12 years ago
Pictured: One baby of the three sets of twins born in our church last year.
It was July 25, 1997. The delivery process had been long and late into the night. We were so tired, but so excited about the new person in our family - our first-born. I had come into the room and our son was with us looking off into the distance. As I began to talk with Michele, he slowly turned his head in my direction and began looking for me. He recognized my voice! So many times before he was born I had talked to him in the womb. I read stories. We talked to him and called him by name. Now he was in the room and he heard a familiar voice.
Recently, there have been some studies that have been gaining some attention. The Washington Times reported today on a study indicating that fetuses have memory. They used sounds that the baby-in-the-womb could hear and observed their reactions. Then over time, the babies would exhibit “habituation” by reacting less to the familiar sound. They became accustomed to it. Later, when exposed to the sounds again, habituation occurred more rapidly which indicated that they had retained a memory of the previous habituation. Again, we are reminded that life does not begin at birth, but at conception.
In a recent documentary shown on PBS called The Music Instinct: Science & Song showed the impact of music on babies in-vetro. In Chuck Colson’s Breakpoint article entitled “Music In Utero” he explains that the documentary had actual footage of a baby hearing it’s mother’s voice from within the womb and smiling.
May God help us to recognize life in the womb just as my child recognized me from the womb.
Did not He who made me in the womb make them? Did not the same One fashion us in the womb? (Job 31:15 NKJ)
