Radiant Motherhood/Chapter 13

AT first invisible, with no outer changes to indicate the vital internal processes, from the moment of conception an intense activity has begun within the mother. Sometimes women are aware of the actual moment of conception, and faintly perceive for the first two or three days sensations too delicate to be called pain and yet intense and penetrating as though of the lightest touch upon the inward and most sensitive consciousness. I have read reports of women, and know one personally, who felt the process of conception, although this will probably be generally received with incredulity. The majority of people are less completely cognisant of the voices of their own organism, and perhaps for two or three months are almost unaware that anything different from the usual course of their, life is taking place.

​If, as seems to me unquestionably the best and happiest relation, the man and woman who are creating a child are doing so deliberately, consciously and with acute interest, a mutual knowledge of the principal stages through which their child passes should add greatly to their interest and the intensity of their feeling.

From the first moment of its conception, indeed often for months before this has been possible, their child is to the loving pair a living entity of whom they may speak.

The active egg cell, which is ready for fertilization, is produced in one or other of the two ovaries, which lie internally and cannot be touched or reached in any way without operating upon the mother; they have no direct contact with the outer world. These two ovaries each communicate with the central chamber, which is called the womb or uterus and this is a strong muscular organ, into the walls of which the attachment of the minute embryo fastens, and within this chamber the growing embryo gradually fills the space reserved for it. The womb or uterus has a connection with the outer world through the lower mouth called the os, which opens into the vaginal channel. This os or mouth with its rounded lip can just be felt at the end of the vaginal channel.

Fertilization consists in the actual penetration of the egg cell by the male sperm, the nuclei ​of which unite. As I have elsewhere described (Married Love, Chap. V) the numbers of male sperm provided in any act of union outnumber by millions those actually required, because for each single fertilization one egg cell combines with one sperm cell. The egg cell or ovum is very large in comparison with a single sperm; nevertheless it is itself a minute, almost invisible protoplasmic speck, measuring rather less than 1/120th of an inch in diameter, and roughly spherical in its shape—a minute pellet of jelly-like protoplasm with a concentrated centre or nucleus. The single sperm which unites with it is a still more minute fleck, and is little more than a nucleus with a film of protoplasm round it, and a long cilium or hair-like continuation which it lashes to and fro, and thus propels itself or swims towards the egg cell. Judging by analogy, it leaves this tail outside the egg cell on the mutual fusion. The nucleus of the sperm and of the egg unite in a very complex and precise manner. In other organisms, and probably also in human beings, the entry of a single sperm to the egg cell shuts out the possibility of other sperms fusing with them, because directly it has been fertilized, the egg cell exudes a film of substance which antagonizes the other sperms, and which ultimately forms a filmy skin around itself.

From the moment of the fusion of the nuclei ​of the male and female cells, active changes and nuclear divisions are in progress. The egg cell, which is free, travels slowly to the allotted place in the womb or uterus of the mother, and there it settles down in the tissue of the wall and attaches itself. Until it has attached itself firmly to the wall of the uterus, conception proper has not finally taken place, and a fertilized egg cell may be lost through want of a capacity to attach itself to the womb, or through some nervous or other disturbance of the walls of the womb, which throw it off after it has been attached. The distinction between the actual moment of fertilization (or union of the male and female nuclei) and of the final attachment which secures true conception is an important one, though frequently overlooked. Sometimes the failure to conceive a child may not at all be due to lack of fertility and readiness to unite on the part of the egg cell and sperm cell, but may be due to some nervous or other influence on the wall of the uterus, which consequently throws off the ovum before it has firmly settled into its place there.

A few days after conception, and when the ovum has attached itself to the proper place, a definite zone of tissue begins to form which, growing and altering with the growth of the tiny developing child (which is now called the ​embryo), forms a medium of transmission between it and the mother through which pass the substances used and excreted by the embryo in its growth.

After fertilization, intense and rapid activity takes place in the nuclei of the cells, first in the united nucleus of egg and sperm cell, and later in the nuclei of all the resulting division cells. The nucleus of the sperm cell is supposed to contain twelve chromosomes which go through a formal rearrangement and mingling with the corresponding chromosomes in the egg cell. As a result of the complete fusion and intermingling of the male and the female factors on fertilization, all the resulting divisions of cells which follow derive their nuclei partly from the male and partly from the female nucleus of the parents. Thus, if it were possible to trace the history of every tissue cell in the body of your child, we should see that each nucleus of all the myriads that compose its structure would ancestrally consist of part of the many sub-divisions of the nuclei of both father and mother. Thus to speak of one side of the body as being male in its inheritance and the other female, is the most unmitigated nonsense, though this idea formed the basis of a recent book.

The rapidity with which the first cells grow to form tissues, once they have been stimulated ​by union is very great, and from the ovum, which on the day of fertilization is only 1/120th of an inch in size, the growth is so rapid that it is ten times as big at the end of fourteen days. By that time the length is one-twelfth of an inch, and it weighs one grain. By the thirtieth day the tiny embryo is already one-third of an inch big, and were it practicable, which, of course, it is not, to remove it living from its bed of tissue in the mother's womb and examine it, even with the naked eye, and still more with a magnifying glass, it would be possible to see the rudiments of the legs, head and arms which are to be.

By the fortieth day the embryo is about one inch in length, and the shape of the child, which it is to be, is quite clearly visible. Dark points are to be seen where later it will have eyes, nose and mouth, and there is already a hint of its backbone.

Meanwhile, as may be realized, although to have grown in forty days to the size of an inch from a minute speck 1/120th part of an inch is a great and rapid achievement, nevertheless the existence of a thing one inch big within her makes little outer difference to the mother, and all the earlier weeks and months of the growth of this tiny organism do not yet take more visible effect on the mother's body than to enhance its contour. After the first child ​this effect is less noticeable, and a woman may be unaware that she is about to become a mother. The first sign in a really healthy woman generally is in the form of her breasts, which sometimes begin to enlarge by the second or third week. It is said that the more healthy and perfectly fitted for motherhood a woman is, the sooner her breasts show signs of the effect of the developing embryo but, particularly with a woman who has already borne a child, there may be no external sign until at least three months have passed.

By the sixth week, the limbs and most essential parts of the child are apparent, and there are the minute indications of the beginning of its future sex organs. It is evident, therefore, that if there is any desire to control the sex of the coming child, it is already too late by the sixth week to do anything, were it ever possible reliably to control sex at any time. It is, therefore, apparent that any passionate desire for a child of one or the other sex which the mother may indulge in when she knows she is about to be a mother, say by the third or fourth month, is futile. It may also be injurious (see Chapter XIV).

By the second month, nearly all the parts are fully apparent, even the eyelids are visible in the embryo and a tiny nose begins to project; fingers and toes can be seen, and some ​centres of bone begin to harden, as for instance, in the ribs.

By the third month the embryo reaches an average length of three or more inches, and weighs on an average about 2½ ounces. In this month the sex organs of the future baby are rapidly developing, and indeed are rather unduly prominent in proportion to the other parts which enlarge relatively later.

Between the third and the fourth month, or often not till a little after the fourth month, the active muscular movements of the embryo's limbs can be felt by the mother. The experience of this, like the consciousness of the moment of conception, depends very much upon the sensitiveness and delicate balance of the mother's conscious control of herself.

Some are insensitively, though perhaps comfortably, unaware of what is going on in their systems; others are conscious, not of what is properly going on, but of what is going wrong in their systems owing to disease or maladjustment; but there are others who, in perfect health, are yet so acutely sensitive and conscious that they can at will detect, as it were, the condition of their whole organs. Such women as these will sooner feel the active movements of the embryo than those who are less perceptive. As a rule, medical practitioners estimate that about half-way between the date of conception ​and the date of birth, which should be a full nine calendar months, that is to say about 4½ months from the date of conception, muscular movements of the child are detectable and distinct.

In the third month, however, some women are conscious of the most delicate fluttering sensation.

By the end of the third month, a definite enlargement of the mother's body becomes visible, because not only the actual child within her has to be accounted for in the space among her organs, but all the accessory growth of the chamber which accommodates the child in the womb has to find its place, the womb growing rapidly and containing not only the child, but the large amount of fluid by which the child is surrounded, and in which it partly floats. The visible changes in the mother to some extent depend on the proportion of this fluid which develops, some having much more than others, and it is to this rather than to the actual size of the child for the first four or five months that any outward change is due.

About the end of the third month the soft and cartilaginous beginnings of the vertebral column begin to harden in various centres, and afterwards the hardening of the bones (or ossification) slowly spreads throughout the whole skeletal system. For some other bones in the body, ​however, the hardening is not fully completed by the time of birth.

By the fifth month, the child weighs six to eight ounces, and is from seven to nine inches long. By this timé its movements are very active and almost continuous except when it sleeps. It should be trained to sleep at the same time as its mother, and thus give her rest. My phrase "it should be trained to sleep" may arouse incredulous smiles from medical men, even from mothers who have borne children, but it is not impossible to train a child even so young as an unborn embryo, strange as it may sound. From about this month (the fifth) to the time of birth, the child appears to have a strong and definite personality, and sometimes, in some strange and subtle way, it seems possible to communicate with it. If there is that sweet and intense intimacy between mother and father which there should be if the full beauty of parenthood is to be realized, the child is apparently to some extent conscious of the nearness of its father, and I know at least of one or two couples who spoke to their coming child as though it were present, and who, by a touch of the hand could to some extent control and soothe it so that it would sleep during the night when the mother desired to sleep.

About the fifth month the actual nails begin ​to grow, although the local preparations for their growth took place much earlier.

After the fifth month, the child grows rapidly in weight, in the sixth month weighing nearly two pounds and during the seventh nearly three.

If it is placed in the best possible position, its head would be directed downwards, and it should be lying so that its arms and legs are tucked in much as a kitten curls up when it is asleep. It will move, however, sometimes completely round, entirely altering its position.

By the eighth month it weighs about four pounds and averages perhaps sixteen inches or so long. It should by this time be very active, so that its movements are not only strongly felt by the mother, but are externally quite perceptible.

By the ninth month, at birth, the child weighs between six and eight or more pounds. It is better for the mother that it should not be too heavy, as, unless she is a large and strongly built woman, the actual weight of the child becomes a great strain upon her, however strong she may be.

A child may be born during the seventh month, and children born during the seventh month live and have sometimes even grown up learned and important men. Sir Isaac Newton is an illustration of a premature child. Usually, however, a seventh month infant is terribly ​handicapped; its skin is not yet fully developed, and in many respects it is quite unfitted to face the world.

Many claims are made that a child is seven months at birth which are based on the miscounting of the date of conception or a desire to conceal a pre-marital conception. When one is shown, as one sometimes is, a bouncing, healthy, ordinary baby, and told that it was "a very forward seven months child," those who know can only smile or sigh, according to the circumstances, for an ordinary, healthy, bouncing baby with nails and well formed skin has never yet been generated in seven months.

The seventh month is the time of greatest danger for a late miscarriage, and many have been the diappointments of parents who ardently desired a child, but who lost it through premature birth at the seventh month. I have often wished to know why this should be so, and have found no satisfactory answer or indication of any scientific reason for this, but when revolving all the possibilities of ancestral reminiscence, it occurred to me that possibly our earlier ancestors, ancestors in fact so early as to be scarcely human, were born at the seventh month. I was, therefore, interested to find that for some of the monkeys seven months is the date of normal birth. Possibly some such ancestral characteristic may make the seventh month a ​critical time in the development of the human embryo, a time when it inherits the reminiscence of the possibility of separating itself from its mother and coming into the outer world.

The times, moreover, when birth is most liable are those few days in each month which correspond to the regular menstrual flow in the woman, the periods which would have taken place at each twenty-eight days had not the child been developing. It is, therefore, often desirable, particularly for the later months, for the woman to take one or two days of complete rest, or even to remain in bed during that dangerous day or two, so as to minimize the possibility of a miscarriage.

The same applies of course to some extent to the eighth month, but curiously enough, miscarriages in the eighth month appear to be less frequent. It is also popularly said that it is more difficult to rear a child born in the eighth month than one born in the seventh, though this does not appear to be true.

The last week or two of the child's antenatal existence are used by it in finishing itself off; growing its tiny shell-like nails, losing the downy hair which covered its body earlier in its existence, and in a sense preparing itself, and particularly its skin, for contact with the outer world which is to come. Its movements are very active, and if it is in the most perfect ​position, the head tends to sink deep down towards the canal approaching the circle of bone through which it will have to pass (see Chapter II).

The question is often asked as to which is the time when the embryo is most sensitive to outward impressions, but as yet there is no sufficient body of evidence to show that at any particular time more than another (unless it be on the actual day of conception, see Chapter II) is the power of influence greater than any other.

Is it possible to pre-arrange, to determine the sex of the child which is voluntarily conceived? Since earliest human experiences have been recorded, this has formed the theme of some writers and thinkers, and a variety of opinions have been expressed, theories propounded, and rules for the production of a girl or boy at will have been given. Each of the views, however, still remains far from being established, and damaging exceptions may be found to every theoretic rule. The impartial observer must feel that we are still unable to control the sex of the child.

There are three main theories on this subject: (a) one is that the nature of the child which will be produced is already pre-determined in the ovum and sperm cell before they have united; (b) the second theory is that the critical moment which settles the sex of the future offspring is ​the moment of fertilization and the changes in the nucleus immediately resulting from it; (c) and the third theory is based on the view that the differentiation of the organs, which makes the difference in sex, take place at some stage in the embryo's development after it is already a many-celled organism.

The first named theory lies behind the advice which varies around the theme that according to whether the conception takes place from the egg cell grown in the right or the left ovary and testicle so will the child be a boy or a girl. Instances of the desired child proving to be of the sex "arranged for" by following out some such methods are of comparatively frequent occurrence, but to the scientist are completely counter-balanced by other and negative results.

The second and third theories do not offer the same explicit application in practical advice. But all the practical advice, on whatever basis it is builded, appears to me to be laid on insecure foundations. In my opinion, the complexities of the factors which determine sex are such that it depends much less on the outward and visible nutrition of the mother, than on the inner and almost inscrutable quality of the nutrition of the ovum and spermatozoon before and immediately after fertilization has taken place.

That sex, even in some vertebrate creatures ​is actually controllable through nutrition can be easily demonstrated with a batch of frogs' eggs. These can be divided into two portions and by simple differences in the feeding of the young tadpoles male or female frogs can be obtained; the richly nourished ones produce the female frogs, those on sparser diet the male. The human embryo, however, developing in and through its mother, will depend to some extent on her diet, but in a much less direct way, for, as all know, the actual nutrition of the system does not depend merely on the quantity and valuable nature of the food taken into the mouth; it depends equally or even more on the digestive power, on the circulatory system, even on the mentality of the person who eats, and to add still further to the complexity, the tissues and organs of one part of the body may be receiving fully sufficient nutriment, while owing to some hindrance or difficulty some other tissues may be wasting and under-nourished. It is consequently necessary before we can theorize, to determine, even in the healthiest woman, whether or no a very rich and abundant nutriment is reaching the developing embryo in its earliest and most critical days, for, on the other hand, just in this critical time, a woman relatively ill-fed and in relatively poorer health may be digesting her simple diet well and may be so stimulated as to provide for the minute develop​ing embryo a richer and more nutritious environment than her better fed sister. Consequently, even if, as I incline to believe, the pre-determination of sex depends on the nutriment procurable by the early dividing cells of the embryo, it is still almost beyond the realm of scientific investigation or of human control to determine whether or not the embryo is surrounded with such stimulating food as will produce a girl, or the rather sparser diet which will produce a boy.