Chapter-1, The Beginning

Baby develops an active mental life in the womb. Stressed mother, stressed baby. Eat right, stay active, be happy.

An important message that the authors gives about in-utero development during the first half of pregnancy is that "the baby wants to be left alone" in a quite external environment. From baby's point of view, the womb is the best place to be  as it is free of external stimulation. In one of the study that has not been replicated, it was observed that children whose mothers suffered from major nausea and vomiting during pregnancy, as the children reached school age, 21% of them scored 130 or more points on a standard IQ test. If the mother did not have any morning sickness, only 7% of kids did that well. This is only a THEORY and not proven. I do not anticipate any meaningful scientific relationship in this finding.

The author mentions that no commercial product has ever been shown in a scientific responsible manner to do anything to improve the brain performance of a developing fetus. There have been no double-blind, randomized experiments whose independent variable was the presence or absence of the gadget. A corporate approach to market such products is appalling to the research community.

It is very strongly recommended to expectant mothers to take B-complex vitamin folic acid, as it helps in shaping the proper neural tube of the fetus.It is the first thing that needs to be done to aid fetus's brain development. At this point of time, researchers cannot explain about 66.7% of observed birth-defects. Only a 25% of all known birth defects have been tied to an isolable DNA problem. Mother's body appears to have a fail-safe mechanism, if something goes wrong during the fetus's development, her body often senses the trouble and deliberately induces a miscarriage. About 20% of pregnancies end in spontaneous terminations. The known environmental toxins and things that can be monitored, account for only a 10% of birth defects observed in the lab.

Surprisingly, a baby's brain development does not finish complete wiring until he/she is in his/her 20s. Boy's brains may take even longer. In humans, the brain is the last organ to finish developing.

When can your baby hear you, smell you?
The developmental principle to remember is:
The brain spends the first half of pregnancy setting up its neuro-anatomical cell production, while ignoring most well-intended parental involvement (of things like drugs, alcohol, nicotine, etc).

The second half of pregnancy is a different story. Here the brain development moves from mostly neurogenesis to mostly synaptogenesis, the fetus begins to exhibit much greater sensitivity to the outer world. During the second half of pregnancy, the wiring of cells is much more subject to outside influences, including the parents.

Babies remember from inside the womb:
From 4th week: Touch, sight, hearing

From 5th week: smell
From 6th week:balance
From 8th week: taste

4 this proven to help baby's brain development
These are especially important in the second half of pregnancy.
-weight
-nutrition
-stress
 -exercise

Weight:
Baby's IQ is typically a function of his/her brain volume. The brain size predicts about 20% of the variance in baby's IQ scores. Brain volume is related to birth weight. larger babies are typically (may be expected) to be of higher IQ scores. IQ rises with birth weight, upto 8 pounds.

If the BMI of mother is between 25 and 29.9, then the mothers may gain only about 15 to 25 pounds to have a healthy baby. It might be better to add about half a pound a week in the critical second and third trimesters of pregnancy.

For normal weighing mothers and if BMI of mother is less than 18.5, mothers need to gain between 28 to 40 pounds to optimize baby's development. That is equivalent to a pound a week in the critical last half of pregnancy.

From nutritional studies, it is known that between 4 months to birth, the fetus becomes sensitive to both the amount and the type of food mother consumes.

 Eating the right food
When an expectant mother has desires to eat particular foods, it is not the baby telegraphing its nutritional needs. There is some evidence that iron deficiencies can be consciously detected, but the data is not as extensive as desired as need to make this observation a fact.
Expectant mothers feel stressed a lot during pregnancy and the food cravings reflect a learned alleviating response to such stress.

Eating a balanced meal with heavy emphasis on fruits and vegetables is probably the best advice for pregnant women. A source of iron in the form of red meat is appropriate. Iron is necessary for proper brain development and normal functioning even in adults.


According to the author, Ginkgo Biloba is not a neurotonic, it does not improve cognition of any kind in healthy adults-not memory, not visual-spatial cognition, not language, or others. It does not prevent or slow down Alzheimer's or dementia. Best thing at this point of time is probably to get a good night sleep.

Neurons need Omega-3
The two known supplements having data to support an influence on brain development is utero are:
Folic acid taken around conception. The other is Omega-3 fatty acids. Omega-3s are critical components of the membranes that makeup a neuron, without it newrons do not function very well. Humans have hard time manufacturing Omega-3s and have to look for outside source. Eating fish, is a good source. Studies show that if a person does not take enough Omega-3s, they are at a much greater risk for dyslexia, attention deficit disorders, depression, bipolar disorder, even schizophrenia.
Does an increased consumption of omega-3s help in increasing the brain power, especially for the baby? Here the evidence gets decidedly mixed.

One Harvard study looked at 135 infants and eating habits of their mother during pregnancy. The researchers found that mothers who ate more fish starting in the second trimester had smarter babies that those who did not. By smarter, the author meant, babies who performed better on cognitive tests that measure memory, recognition, and attention at six months post-birth.  The effects were not large, but they existed. Consequently, researchers recommend that pregnant women eat at least 12 ounces of fish per week.
What about the mercury content in fish? it appears that the benefits outweigh the harm. The sources of omega-3s are recommended to be from less concentrated fish sources of salmon, cod, haddock, sardines, and canned light tuna.

Avoid too much stress
It is known with certainty that  stress of expectant mothers is not good for babies. This finding results from the study of researchers who studied the babies born during the time of a natural disaster of an ice storm in Quebec in January 4th 1998.

Documented results from the book, if a mother is stressed during pregnancy.
-It can change the temparament of the child, infant may become more irritable, less consolable.
-May lower baby's IQ by an average of 8 points in certain mental and motor inventories measured in a baby's first year of life. Using David Wechsler's 19944 schema, this spread can be the difference between "average IQ" and "bright normal"
-Can inhibit baby;s future motor skills, attention states, and ability to concentrate, differences still observable at age 6. It may damage baby's stress-response system.
-Stress can even shrink the size of a baby's brain.

A review of more than 100 studies in various developed countries confirm these powerful negative effects on prenatal brain development. David Laplante, a lead author pf the ice-storm study has said that they suspect an exposure to high levels of stress may have altered fetal neurodevelopment and influenced the expression of the children's neurobehavioral abilities in early childhood.

3 types of toxic stress

Too frequent:
such as overly demanding jod, chronic illness, lack of social support, and poverty.

Too severe:
such as marital separation, divorce, death of a loved ones, loss of a job, criminal assault, and other events that lead to a loss of control by expectant mothers.

Too much for you
If you have a tendency to be stressed all the time, so will be the womb.

A woman's stress hormones affect her baby by slipping through the placenta and entering the baby's brain. The first target is the baby's limbic system, an area profoundly involved in emotional regulation and memory. This region develops more slowly in the presence of excess hormone. The second target is the braking system, the region that is supposed to control the stress hormones (glucocorticoid) levels after the stress has passed. Excess hormone from mom can mean baby has a difficult time turning off her own stress hormone system. Baby's brain becomes marinated in glucocortoids whose contentrations are no longer easily controllable. The baby can carry this damaged stress-response system to adulthood. The baby may have trouble in braking and controlling her/himself during the stressful phase. If the baby is a female, she eventually affects her baby amd th enext-generation brain shrinks further, it is a vicious cycle. Excessive stress is contagious and parents can get it from children or vice versa.

For optimal development of a baby's brain, mothers should be in a low-stress environment, especially in the last few months of pregnancy. To be mothers can identify the areas of life where they fell out of control and form strategies to take back control. The website resourcing the book:www.brainrules.net has a number od techniques known from research literature to reduce stress. An important one is exercise, in fact exercise is recommended to be a part of living.

A benefit of exercise is a reduction in the time the baby takes to come out of the birth canal. The quicker the baby comes out, the less chances are for the baby's brain damage from oxygen deprivation.

Exercise (especially aerobic) protect an expecting mother against the negative influence of stress by blocking the nasty stress hormones called glucocorticoids. However, doing too strenuous exercises is not recommended as baby can feel and react to mother's motion. During later stages of pregnancy, strenuous exercises that increase mothers hear rate above 70% of maximal rate (=154 bears/min) are to be avoided as they may shut off blood flow to the womb. Elevations of more than 2 degrees Celsius raise the miscarriage and can effect brain and eye development.American college of obstetricians recommend 30 minutes or more of moderate exercise per day.


Key Points:

- In the first half of pregnancy, babies want to be left alone
-Don't waste money on products claiming to improve a preborn baby's development.
-In second half of pregnancy, babies begin to feel, see, and sense.
-Four ways to boost baby development: gaining proper weight, eating a balanced food, exercising moderately, and reducing stress.