"Parents, doctors, and midwives should be heeding these reports of birth. This book gives an understanding of babies that is essential for adults. Arthur Hastings, former president of the California Institute of Transpersonal Psychology, Palo Alto, Calif."Splendid, delightfully written, and thorough." Asley Montagu, anthropologist and author of Touching: The Human Significance of the SkinPraise for David Chamberlain's previous book The Mind of Your Newborn Baby"An impressive book which challenges the assumptions we make about babies and impels the reader to look at the newborn child with fresh eyes." Sheila Kitzinger, author of The Complete Book of Pregnancy and Childbirth"Alongside of Spock and Brazelton on your parenting bookshelf, make room for a book that sets out to prove babies ... should be recognized for the bright, information-gathering beings they are." San Francisco Peninsula Parent"If babies ever stage a protest march, David Chamberlain will be on the front lines." Sarah Patee, San Diego Tribune"Put a ribbon around this book for every pregnant woman you know...."Audrey DeLaMartre, Minneapolis Star TribuneAbout the AuthorDavid Chamberlain, PhD, is a California psychologist, scholar, author, and international lecturer with over 60 publications and 27 years of leadership in the Association for Prenatal and Perinatal Psychology and Health (APPPAH). In a landmark study of mother and child pairs in 1980, he demonstrated that birth memories were reliable and not fantasies. In 2003, Mothering magazine celebrated David as a "Living Treasure." He was a founding faculty member of Santa Barbara Graduate Institute; in 2006 the institute conferred upon him an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree. In 2007, he was honored at the Gentle Birth World Conference with the Mother Goose Award for his work with mothers and babies. The author lives in Nevada City, CA.Excerpt. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.Interactive, Social Movement in the WombAlthough traditional psychological theory looked for the beginnings of social behavior long after birth, you may already realize how intimate and relational your life inside mother really is. Can a human being ever be closer than thiswoven into her body, your lifelines linked, tucked under her variable heartbeat, memorizing her rising and falling vocal productions? How could you avoid something so close? You live in layered space, not in solitude. Your mother breaks into song! Or tears. Happily or unhappily, she moves through space and you move right along with her. The womb is not an isolation tank. In the course of growing, you encounter more and more of her richness and rhythm, first the inside sounds, then the blend of sounds outside of her including the recurring sounds of other voices nearby like your father, siblings, or household pets, voices directed toward you. Noises from farther out eventually add to the impersonal cacophony of the world of storms, traffic, sirens, or explosions. Babies dont ignore these provocations; they get curious and interested, and participate. They are social creatures. Mothers and fathers are social too: they have their own curiosity and start experimenting with how to communicate with you a few layers down. They may blurt things out spontaneously in their usual adult language, although if they stop to think about it, they tell themselves this is a little crazy because you havent yet had time to learn any language. At certain times of day they may sing to you or read storiessomething slightly less crazy, but possibly entertaining. Dads think up their own weird experiments. One dad used to announce from time to time in a commanding voice, This is your father speaking! With repetition it started to mean something. When he made that statement at birth, the baby immediately turned his head and searched for that voice. They were continuing a relationship established long before birth. Parents using the prenatal enrichment program created by obstetrician F. Rene Van de Carr like learning how to play the kick game. First they have to notice that you have started to kick somewhere. When that is happening, they touch the abdomen where you are already kicking and say, Kick, baby, kick! Babies catch on, and the game progresses as baby kicks in new places being touched. Some parents have even discovered that if they touch in a circle pattern, babies soon learn to kick in a circle! Of course the whole purpose of this is to play together and be socialall within the natural abilities of the baby in the womb. Van de Carr reports an examination he was doing under ultrasound, as Beethovens Fifth Symphony was playing in the background. He observed that the thirty-three-week-old baby was breathing in time with the music. When he stopped the music, the breathing pattern stopped as well. When the music started again, breathing started again, but not in time with the beat. However, after skipping a breath, the baby was again back in cadence with the music. A colleague of mine, by profession a doctor and by hobby a folksinger, often entertained her baby during pregnancy by singing folk songs. She noticed the baby kicked a lot when she hit the low notes, so she would deliberately invent more low notes. Mother and baby were having a relationship, no doubt of that, but it was not the one she assumed. Clarification came about three years after birth when the baby boy finally had words to explain that he was kicking because he did not like hearing those low notes! Consider the heretofore secret life of twins. With the help of ultrasound, we have learned some of the unforeseen dimensions of their intimate life with each other. In 1996, perinatologist Birgit Arabin and colleagues in the Netherlands discovered just how, when, and where twins first touched each other. By systematically observing twenty-five sets of twins at weekly intervals, they found first touches and reactions at seven weeks from conception. Brief contacts of less than three seconds went to an arm, leg, head, or torso. Initial approaches were slow but became faster with practice. Over the next three weeks touch became longer and more complex between their bodies and extremities. In another week came contacts initiated by sucking movementsall this development in a window of twenty-seven days. Arabin watched as lips met lips and recognized it as a kiss. Experts around the world who have an opportunity to observe lots of twins report seeing them hitting and kicking each other; some were boxing, trading blows back and forth with a pause between. Alessandra Piontelli in Milan has written in painstaking detail about her ultrasound observations of a series of singletons and twins beginning in 1987. Her purpose was to see if there was a continuum of human behavior between the prenatal period and infancysomething she proved with great success in a series of publications. Starting about halfway through gestation, she concentrated on monthly hour-long recording sessions and after birth followed the babies annually for several years. She discovered a hidden world of complex fetal behavior clearly revealing a variety of personalities and relationships previously unknown in psychology. Twins Marisa and Beatrice hit each other in the womb and continued to do so after birth! Celia and Mark also had a conflicted relationship. Celia was so much in motion that both parents said, Lets hope she will calm down after birth. Her brother, more restless than active, kept turning and folding his legs tightly while screening his face with his hands. He responded to any stimulation coming from his sister by turning away and burying his face deeply inside a distant corner of the placenta. If she persisted in trying to make contact with him using rather gentle motions of her feet and hands, he responded by violently kicking back. She instantly withdrew as if frightened by his strength. At birth, Marks mother described his facial expression saying his forehead is permanently corrugated; somehow he looks permanently tired and old. At three months of age, when Celia tried to touch him, he always reacted by turning away. At eight months, he was still pushing away his sisters advances, and mother testified he often knocked her out! I cannot think of a more obvious example of the organic relationship between motion and emotion. Finally, lest you form the impression that all twins are aggressive and angry in utero, Piontelli shares with us the charmed relationship of Luke and Alicia. When first observed at the halfway point in pregnancy, in spite of obvious differences in size and agility, the two were a friendly pair. Luke, agile and active in testing out his leg muscles on the uterine wall would periodically turn his attention to his sister. Reaching out gently with his hands to the dividing membrane that separated them, he touched her face, and when she responded by turning her face toward him, he engaged with her in stroking, cheek-to-cheek motions. From this time, the mother and doctor nicknamed them the kind twins. During the following monthly observations, the kind behavior continued. Alicia was always in a more sleepy and passive role, and Luke, smaller but more active, paused in his exercises to approach his sister by touching her face, after which they engaged in a mutual face-to-face stroking. At one point the mother remarked on how they seem to cuddle up together. Look how he strokes her. After birth this agreeable behavior continued with Luke in the initiative, smiling, seeking interaction with his father and mother, as well as his sister. He seemed interested in everything, including music, the piano, and looking into picture books. He was the first to walk and talk and his parents commented on the adult quality of his eye-to-eye contact with them and with his sister. At one year of age both could walk and were beginning to talk; they showed great delight in playing with each other. Mother reaffirmed that they were still kind to each other and touched each other to express their fondness. She reported that their favorite game had become hiding on opposite sides of a curtain and using it like the dividing membrane in utero. Luke would put forward his hand through the curtain and Alicia reached out with her head and their mutual stroking began, accompanied by gurgles and smilesjust as they did in the womb. American psychologist Evelyn Thoman studied premature babies who were in the same age bracket as babies still enclosed in the womb, further documenting the social nature of interactions inside and outside the womb, and the organic relationship of motion and emotion as well. Thoman invented a toy teddy bear that could be set to breathe at a rate to match that of each premature baby during quiet sleep. In an experimental format where some babies had a Breathing Bear, some a nonbreathing bear, and some no bear at all, sleeping babies in these three conditions acted very differently. After three weeks the records showed that infants with breathing bears made significantly more contact with their head, body, arms, or legs than the other sleepers. Showing interest in the presence of a breathing companion, they moved steadily toward it and interacted with itI dare say happily. And the experiment showed another significant result. Babies with bears set to breathe at their own rate of quiet sleep ended up spending greater amounts of time in quiet sleep. Were they not intimately engaged with and being influenced by the companion teddy? In more complex studies with the Breathing Bear as a rhythmic stimulation in sleep, babies at thirty-three to thirty-five weeks of conceptional age showed less wakefulness, more quiet sleep, fewer startles in quiet sleep, and less crying. In active sleep (REM), babies with the Breathing Bears were more likely to smile (positive affect) while those with nonbreathing bears were more likely to grimace (negative affect). Researchers concluded that the presence of a breathing bear facilitated neurobehavioral organization. Because premature babies have left the womb early and no longer have close proximity to their mothers stimulating rhythms, sounds, and movements, there are reasons to think they would appreciate even a small reminder of mother while sleeping in a hospital Isolette. Finally the story of twins Kyrie and Brielle, born twelve weeks before term, reveals not only the keen social attunement they developed in utero but the grave danger of losing it during a crisis in the premature nursery. In addition they dramatize how eloquent body language can be and how powerfully motion and emotion work in sync. At birth Kyrie weighed two pounds and three ounces, while Brielle weighed just two pounds. In their first month of neonatal intensive care, the gap widened as the larger quickly gained weight and slept calmly. Brielle had breathing problems, heart rate problems, and lower oxygen levels in her blood. She began gasping for breath and her face and stick-thin arms and legs turned bluish-gray. Her parents were terrified she might die. The nurse tried everything: suctioning the breathing passages and turning up the oxygen flow but the heart rate continued soaring. Desperate she recalled being told that in Europe, multiples (especially pre-matures) were sometimes double-bedded. After getting the parents permission, she put the sisters together. No sooner had the door of the incubator closed, than the weak one snuggled up to Kyrie and calmed right down. Within minutes her oxygen readings were the best they had been since she was born. As the smaller one dozed, Kyrie wrapped her tiny arm around Brielle. Happily a photo recorded the precious moment, which is how millions of us around the world became aware of this miracle among twins. From that lifesaving moment of reunion, Brielle left the danger zone and started on the road to health. An excerpt from Windows to the Womb by David Chamberlain, published by North Atlantic Books, copyright 2013 by David Chamberlain. Reprinted by permission of publisher. what year are books in the public domain Windows to the Womb: Revealing the Conscious Baby from Conception to Birth
13 of 13 people found the following review helpful. ExcellentBy momof2As a mother of two children, and one who is very interested in prenatal infant development, I found myself entranced by this beautifully refreshing take on human life. When I ordered it, I figured it would be similar to most "what to expect when you're expecting" books and may not provide much depth beyond what I already "knew". I was wrong. I could not put it down. The author seamlessly pulled me along through feelings of curiosity, sheer awe, and near breathlessness. It contained the most fascinating description of life in the womb that I've ever read. I feel this book has completely changed the way I view myself, my children, and everyone I come into contact with. This is not just for mothers or father-to-be, this book is for everyone. Because everyone has very, very personally walked through this journey of conception through birth and can take away something, even just *one* new idea, from this book that will better the world. I can only hope I will experience pregnancy birth another time in my life, and take my newly acquired perspectives into it, fully conscious of the miraculous person within. This isn't one for the Wish List, put this straight in Checkout!10 of 10 people found the following review helpful. Most Remarkable Book on Fetal Life Everyone Disavowed!By William F. Pillow, Jr.Perhaps the most remarkable aspects of this book are its revolutionary empirical details about fetal memories reported by young children and the lucid and entrancing writing style of its author. The first chapters take any uninformed reader through a captivating learning experience of the exciting details of how a human comes to be, written in easily understood prose. Much of the latter part of the book contains anecdotal individual case reports, each followed by brief clinical commentaries. There is no mistaking the significant impact that the research exemplified by this book must have on health professionals as well as the clergy and even pro-life advocates. Prospective parents and other laity will substantially enhance their understanding and appreciation for fetuses as "little humans," especially since traumatic emotional events experienced by parents can be sensed and affect fetuses for an indeterminate future, yet go undetected and unsuccessfully treated with traditional obstetric, pediatric, and psychological care. Worth many times its purchase price!4 of 4 people found the following review helpful. Theories about consciousness will never be the same!By Michael AlvinThis book is a paradigm breaker! Hopefully, it heralds the end of a materialistic science that declares human consciousness to be a product of matter. Dr. Chamberlain provides proof that infant consciousness precedes brain development. He does this by means of modern instrumentation such as ultrasound, which "looks" into the womb, and by identical prenatal memories of mothers and children years after birth. Don't be fooled by the picture on the cover. This book has ramifications far beyond embryology. It will change your mind about the very nature of a human being.The first part of the book describes the wonders of the early months of formation from the time of conception. However, more enlightening information is contained in the remainder of the book, such as scientific studies of prenatal memories and new information on bonding. I was astonished by the recent studies that have been done to demonstrate that consciousness does not arise out of nor is it limited by the infant body. When fully understood, this will be a paradigm shift that will match relativity or quantum mechanics! We are finally receiving the proof that the human being is not just "a bag of bones". No longer will obstetricians be able to conveniently view babies "in utero" as unconscious or semi-conscious beings that can be treated as less than fully human. No longer will scientists be able to view human consciousness as just a second-hand outgrowth of matter.I was so impressed by this book that I will be referring to it in the book I am presently writing about the human life cycle. Thank to Dr. Chamberlain's astonishing research and revelations I have further verification that the consciousness of the human being extends fully throughout his entire life cycle. The bibliography of the book is worth the price alone. I've never seen one done so well.If it were possible I would give this book ten stars! I would recommend it to anyone who wants to have their eyes opened to the reality of human consciousness.