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How Your Thoughts Affect Your Unborn Baby

Much research has been done to prove how the link between negative thoughts, emotions, and the stress response injures the unborn child while optimism and loving emotions nurture your unborn baby.

Research shows soon after conception, a level of consciousness exists in the embryo. As the fetus develops, its subconscious stores information to prepare it for its mother’s environment. But, the father’s role in relation to the mother is also important.

By the sixth month, the fetus can hear and move in rhythm to its mother’s voice. Imagine the different influence this has if the mother is happily singing or yelling in anger.

It’s no surprise that sonograms taken while parents yell at each other show the baby’s entire body flinching in agitation. Imagine the damage caused by months of feeding this negative energy to a fetus.

Frightening, isn’t it? In fact, studies show a bad relationship between parents increases the child’s risk of psychological and physical damage by a startling 200% or more!

In Biology of Belief, cell biologist, neuroscientist, and Stanford researcher, Bruce Lipton, PhD, discusses how thoughts “perceived by their mothers before birth” allow the unborn infant to “optimize their genetic and physiologic development.”

“It is biologically impossible for a gene to operate independently of its environment: genes are designed to be regulated by signals from their immediate surround,” says Daniel Goleman, in Social Intelligence. The international bestseller continues, “…some of which, in turn, are profoundly influenced by our social interactions.”

Dr. Thomas Verny founded the Association for Prenatal and Perinatal Psychology and Health (APPPAH). In Tomorrows Baby: The Art and Science of Parenting from Conception through Infancy, he writes,

“Scientists have come to recognize living organisms as ‘dynamic systems’ capable of actively reprogramming gene behaviors to accommodate environmental challenges.”

The link between negative thoughts, emotions, and the stress response seems clear. The link between optimism and the nurturing of the unborn child would presumably follow the same course of action.

This time, “good” hormones, like oxytocin, are likely to be the ones circulating to help baby. But thoughts may have an even more direct route for influencing the DNA.

There is another energy that seems to link emotional thoughts to genetic change. Dr. Joseph Mercola, who runs the natural health website, Mercola.com, reported a unique experiment showing just how receptive to thoughts the placenta can be.

In the study, The Institute of Heartmath, a non-profit organization dedicated to researching stress and emotional management, used placental DNA.

Each of 28 researchers who were “specially trained in how to generate and feel strong emotions on demand,” were given a vial of placental DNA. Researchers found that each placental DNA sample “changed shape according to its researcher’s feelings.” When researchers felt positive emotions, like love, joy and gratitude, the DNA “responded by relaxing: the strands unwound and actually lengthened.” When the researchers felt negative emotions, like anger, fear, frustration, or stress, the DNA “tightened up, became shorter, and even switched off many of its codes.” Finally, when researchers felt positive emotion again, the “codes switched back on.”

By Jade Small, The Open Mind; | References: To believe is to be; Natural baby pros; Get fit for birth; Conscious pregnancy retreats; Featured image;