Pre-Birth Intelligence

I began reading a fascinating book this week about babies and what is proven to work best in terms of raising them from pre-birth to age 5.  The fascinating part about the book is that it is based upon years of research by a molecular biologist and other scientists who have been studying what happens in a babies brain.  The book itself is called "Brain Rules for Baby" by Robert Medina.  As I have just started the book, I only just the passed the section on pregnancy and just started into the life of a newborn.  So far, the author has debunked a series of myths that relate to an infants time in the mother's womb and has related what is proven to work to bring to term a healthy, happy, baby.  So what are the myth's debunked?  Essentially, anything that parents try to do to increase a baby's intelligence while it is still in the womb, such as playing Mozart, reading to it, or any other activity that is "supposed" to raise a baby's IQ, won't do anything.  What a baby really wants in the womb is to be left alone.  During that time, as we know, a baby is growing at an astounding rate, especially its brain, and any sort of intervention or outside stimulus will not aid in assisting it.  At certain points, the baby is forming 8000 new neurological connections a second.  Astounding if you take time to think about it.  Further, it is quite fascinating how the brain develops in association with the different senses.  The baby's brain forms separately from the senses; the eyes, ears, and nose all forming on their own and connecting during the second half of pregnancy.  Even by the end of pregnancy, however, the baby's brain is not fully developed in order to ensure that it can pass safely through the birth canal.  Throughout the first year of life and beyond, the baby's brain is still forming all the neurological connections it needs.

There are only four things that are proven to assist the baby's development inside the womb and these are: 1) weight, 2) nutrition, 3) stress, and 4) exercise.  These are all fairly simple things that most women already know, but they are the only proven things to help.  The first is obviously the mother's weight, which should remain at a healthy level.  But accompanying that is the baby's weight.  It has been shown that a baby's IQ increases with its body weight up to 8 pounds and over 9 pounds it is actually shown to decrease.  The second is to obviously maintain a healthy diet.  The only two supplements that have been proven to aid in helping a baby's brain develop properly are B-folic acid and Omega 3 fatty acids.  Aside from that, it needs exactly what the mother needs to survive, nothing crazy.  The third should also be fairly obvious and that is to keep stresses to a minimum.  The more stress a mother experiences during pregnancy, the more it will affect the baby both during pregnancy and later in life.  The fourth is exercise.  Exercise must be kept moderate and anything excessive will actually harm the baby.  There is so much more detail in the book that I just simply couldn't get into here because I don't have the time, and the author does a much better job at explaining all of this than I do.  So after reading all of this, you must be wondering, why am I writing about it? 

Well, watching my wife go through 9 months of pregnancy and not reading this until now, I found it interesting to look back and compare what my wife did with what the book says should happen.  It turns out my wife did a really good job of following these four criteria without even knowing it.  We had done some research, but nothing as extensive as this book provides.  We did read a little to our son, but it wasn't in an effort to boost his IQ, but more in an attempt to have him recognize our voices before he came out of the womb.  I also just found it amazing to read about how exactly a baby's brain develops, starting as soon as four weeks after conception.  Reading this book continues to prove how a fetus really is a human even though some people continue to think that this is not the case.  To hear how all the different body parts develop in accordance with the brain and how all the neurological connections take so long to develop really drives home the importance of a healthy pregnancy.  As I read more in the book, I will pass along the information that I get in a condensed version so that any young mother's out there can hopefully use it with their own children.  Even for the older, experienced mother's out there, it might be interesting to see what is being proven now compared to when you were pregnant.  In any case, to read more in detail, check out the book.