We
rightly think of newborns as helpless creatures dependent upon the care they
receive from the adults in their lives.
However, in the past five days I was reminded by two newborns (a six
week-old and a three month- old) and two medical doctors (my uncle and my
cousin) of the remarkable set of reflexes given to infants that help them adapt
to life outside the womb and survive in it.
Here are
just a few of the beneficial reflexes newborn are born with:
- While the developing infant has lungs,
she does not need them until birth. The breathing reflex “even before the
umbilical cord is cut”[1]
allows her to make this transition to a world with air. The ability to sneeze, hiccough, cough
and thrash are also vital to breathing in newborns.
- A newborn has no experience with eating
through its mouth. Yet when a
baby’s cheek is stimulated, he turns in that direction, opens his mouth
and begins to suck anything that touches his lips. An additional aid to the newborn is
that right after birth, his mother’s breast smells like amniotic fluid,
the familiar environment that the baby has known. In my cousin’s words, “It smells like
home!”
- The proximity of our windpipe and
esophagus makes choking a dangerous possibility even for adults. The gag reflex begins in newborns and,
thankfully, never leaves us.
- Newborns can lose heat rapidly, so
parents are given instruction about swaddling them and guarding their
temperature at all times. However,
tucking legs close to the body, shivering and crying are reflexes that
enable a baby to conserve heat.
I remember being
impressed watching the news in 1985 after the devastating earthquake in Mexico
City. Up to a week after the tremor,
the survivors that were found were newborns.
How is this even possible? According
to a New York Times article at the time, pediatric specialists “generally attribute it to the fact that
newborn babies have an excess of body fluids and are metabolically prepared for
stressful events at the time of birth. In addition, because the nature of their
entombment was somewhat similar to being in the womb, doctors have speculated
that the infants probably experienced less of the terror and shock that can so
quickly drain away the life of an adult in a similar situation.”[2]
We all began our
lives so vulnerably, but how amazing that we were designed to rise to the
challenges before us. It is no cliché
that the birth of a child is laden with miracles.
[1] http://www.reocities.com/route66ok2000/devpsych5/devpsych5.html;
chapter summary of pages 130-136, point 8.
[2]
http://www.nytimes.com/1985/10/16/world/mexico-s-entombed-babies-win-the-fight-for-life.html
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