Product Description

Your baby is yet to be born... but she's listening, learning, and aware of the outside world! Traditionally, the world of an as-yet-unborn baby was thought to be an isolated and silent one. It was assumed that, asleep and growing in its mother's womb, the developing baby was incapable of experiencing sight, sound, thought, or emotion. In fact, the truth is very different, as bestselling author Nikki Bradford reveals here. Drawing on the latest research by leading authorities in the field, the author explains how the unborn baby's awareness of the outside world develops rapidly from very early in pregnancy. Did you know that unborn babies respond to sound, and duck away from strong light, as early as 16 weeks? That they have been observed shying away from-and even attacking--an amniocentesis needle at around the same time? That babies follow moving light sources with their hands by 20 weeks? Or that they recognize music and nursery rhymes from 33 weeks? The Miraculous World of Your Unborn Baby not only offers mothers-to-be unique insights into their child's remarkable mental and physical developments in the womb, but also provides wide-ranging information on pregnancy and childbirth for the mother. This information is featured in comprehensive sections on:

• How babies grow, week-by-week: Stunning color photographs enable mothers-to-be to follow the physical development of their baby. Did you know that the first heartbeat can be detected at about five weeks, and that fingernails appear by ten weeks?
• Your pregnancy and birth: Just how does the mother's body cope with it all? Advice and information are provided on every stage of pregnancy.
• What babies can do in the womb: The latest research findings about unborn babies' emotional awareness and learning abilities; the evidence of communication (and telepathy) between babies and mothers.
• What unborn babies know: What babies hear, sense, experience, dream-and remember-about being born and being in the womb. Looks at babies' emotional development, including reactions to their mothers' various moods.

Nikki Bradford has written The Miraculous World of Your Unborn Baby in consultation with leading experts in the field: San Diego-based Dr. David B. Chamberlain, President of the International Association for Pre- and Perinatal Psychology and Health, and arguably the world authority on prenatal psychology; Professor Geoffrey Chamberlain, past President of the Royal College of Obstetrics and Gynaecology in the United Kingdom; and Dr. Sammy Lee, an acclaimed London-based consultant embryologist.

---

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #219976 in Books
• Published on: 1998-09-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 160 pages

About the Author

Nikki Bradford has worked as a health editor and writer for several magazines, including Essentials and Good Housekeeping. Her books include The Well-Woman's Self-Help Directory, Pain Relief in Childbirth, and Men's Health Matters. She also contributed to the Good Housekeeping Complete Book of Parenting and acted as a consulting editor on the bestselling The Hamlyn Encyclopedia of Complementary Health.

---

Customer Reviews

A Midwife's Top Recommendation
There's a new book, The Miraculous World of Your Unborn Baby by Nikki Bradford that incorporates prenatal psychological development and bonding as part of "A Week-by-Week Guide to Your Pregnancy". This is now my current top recommendation about the changes of pregnancy. Overall, it's outstanding.

Some particularly interesting points:

p. 125 - "Labor pain does not come directly from your womb, but is due to ischemia, a lack of blood in the uterine muscles produced by the womb working hard. This hurts for the same reason that a heart attack or angina hurts; lack of oxygen to the muscles, and a buildup of cellular waste products which irritate nerve tissue."

I especially love the following paragraph at the end of p. 123:

"But perhaps the best news of all is that birth memories are something all future parents can influence positively, for their own children. We do not have to repeat the mistakes previous generations have made. We can, by making the transition of newborns into our world as gentle, loving, and respectful as possible, help ensure that their first -- and lasting -- impressions are good ones."

It's only by contrast with the overall excellence that the following points stand out as questionable:

p. 92 - Endorphins too large to cross placental barrier? Morphine is known to cross the placental barrier, and it's known that epidurals in a laboring woman change the baby's level of endorphins at birth. I'd like to see some research behind this claim.

p. 118 - The discussion of due dates ignores the research that shows the average healthy, well-nourished caucasian woman naturally birthing her first baby will give birth eight days after her due date. That means that half of them don't give birth until *after* eight days past the due date.

p. 127 - The picture shows a woman laboring lying flat on her back. This position is almost always significantly more painful to a laboring woman than an upright or side-lying position, and it could possibly cause circulatory problems.

p. 134 - In the discussion of how a newborn experiences birth, there is mention of a fear of dying that may go back to feeling unable to breathe immediately after birth. This section ignores the option of leaving the cord intact to continue delivering oxygenated blood to the newborn during the time it takes to convert to breathing air.

p. 137 - The picture caption describes the baby as having been gently washed, weighed, and diapered before being wrapped in a soft blanket and placed in his mother's arms. This is amazingly backward for a book about perinatal psychology. I feel quite certain that washing, weighing, diapering and swaddling are all much lower on the baby's priority list than being placed in the mother's arms. This caption also perpetuates the myth that newborns are warmer wrapped in blankets. In fact, since newborns have trouble generating their own body heat, wrapping them in layers of insulation keeps them separate from sources of heat, such as their mother's belly. The best way to warm a baby is skin-to-skin on mom's belly, all covered by a blanket. Regarding a Leboyer bath, this may have advantages, but it also has disadvantages in washing the amniotic fluid off the baby; the smell of the amniotic fluid is a clue to the baby of what breastmilk is like, and the more mother and baby continue to smell the same after birth, the better breastfeeding will go.

p. 137 - Another piece of misinformation is the recommendation to "Breastfeed right away if you can." This slogan originated in a time when babies were often separated from their mothers for many hours after birth, and there was an attempt to reduce this time to an hour or less after birth. Unfortunately, this information has been misinterpreted so that mothers are now trying to force feed their babies before they're ready to nurse. Babies are not subtle - they have no manners. When they are hungry, they will let you know. Typically, a baby's first priority is figuring out the breathing routine. Then, the baby wants to gaze at faces to help organize the visual part of the brain. Then, some time later, typically 20-30 minutes after birth, the baby becomes interested in finding the breast.

Contains inaccurate information
Given that this book is written by a health editor, I expected this book to be far more medically accurate than it is. There are numerous errors in the text, the most glaring of which is the author's statement that you can become pregnant within the couple of days leading up to and following ovulation even though a major study reported in a major medical journal two years ago indicated that you have virtually no chance of conceiving after ovulation.

The entire book seems to be based on heresay rather than medical facts. The author says that you can increase your chances of going into labor by eating spicy foods--an Old Wives' Tale that has never been scientifically proven. The Unofficial Guide to Having A Baby would be a far better choice for parents who are looking for medically accurate information.

The photos are also a disappointment. On one of the spreads that talks about the importance of resting during pregnancy, we get a dripping wet woman sleeping in a wet bathing suit! The photos of the developing baby are not nearly of the quality that you can find in Lennart Nillson's book A Child Is Born, a far better alternative for anyone who wants to see photos of the unborn baby.

I have one final criticism: the book was originally published in Britain and wasn't edited appropriately to meet the needs of an American audience.

There are a lot of far better pregnancy books on the market than this one. I give it a total thumbs down.

Title is deceving but generally good
We bought this book for the photos week by week. Instead, it is 4 weeks by 4 weeks and there are not enough unborn baby photos that we expected. Most of the unborn baby photos only cover the first half of the book. There aren't enough information based on week by week. She instead summarizes the whole 4 weeks.

There are some new age or mystical info. She talks about mother-baby communication via hormones and via psychic. She talks about baby dreams.

At 23 weeks, she says baby may cry with sound. But the baby can't cry with sound since there is no air inside his or her lungs.

She address the baby as an "IT" during early stages then calls the baby as she/he or his/hers. We don't like the way most baby books address unborn babies as "IT'S". That baby is a child with personality - an unborn human being. It could also be the fault of the English language having no neutered gender.

The best way is to see any book personally first before buying it.