Brott who discovered that he could play certain musical pieces without looking at his musical sheets. His mother, a cellist, had practised these same pieces over and over during her pregnancy. Other research by psychologists Anthony De-Casper and Melanie Spence at the University of North Carolina proved that stories read before birth could be remembered after birth. They asked pregnant mothers to read 'The Cat in the Hat' out loud, twice a day during the last six weeks of pregnancy. A few days after birth, the babies were given earphones to enable them to hear the familiar story and another unfamiliar one by Dr Seuss. They were given a special nipple that enabled them to change the story heard by sucking faster or slower and ten out of twelve changed their speed of sucking to change back to the familiar story.

Research psychologists have been investigating the memory of newborns and asked mothers to repeat the unfamiliar words tinder and  beguile ten times, six times a day for two weeks, starting a couple of weeks after birth. At the end of this experiment, the infants showed that they recognised the words through eye activity, head-turning, and raised eyebrows. These babies responded to these weird words more than their own names.  

In the first few days together, an infant will be learning from its mother the difference between night and day, however, mother and child need to be together for this to happen. Research has shown that babies that are kept with their mothers learned the difference between day and night in just three days, whilst nursery babies had not learned it after eleven days.

There have been many experiments on infant's being able to learn and I have included only a miniscule amount of the information recorded, but the final conclusion has been noted. Infants are able to learn, in fact they are learning all the time. If there are able to learn, they are able to think and therefore their brains are working full steam ahead.

As for their senses, I mentioned above that sensitivity of touch progresses from the face at eight weeks to virtually all areas by seventeen weeks, which means they can also sense temperature changes. Whilst in the womb, an infant's temperature is normally a degree or two higher than their mothers, so when plunged into a cold hospital delivery room when born, it will be quite a shock. It is amazing what touch can do for babies too. Stroking and massage everyday can help premature and low-birth babies to advance neurologically. Psychologist Tiffany Field organised a touching program in a Florida nursery that took fifteen minutes three times a day. The effect in only ten days of stimulation, which included stroking, caressing, sitting up, moving of limbs and massage, was incredible. The infants increased their weight by an average of 47 percent per day on the same number of feedings and calories. These babies were also more awake, more physically active, reacted better to distracting noises, were able to calm and console themselves better and left the hospital six days earlier than prem or low-birth babies not involved in the program. When tested eight months later, these babies were longer, heavier, had larger heads and showed fewer neurological problems. Amazing what touch and physical activity, rather than isolation, can do!

Babies are also able to taste in the womb. Taste buds start appearing at eight weeks and reach adult form by the thirteenth week. Looking at all the research, it indicates that babies have been tasting for about twenty-five weeks before birth. Studies reflected that when bitter tasting fluid was injected into the amniotic fluid, babies stopped drinking, but when saccharine was injected they doubled their swallowing of the sweet amniotic fluid. This taste preference is usually carried through after birth, and research indicated that babies remembered and learned more quickly from experience when given different flavours. Newborns that were given sweet drops sucked longer, sucked shorter for plain water, and much shorted for the salty drops.

As for hearing, signs of ear development can be seen in your preborn only a week after conception with the intricate design of labyrinths, chambers and brain connections in place halfway through pregnancy. Researchers believe that infants begin hearing from as early as the eighteenth week of pregnancy. There are many stories from pregnant moms as to how their unborn babies reacted to certain sounds. A pregnant lady in Essex, England attended a very loud rock concert. The baby kicked her so hard that she ended up with a broken rib. However, when pre-borns have been played Vivaldi and Mozart there is a definite calming reaction. Sudden noise in a quiet room can even startle a preborn; this has been seen on ultrasound machines.

In the womb, the baby's nose begins to develop a profile around the sixth week and is well formed by the fifteenth. Current research shows that the sense of smell is not as highly developed in humans as hearing and vision, however, the newborn quickly starts recognising certain odours. Experiments, for example, have shown that baby's turn their heads more often to the side of used breast pads instead of unused ones. They can do this a few days after birth.

Sight is probably the most important of all ways a baby is able to connect with its mother. Research has shown that babies are able to use their eyes at birth. It may not be perfect, but it is well advanced and adequate for immediate needs. Babies will be able to recognise their parents, what's more important than that, hey? But really, a newborn's pupils begin to adapt immediately to light intensity. This will happen whether a newborn is premature or full-term and you can see this by their reaction when they thrust their heads back when there is too much light. Some tests show that a newborn can follow objects as well as most adults, taking the same test. Using other methods, research has indicated that, under some conditions, infants focus well as early as one month, with distinct improvements in focus continuing in the first two or three months after birth. It was also discovered through all the research that babies prefer to look at patterned surfaces instead of the plain; at complex, instead of simple; at curved lines instead of straight; at colour rather than black and white; at three dimensional instead of two, and at faces instead of other objects.

So with the latest instruments, scientists, psychologists and other researchers have observed, recorded, tested, filmed and analysed how newborns use their minds, senses and muscles and the feedback is incredible, but what about the individual personalities that babies begin exhibiting? This also reflects that these tiny adults are more than just a pretty face or cute body. Those first smiles, which have actually been recorded in some cases before a baby is born, are not all wind. Every baby has certain facial expressions which individualises his or her own personality. Part of this personality is a newborns ability to pick out its mother in a gallery of mug shots. When faces are not 'right', a baby becomes alarmed and this reaction is extremely personal. This also indicates that a baby remembers its mother.

Many people have had birth memories come up for them later in life. I had two birth memories both whilst I was having craniosacral therapy. The first time I was in my mother's womb, what an amazing feeling, and another time I had just been born. I have written about this latter experience in a separate article which you can access on my website called "Birth Trauma and Craniosacral Therapy". Some people find themselves going back to such memories when treated for certain symptoms, such as headaches, breathing problems, etc; or even trying to find out the cause of certain emotional states of being. This can be done through various treatments, such as hypnosis, psychoanalysis or even craniosacral therapy, to name a few. Children, especially between the ages of two and three when they begin to talk, are known to start recalling birth experiences and asking certain questions they don't understand. I would like to include an extract from The Mind of Your Newborn Baby, about a little two year old who was lounging in the bath and all of a sudden started speaking about things he did not understand about this birth. "Why were the lights so bright when he was new", he asks. "Why was the light circular and intense where he was but dim elsewhere? Why was the bottom half of people's faces covered by a green patch?" This child does not know what green surgical masks are. The only time he could have seen something like this would be during his birth. If you have a child of around two, why not ask them whether they remember anything from their birth. David Chamberlain suggests that when doing so, ensure that the mood is relaxed and that you have their full attention. I personally believe that sometimes not all kids will remember, however, as if the birth has been extremely traumatic, memories can be blocked out, but kids know and remember. Bear in mind that kids will have their own names for certain things; it just depends on how they perceive things to be. One girl said, as written in the book, "There is a snake in there with me…It was trying to eat me but it wasn't poison, wasn't a poisonous snake." She was referring to the umbilical cord.

Anyway, I could go on and on about this subject. Should you find this fascinating, or want to find out more, David Chamberlain's book is very interesting with many other references to research this captivating subject.

Looking at the complexity of how we have been formed as well as the milestones of development whilst still in the womb, I can only reflect and say that if we have undergone this miracle of life then how can we not be intelligent, or feel?