Unwanted in the Womb
Does an embryo know whether it is wanted or not?
Few experiences compare with the oneness between mother and her unborn baby. The connections embrace mind, emotion and sensation. In this intimate world, babies are vulnerable to maternal thoughts. According to Dr David Chamberlain, it is a stroke of violence when the pregnant mother does not want the child. Emotional separation occurs.
The consequences of the unwanted child seem to be compounding. There is an epidemic of unwanted children. As the poet said, "the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world." In the case of unwanted child is there a hand to rock the cradle? Most of our social challenges result from children being born without bonding -- children born unwanted or without a family. No wonder they are angry and violent. These children must take it out on somebody. They attempt to fulfill their needs in some way or another, perhaps with drugs or guns. Gangs are a poor substitute for parental bonding, however gangs give a sense of power and belonging. Without that original bonding experience, these children substitute power for safety.
Fortunately these early imprints and their effects can be changed with awareness. If parents and professionals have this knowledge, pathological patterns can be prevented or healed. Although we cannot always have a perfect pregnancy or birth, we can learn to avoid long-lasting damaging effects. The earlier the treatment, the easier and quicker the healing.
Trail of Sorrows
Mothers who experience an unwanted or mis-timed pregnancy are typically unwilling to answer their now grown-up child's question, "Was I born from an accidental pregnancy? Did you want to have a child?" Since many children never know the answer to that question, the findings of modern research on unwanted pregnancies is instructive.
Suppose a baby is unwanted emotionally or is physically rejected by the mother. The baby's cells will react, laying the seeds of fear and mistrust at a visceral level. The experience is a biochemical jolt of terror which imprints the organism at a cellular level. As Bruce Lipton says, "The melody is laid down in the womb. Later the words must fit the melody." The intellect assigns meaning and gives words that fit the physical/emotional reaction.
Babies in the womb know the destructive impact of rejection. Children born to mothers who did not want them typically find themselves on a trail of sorrows according to a study which compared children who were unwanted at conception and during gestation versus children of mothers who had accepted their pregnancies. This landmark study researched children in three European countries over a thirty-year period (Sweden, Finland and Czechoslovakia). The mothers were repeatedly denied requests for abortions and were forced to bear and raise children they did not want.
Goteborg, Sweden
Psychologists observed the lives of the 120 unwanted Swedish children over a twenty-five year period. These children experienced greater psychiatric problems, more delinquency and poorer academic performance compared to matched control subjects.
Northern Finland (Oulu and Lapland)
Psychologists analyzed unwanted children up to the age of sixteen. The unwanted babies were smaller in weight and length at twenty-eight days after birth. They had a higher infant mortality rate, higher incidences of handicaps such as cerebral palsy and mental retardation, and a greater proportion had been born prematurely.
At eight, the rejected babies had more difficulties in school, needed more guidance from teachers and were rated poorer in verbal performance.
By fourteen, the unwanted children had lower IQ scores. Physical growth was poorer and school performance significantly lower.
At sixteen, the unwanted children were more reluctant to attend school, desired to leave at the earliest possible age, and found little purpose in completing their studies. Relationships with teachers and classmates were more troubled.
Prague, Former Czechoslovakia
Psychologists analyzed unwanted children in Prague from birth to early adulthood. By age nine, the rejected children required more medical care for acute and long-term illnesses. They were more stubborn, naughty, bad-tempered, deviant and lower in academic achievement. Schoolmates often rejected them as friends.
At fourteen, they were more prone to be hyperactive and less sociable. School performance suffered. Many opted to drop out of school. Relationships with parents deteriorated.
By twenty-three, the unwanted children consumed more black coffee, beer and smoked more cigarettes. They experienced a greater degree of dissatisfaction, unhappiness and problems. They worried about happiness and life-style. Minor stressful situations overwhelmed them. Many needed psychiatric care.
They experienced repeated disappointments with love relationships and less satisfying marriages. Women reported more unwanted pregnancies, and required more time to develop a close relationship with the unborn child. Many mothers desired to return to work as soon as possible -- at the end of the paid maternity leave (two years).
The unwanted children had almost three times the risk of showing up in the criminal register. This finding correlates with studies showing that rejection and post-partum separation paves the road to violence.
As Dr David Chamberlain points out, this research on unwanted children in three European countries over a thirty-year period has uncovered the lethal consequences of the mother's negative thoughts and proves how very early rejection became a template for life. These studies are significant considering that nearly 50% of the pregnancies in the U.S. are unplanned.
Rejected in utero
Unwanted children need not wait until childhood for a bad home situation or another cause to make them neurotic. The damage has been done for them before they have even seen the light of day as research illustrates:
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USA and Greece -- Planned and welcomed babies showed higher levels of cognitive processing and greater attachment to their mothers at three months of age than unplanned babies.
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Dr David B. Chamberlain -- Unwanted babies are 2.4 times more likely to die within the first month of life.
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Dr E. K. Turner -- Illegitimate babies tend to be characterized by increased restlessness, excessive crying, irritability, vomiting and frequently loose stools.
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Dr Ann L. Coker -- Women reporting an unwanted pregnancy were more than two times more likely to deliver infants who died within the first twenty-eight days compared with women reporting accepted pregnancies. The unwanted children suffered greater abuse from their parents as well as delayed cognitive and social-emotional development.
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Dr Duncan Leys -- Four of the six children in a psychiatric study on Infantile Acrodynia were unwanted. Symptoms of the infants experiencing this illness were: loss of appetite, insomnia, moodiness, purple hands, accelerated pulse, excessive perspiration, and cold hands and feet. Their arms and legs become limp and they desired to be carried about.
Two of the children were the result of a failure in birth control. One child was conceived before the parents' marriage and both grandmothers feared a scandal in their respectable families. Another child was born to a mother of six children who desired no more.
Violence in the Amniotic World
We assume because we have mature bodies that we are grown up. Yet many people are emotionally blocked due to traumas that happened in the womb or at birth. We must become aware of the cause and effect connections between pre- and perinatal pain and trauma to later behavior. Until we do, we will not prevent or correct it.
We gain a deeper understanding of people when we know that they had been unwanted in the womb. Such a person bears a special stamp of misery or disharmony in his fate under which he must suffer throughout life. Dr Christiane Northrup believes that people who have been gestated and born under circumstances in which they are not wanted feel an existential depression. Reports from several of Dr Northrup's patients follow:
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A female patient said, "Recently I experienced an emotional healing session in which I realized that I had never felt safe in my mother's womb. I was not wanted. I have been trying to compensate for this my entire life by studying, becoming a physician and having a series of relationships. None of this fulfilled a need that had been within me since I was in the womb -- the need to be well loved and desired as a child. My mother's heartbeat, so close to my own, did not comfort and reassure me. Now she is deceased and I finally miss the mother I never had. I have forgiven her. She was doing the best she could. She never had a chance for herself."
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A patient explained, "I feel ashamed for breathing air and for taking up space. I have a sense of not belonging, that I am causing someone pain simply by being here. I have felt this as far back as I can remember. I always knew that I had been unwanted."
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A patient recalled, "I know I was conceived during my mother's grief for a son who died nine months before. I remember taking this on in utero. I vowed to try to make it better for her. I've spent sixty-four years trying. It has never worked."
Long and short term consequences of the unwanted child in the womb have been reported by a number of researchers:
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Dr Andrew Feldmar -- Four adolescents repeatedly attempted suicide at the same time each year. Their suicidal compulsion occurred each year around the time their mothers had attempted to abort them --something these self-destructive youths had never consciously known.
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Dr Norbert Glas -- The destiny of one particular unwanted child was difficult from the beginning. His mind was deranged for many years, he suffered from various ailments, and "he always felt himself to be a stranger -- not at home." Perhaps that is why he loved to talk to foreigners, learn their language and longed to travel to other countries.
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Dr Lester W. Sontag -- A thirty-five-year-old woman became pregnant and had expected to marry the child's father until she suddenly discovered that he was already married. Her severe family made her pregnancy even more miserable. From the beginning, her child was characterized by hyperirritability and severe feeding problems.
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Dr David B. Chamberlain -- Studies of violent criminals reveal that they often have poorly functioning brains. They were constructed under adverse conditions when they were in their mother's womb. Evidence suggests that criminal behavior is a clinical disorder resulting from structural and metabolic problems in the prefrontal area, as well as from other brain injuries and dysfunctions. Juveniles on death row, for instance, show a pattern of neurological impairment, paranoid misperception, hypervigilence and low IQ's.
Researchers appreciate that a combination of factors determines violent criminal behavior, however we must take note that brain-based origins of violence begin in the prenatal period.
The Toll of War on Fetal Development
People who are in utero during wartime exhibit instabilities which are not wholly due to the socially disruptive effects of the aftermath of war according to Dr. Ashley Montagu. The emotionally disturbing experiences associated with war affect the pregnant mother and the potential of her unborn child as evidenced by the following examples:
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Jacob Clusius (1812) -- Malformations in children in utero during war time increase in frequency.
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Gustav Freytag -- Regarding the Thirty Years War: "The effects of such a life, full of uncertainty and terror, exercised upon the minds of country people were very dire. One observed the signs of terrible misery in numerous malformations."
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Germany -- The average malformation rate for the period 1933-1939 when Hitler assumed power nearly doubled that which prevailed during the final seven years of the democratic Weimar period.
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Dr de Saull -- There was a marked rise in the number of malformations following the siege of Paris in 1870-71.
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Finland - A study revealed that pregnant women who experienced the stress of their husbands' deaths during WWII birthed children with psychiatric problems.
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