Source: TED Talks

Annie Murphy Paul, a science writer and reporter, has recently done research on fetal origins which is based on the theory that our health and our well-being is significantly affected in the rest of our lives by the 9 months in our mother’s womb.

One of the most apparent things we learn is the sound of our mothers voice. As other sounds are muffled from the protection around the baby, the mothers voice is reverberated throughout the body and thus when the baby is born, he clearly recognizes his mothers voice. In fact, he can even recognize things she used to read to the child while he was in the womb.

The way researchers can even recognize if a child responds to something is by his sucking. The slow down their sucking when something interests them. In a study where women read a passage from The Cat in the Hat before the child was born and then again afterwards, babies responded to this same passage.

Paul goes on to speak about the effects of a mothers dialect on the baby’s cry, which increases endearment to the child, the effects of the mothers food preferences, which lets a child know what his environment will be like, and even stress genes that show up in babies that have parents that go through stressful times or are faced with post traumatic stress disorder, during their pregnancy.

Watch the Video Here