Gestation in humans lasts approximately 38 weeks, 266 days, from conception to birth. The baby is not capable of surviving on its own outside the womb, it is a defenseless being that needs basic care such as food, protection and permanent physical contact.
Birth is not a before and after, a separation between the mother and the baby, but a continuation of that dependence but outside the uterus, which is known as the baby’s exterogestation or the second nine months of “pregnancy .”
Nine months in the womb, nine months out
For at least nine months after delivery, the baby needs to feel the warmth, protection and comfort that he felt inside his mother’s womb as he adjusts to extrauterine life.
The image of the mother kangaroo carrying the baby in her bag will surely come to mind. Kangaroo pups are born with a very incomplete stage of development so they crawl to the pouch in their mother’s womb where they need to spend a lot of time drinking their milk until they are developed.
Human beings are also born underdeveloped and need to continue “gestating” outside the womb. But of course, humans do not have a pouch, that bag that works as an incubator, therefore we have to provide our young with similar care. How? With a lot of physical skin-to-skin contact and upbringing in the arms, carrying the baby in her arms and carrying it as long as possible.
External gestation or exterogestation, what is it?
Just by looking at a newborn baby we can see that it is unable to survive on its own. It needs warmth, food and our protection to know it is safe. Nor can it communicate with words, only crying, nor can it move by itself as other mammals do as soon as they are born.
At the moment of birth the baby undergoes a transformation, passes from life in the womb to a completely different world. It supposes a very big change, therefore, this adaptation must be gradual, it needs to continue feeling inside the mother’s womb while being outside .
The closeness to the mother during the first months of life favors in the baby the regulation of the development of its still immature systems at birth.
Forty weeks is a very short time of pregnancy
40 weeks of pregnancy, 38 from the moment of conception, is a very short gestation time for humans.
Throughout the history of evolution, pregnancy has been reducing its duration . Due to the increase in the size of the brain and the head added to the narrowing of the pelvis when starting standing, human beings have had to reduce the maturity of their systems to be able to cross the birth canal and be able to be born. Human gestation has had to be shortened, causing us to be born defenseless and immature.
Apes are born just two weeks after humans, but their level of development is higher. While the human brain has developed 25 percent at birth, that of the ape has developed twice as much. Throughout life, all our stages of development (childhood, puberty, adulthood) are much longer. Therefore, pregnancy should be too.
According to Portman, to reach the developmental stage of a newborn monkey, the gestation of the human being should be approximately 21 months. Another researcher, Kovacks, set it between 18 and 20 months, while according to Bostok the ideal gestation for a newborn human being would be when quadruped locomotion (movement on all fours) begins, when in theory it would be able to escape danger on its own media. In the human baby this would happen when they begin to crawl, around nine months, that is why we speak of exterogestation as the second nine months .
The baby’s immature brain
The baby is born with a very underdeveloped brain. Other organs such as the heart or lungs have completed their development to allow it to survive outside the uterus, but the brain will finish growing and maturing outside .
At birth, the brain establishes few neural connections and represents only 25 percent of the size it will be in adulthood. In fact, most of the development of the brain occurs outside, especially in the first years of life reaching 1,000 billion neuronal connections by four years , the largest in his entire life .
That is why the experiences lived in the first years of life are key to the development of your brain. Although as an adult you will remember very little of those years, everything you live and the care you receive will largely determine your future life.
At least those second nine months of “gestation” after birth are necessary to minimally complete their development. From that age, between nine months and one year, the baby begins to interact with the world around him, beyond his caregivers.
Beginning to move by himself, crawling and then by his own foot, is the natural evolution of the human being who now begins to feel confident to explore and discover what the world has to offer.
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In Babies and more | The baby’s brain: how to help its proper development (I)
