Sunswept shadows in fluttering dreams
Fly by like the gems of wisdom past.
Fairys and hopes on whispering wings,
Dart in and out and in-between.
Things to come,
Who knows best,
What will be and then the rest.
Sunswept shadows in fluttering dreams,
Bring hope into life like the whisper of fairy wings.

Elizabeth S. Tyree

My wife has started to feel our baby moving around inside her.  Unfortunately, I am unable to join in with this miracle as I cannot feel a thing just yet, despite being encouraged to hold, prod and poke around her gradually swelling midriff.


I will confess to a certain discomfort when engaging in this.  She is more than happy to squeeze and cajole in an attempt to feel this growing human; I, on the other hand, am terrified that somehow I will hurt our child.  They are still so tiny - although according to the iPhone app yesterday now the weight of a turnip with a bony, rather than cartilaginous, skeleton - and I all this poking worries me.  If I am honest, I find the idea of the first few months fairly anxious until they become a bit more robust.  I am sure I will get used to it.


It feels like we are now coming out of a strange few months, a kind of limbo.  My wife is beginning to 'show', she is now feeling Junior move around, we should be hearing the heartbeat next week.  Everything is becoming more real, and more public, and more pressing.  We are weeks away from Christmas and then when Christmas is done, we will be a few short months away from arrival.  

These are strange but exciting times.  I remember when Junior would have only been a couple of centimetres, now he is over 13 and weighs more than 100g.  I sense that this will be a feeling for the next couple of decades as our progeny grows and develops and we are left thinking "they grow up so fast".  Junior hasn't even arrived yet and already I find it amazing how quickly things change and move on!  In my head I have vowed to appreciate each moment, I do not want to waste time in the now thinking about what is past, or what is to come.

Pregnant? Us? YES!

Today we saw our child for the very first time.  It was so much more than I expected.  Our baby was moving, responding to the outside world (junior wouldn't get into position for some measurements, but we certainly saw the after effects of my wife's very best hula-hooping!), had an umbilical cord connected to mummy, a heartbeat and, this was amazing, the hiccups!  I'm not sure anything could have prepared me for seeing our child moving about.  And the key word there is - OUR.  I could have watched all the You Tube videos, looked at all the Google images and talked to all the experienced parents in the world and they would not have prepared me for viewing my child for the first time.  Our baby is alive, is growing and is most definitely there.

Junior is 5.5cm long, approximately 11 weeks and six days old and due on the 20th April.  No longer is he a kiddie bean sized bundle of cells; he is a foetus that is interacting with his environment.  I have been able to tell people (and believe me since 12:30 today I have told A LOT of people!) and talk about the fact I'm going ot be a dad.  She has all her limbs, a nose, an active lifestyle and a busy few months ahead of her.

I won't see him for another eight weeks.  And already I'm missing him.

It's life, Jim, but not as we know it.

When does the rapidly growing and sub-dividing set of cells within my wife's body become life?  This seems a rather philosophical question (and I am thinking of it in terms of philosophy - or spirituality - and not biology), but it is one that has been niggling me for the last couple of days.  This is my difficulty.  You would happily call a plant alive (after all, we've all overwatered them and seen them die), but surely all it is, is a set of chemical responses to certain environmental stimuli?  A plant will grow towards light - but do any of us think there is choice in that?  My wife tells me that a foetus in vitro will turn away from light shone on the mother's tummy - is that a choice or a biological response?

Ultimately, my question is: when does my child develop a consciousness?  This is quite a nice short article - http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2005/feb/10/thisweekssciencequestions - and it is the first time I've heard of the primitive streak.  With our growing baby at around six weeks, this suggests its central nervous system is already in place.  Not fully developed but in place.  So has my child started to have primitive thoughts? 

This person says no: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=when-does-consciousness-arise.  Apparently integration of our cognitive circuits, which enable us to think, dream and so on, happens between the 24th and 28th week.  So does this mean my child is not 'in there' until the third trimester?  Yet premature babies as young as 22 weeks have lived - so there is a life in there before this time.  So I still don't have a satisfactory answer.  And nor, I suspect, is there a likelihood of me getting one.

(Quick note: I don't actually agree with some of the author's assumptions, particularly the newborn not being self-aware and that sleep lacks any form of consciousness, but then he is a biologist and I am a psychologist.  But I would say it is worth a read and some of the comments are very interesting if this kind of thing floats your boat!)

But why is any of this important?  I want to know my child.  And, for me, that begins with consciousness, as this is what it separates my little boy or girl from a collection of biological and chemical processes.  This is an entirely subjective belief; it is not one based in evidence.  But I want to know if child is responding to the world.  When do I start speaking to a swelling tummy with confidence that there is someone, rather than something, in there?  I want to know when the child, that I am already beginning to love, is home.  And I want them to feel safe and dream dreams of colour, movement, tranquility.