Stress Free Mom, Stress Free Baby

Emotional Trauma in the Womb | World of Psychology

The caller complained, “I’ve been sad all my life. I’ve been to many therapists and none have been able to help me get rid of my sadness. Do you think you can help me?

Since I have seen many similar cases like this before, I told the caller, “I have a good hunch on what is going on. Come on over and lets see if I can help.” After briefly treating the person, the sadness was gone and it has stayed that way ever since. I have treated hundreds of these situations where individuals have been able to experience release of seemingly hopeless issues. What has made the difference?

There is a growing body of research showing that babies in the womb feel, taste, learn, and have some level of consciousness. One study had babies in the womb receiving “vibroacoustic stimulation” (Gonzalez-Gonzalez et al., 2006). That is a fancy way of saying sound waves were transmitted. For comparison purposes, there was also a control group that did not receive the treatment. After they were born, the babies who had received the stimulation were again given the same treatment. The result was that these babies recognized the signal and tended to calm down after receiving the signal. The researchers concluded that fetal life is able to learn and memorize with this capacity lasting into neonatal life (post-birth).

In other research, Anthony DeCasper and William Fifer created a nipple that was connected to an audio device (Kolata, 1984). This nipple test was given to 10 newborn babies. If a child sucked in one way they would hear their mother’s voice. Sucking in a different pattern would cause the child to hear another woman’s voice. The researchers found that the babies sucked in a way to hear their mothers. The same experiment was done using the sound of the mother’s heart beat and that of a male voice. The result was that the babies sucked in such a way as to hear the mother’s heart beat more often than the male voice.

DeCasper later did another test where he had sixteen pregnant women read a children’s book. They read the book out aloud twice a day for the last 6.5 weeks of their pregnancy. Once born, the babies were given the nipple test previously mentioned where they could listen either to their mother reading the original children’s book that was used or another book. The babies sucked to hear the original children’s book. What DeCasper concluded was that a prenatal auditory experience can influence auditory preferences after birth.

An author and well known obstetrician, Christiane Northrup (2005) shares that if a pregnant mother is going through high levels of fear oranxiety she creates a “metabolic cascade.” Hormones known as cytokines are produced and the mother’s immune system is affected, including her child’s. Chronic anxiety in the mother can set the stage for a whole array of trauma based results such as prematurity, complications of birth, death, and miscarriage. The opposite is also true. When the mother is feeling healthy and happy, she produces oxytocin. This is often called the molecule of belonging. The presence of this component creates feelings of bonding and strengthens immunity in the baby. Neurotransmitters moving inside the mother’s body creates a chemical and physical imprint on the baby’s brain and body. The message imprinted is that there is safety and peace. The baby feels secure and taken care of.

Can a baby learn while in the womb? The research seems to point in that direction. In terms of mental health, can this be a clue to psychological issues adults exhibit? In some cases, I think so. I feel this way, not because I have done peer-reviewed research on the matter, but because of the hundreds that I have treated for their fetal life traumas. They experienced significant or total reduction of their negative and dysfunctional issues. Many of these patients had previously exhibited spontaneous and abrupt feelings of anger, fear, sadness, loneliness, hyper-vigilance and even co-dependent enablement.

The next time you experience one of these emotions and you cannot figure out where it came from perhaps it came before your physical birth. You may have had a detached mother or a scared one. You could have had a mother that did not want to get pregnant and resented the father. Maybe your mother was depressed and lonely. Hopefully, you had a happy and content mother who nurtured you in her heart and enjoyed having you in her life.

References

Gonzalez-Gonzalez, N. L., Suarez, M. N., Perez-Pinero, B., Armas, H., Domenech, E., & Bartha, J. L. (2006). Persistence of fetal memory into neonatal life. Acta Obstetricia et Gynecologica, 85, 1160-1164. doi:10.1080/00016340600855854

Kolata, Gina (1984). Studying learning in the womb. Science, 225, 302-303. doi:10.1126/science.6740312

Northrup, C. (2005). Mother-daughter wisdom. New York, NY: Bantam Books.

38tweetsTOP5Kretweet Samuel Lopez De Victoria, Ph.D. is a psychotherapist in private practice. He is also an adjunct psychology professor at the Miami Dade College in Miami, FL. He can be contacted through his web site at http://www.drsam.tv/.

Pelvic Floor Preparation for Birth

Contrary to popular belief, we are NOT walking around with weak pelvic floors as some of us have been told. If our pelvic floors were not functioning correctly we would not be standing, let alone walking.

Our pelvic floors function whenever we move as part of the total symphony of muscle movement in our bodies. What we do need to do is become more aware of this area, and be conscious of how we use it.

One of the best times to become acquainted with this area is during pregnancy. It is usually at this time that most of us realize we have pelvic floors and that we need to be exercising them!

Most pregnant women are instructed by their health care providers to begin an exercise named “kegels”, which is in essence, “pulling up your pelvic floor”. In order to find these muscles, women are guided towards stopping the flow of urine, and by doing that hopefully, find their pelvic floors. While this is true to a certain extent, what we are literally finding is one small part of our pelvic floors, namely, the sphincter muscles. These are the muscles that form a ring around the urethra and the anus, closing the holes when contracted, thereby providing some form of continence.

Kegels are important up to a point but we need to be working the pelvic floor muscles more functionally. And it is easier than you think.

During pregnancy, a woman should be aiming for preparing her body for the labor and delivery of her baby. This isn’t a good time to be working out hard and trying to stay in shape. This is a time of releasing and opening the body in order to facilitate the changes that are taking place in the body. This is especially true of the pelvic floor which is paramount in helping expel the baby out of the birth canal.

The pelvic floor will be better able to do its work of pushing the baby out, if it is both strong AND flexible. The pelvic diaphragm or levator ani muscles wrap around the baby’s head to help support it on its journey out of the womb. If the mother has been concentrating on keeping this area strong, chances are that the pelvic floor will not be able to stretch enough to be functional.

The women most likely to be in this category are the elite athletes, dancers and fitness/pilates instructors. A balanced workout that includes both toning and stretching of the pelvic floor is going to be very beneficial, especially for those women looking to have a natural birth.

In order to realize just how simple it is to work the pelvic floor muscles, you must first have an understanding of where they are. If you just think that one part of these muscles attach from the tailbone to the pubic bone and then another set attach from sit bone to sit bone, you will know that certain movements will work these muscles without much effort on your part.

The Pelvic Diaphragm or Levator Ani muscles attach from the Pubic bone to the Coccyx. These muscles contract from back to front.

 

Pelvic Tilts: This exercise pulls the pelvis into a posterior tilt. In order to do this the pelvic diaphragm will contract towards the pubic bone and aid in the movement. When done on the ball, the effect on the pelvic floor is intensified. During pregnancy this is one of the exercises used to tone the pelvic floor.

The Uro genital triangle. Some of the pelvic floor muscles in this layer attach to the sit bones. The muscles contract towards the midline.

Using the breath to activate the pelvic floor muscles.

Breathing is a great way to activate the pelvic floor and can be used as a warm up to a Pilates session.If you think about the sit bones gently pulling together on the exhale, you have essentially activated the pelvic floor.

• Lie supine with the knees bent, feet hip width apart and place both finger tips on the sit bones.
• Inhale into the fingers using verbal cuing to indicate the breath flowing through the pelvic floor.
• Exhale and initiate the out breath by visualizing the sit bones coming together
• Repeat desired number of times