Pregnant women are often advised on what to eat and how to take care of
their health to nurture their developing babies. But they are rarely
encouraged to get to know their unborn baby's personality. But now
comes Postcards from the Bump, a guide for expectant mothers who want
to bond with their babies long before they're born.
Long-time
friends Ame Mahler Beanland and Emily Miles Terry have a total of five
kids between them. Through their experiences, they say, they developed
a new perspective on pregnancy.
"We recognized that once our
children were born that we knew a lot more about them from just being
pregnant than we actually thought," Terry says.
"It just got us talking about how much you really can have insights into those little personalities," adds Beanland.
For
example, Terry says, her third child, Miles, was comfortable in the
arms of his family members from his first day. Yet, when a stranger
held him, he'd scream. She says it seemed as if he was born already
knowing a lot about his world.
"We have a dog who barks loudly.
My mother remarked, 'Isn't it nice that Miles doesn't wake up when
Willie barks?'" she recalls. "Without thinking I said, 'Well, he has
heard it before.' After those words popped out of my mouth, it made me
stop and think about all the things that he had done and all my
previous pregnancies and how different they were from each other, and,
yet, I'm the same mother. I think that pregnancies' symptoms,
experiences are driven by the baby and the baby's different physical
and characteristics."
Encouraging expecting moms
Since Terry and Beanland are writers and
they knew pregnant women often like to read books on pregnancy, they
decided to co-author a pregnancy guidebook, Postcards from the Bump.
"So
many books out there focus on the process of pregnancy: what you should
or shouldn't be doing. And there is a kind of cautionary or anxious
tone to a lot of pregnancy books," she says. "We really wanted to write
something that really delivers comfort and connection."
They
collected dozens of stories by women who had paid attention to their
babies' movements in the womb and linked that to their personalities.
"There
is a story from a woman whose baby was incredibly calm and didn't move
very much," Beanland says. "She jokes about how there were just enough
kicks and flutters to keep her from panicking. The child today is
incredibly calm and sort of likes to sit on a couch and read a book.
She said, 'I knew without a doubt that I was having a couch-potato.'"
"One
of the first responses that came in was the story of the football
kicker," Teryy adds. "This one is about a baby, when the mother was
pregnant with the baby, he would kick her so hard in one particular
spot. She would even have bruises. Now, I think he is in college. He
was the kicker for his college football team."
Scientific support for the mother-baby connection
The authors include scientific research that supports those anecdotal stories. Some of the findings were surprising, Terry says.
"By
the 28th week in your pregnancy, the baby can taste, hear and see. They
can make faces," she says. "They can cry. [They can do] so much of what
they do outside of the womb after they are born. They are practicing. I
think these days, we're given so much wonderful medical information
about your baby, but it's also important to just sort of relax into the
experience and make your own observation."
Further evidence of a
prenatal mother-child connection comes from The Cat in the Hat study.
Beanland explains that research shows infants recognize their mother's
voice shortly after birth and that their preference for their mother's
voice is based on prenatal memory.
"Basically, what the study
did was have a pregnant woman read The Cat in the Hat by Dr. Seuss to
their bump for six weeks," she says. "In the last six weeks of the
pregnancy, they read it twice a day. Then, very soon after birth, they
had sort of a test where Cat in the Hat would be read maybe by a
stranger and maybe their mother voice reading a different book. Then it
would be like their mothers' voice reading the Cat in the Hat. All
those audio recordings were connected to a pacifier-like contraption.
What they realized is that babies could find the one that corresponded
to their mom's voice reading."
Double the joy
The authors say pregnancy is not
a burden or a phase where women wait, counting down to the big
birthday. Rather, it's an exciting experience, and they offer expectant
mothers some tips for relaxing, enjoying and connecting with their
babies.
"You've got double the reason to be happy and take care
of yourself because if Mommy is happy, baby is happy," Beanland
says."[We suggest] going on date with your bump [baby] and kind of
checking out the playground or exploring the places you're going to
take your baby to once he or she gets here."
"Take a little time to appreciate this process," Terry adds.
Beanland
and Terry encourage mothers to take notes and write about their
pregnancy experience. That, they say, can help them pick up clues about
who their babies are and how they feel. After all, they say, pregnancy
is a journey, during which an expectant mother can enjoy the company of
her baby before anyone else can.