Mommy, What Were You Thinking?

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Can the thoughts of a pregnant mother affect her unborn child?

I passed by my daughter’s room the other day as she was listening to music and I noticed that she tends to listen to some of the same artists that I enjoyed thirty years ago when I was pregnant with her and started to think about the inner world inside the womb and how outside influences can affect the developing fetus.

There is also an inner environment that the fetus dwells in that must be considered when it comes to the emotional well being of the child. Obviously substances such as food or drugs that are taken in during pregnancy have an effect on the growing baby, but have you ever considered how the thoughts of the mother may affect the fetus growing inside her? The scientific and medical communities are confirming evidence that the thoughts and emotions of the mother affect the developing fetus inside the womb. Research suggests that positive thoughts of the mother can shape the body, internally heal and nourish the child to be healthier. There are deeply embedded patterns of feeling that shape the way the child develops and perceives itself emotionally. According to Dr. Thomas Verny, founder of the Association for Prenatal and Perinatal Psychology and Health, he states that “everything the pregnant mother feels and thinks is communicated through neurohormones to her unborn child, just as s urely as are alcohol and nicotine.”

Our thoughts are a precursor for our emotions, which are the precursor for the neurohormones that Dr. Verney refers to. This doesn’t mean that every fleeting thought is communicated to the child. What it does mean is that deeply embedded patterns of feeling that can sometimes be the root cause of a stress response based on fear can pass through the placenta and can activate the child’s endocrine system which influences them during their development inside the womb. These emotions that we are exposed to while in the womb are very primal because they are subcortical-below the cerebral cortex, and of nonconscious origin. Consciousness is defined as a sensory awareness of the body, the self and the world. The fetus can have an awareness of its body in that it can sense and feel pain.

When we are taking care of children who have been traumatized, we take into account the environment that they have been exposed to from the time they were born until they are in our care. In addition to external influences since birth, we now add another dimension to the level of layering of traumatic experiences. If the thoughts of the mother affect the unborn baby, we now need to consider that environment as well. What if the mother was raped? If this were an unwanted pregnancy, those thoughts would also shape the developing baby. A father’s attitude towards the mother and the unborn child have been previously overlooked until a short while ago but now the importance of this element of the pregnancy is also being considered to have an effect on that child.

In my work as a connective tissue therapist, I have seen clients relive a painful birth experience. I once had a client that remembered during a treatment being in the birth canal and darkness and a lot of fear. I assured her that this was a safe place and that it was okay for her to feel into the body and allow the emotion to flow through her as a physical sensation, without an emotional attachment so that the bioelectric energy could be released and cleared.

As we go through life we can have many layers of trauma. Some of them are present before we ever enter into this experience of life outside the womb.

There can be some very primal layers that we may have no conscious awareness of. Considering this, and in unwinding the body, it is not so important that we know the exact event in which the connective tissue stores the cellular memory because these emotions are not even ours. They come from inside the womb and from the thoughts, attitudes and feelings that our parents had before we were ever born. The important thing to keep in mind is that in accessing the surface layers of what is known, these primal layers can rise to the surface and be healed on a cellular level. As we peel away the surface layers the trauma that we have experienced that is inherent from before birth that affects us beyond the womb can be resolved and healed.