Tuesday, August 29, 2006

Day 148 - The Kick Inside

I wrote yesterday about what happened when I held little M____, our friends' new baby.

K___ held the baby too and something happened to her which was a little odd. It didn't involve bodily fluids though. K___ has held a few babies in her time, principally C_____ and H______, her nephew and niece. Done it lots of times, is not phased by it. In fact, actively likes it. Not expecting anything weird to happen.

As K____ held the baby, our unborn child started to go absolutely mental, kicking like she'd never kicked before. K___ wasn't holding M_____ tightly, certainly not in any way that ours would have felt distressed. She was very calm, she wasn't mucking about with M____ and B_____'s baby, nothing...

The weird thing is that B_____ said that M_____ had herself done a similar thing when she'd been in the womb and B____ had held another baby. I find this incredible. The only way I can think that there could conceivably be any way of the foetus knowing there was another infant outside is by sound. There are - to my (admittedly limited) knowledge - no other ways in which the baby could perceive what's going on outside. K___ has sat with cushions held against her bump, but the baby's not been bothered by it. The baby can't see or smell or touch or taste...

Sound is the only way that I can think the foetus might be capable of detecting what's going on. There is one other possibility that I haven't mentioned, which is that there's simply no connection whatsoever between K___ holding another baby and this intense drumming of feet, but with B_____ reporting the exact same thing, I'm tempted to think there is something happening here. Of course, B____'s report may just be causing confirmation bias. That can't be ruled out.

If there is a connection, it's quite remarkable because there's no way this reaction is a learned one, and that means that there's pretty sophisticated instincts that are already well developed. Of course, it stands to reason that any child of mine is going to be supernaturally intelligent, not to mention incredibly witty, wonderfully creative, deeply humane and stunningly attractive* but even so, this seems to be more than a little bit advanced for such a young age.

We don't know what happened for sure, but we'd be fascinated to hear if other people have had similar experiences.




* Or it might take after me, and be into prog rock.

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