HW 35 - Other Peoples' Perspectives 1

I came home this evening smelling like baby spit and an endless amount of tears. The six month old that I sit for has just begun teething and isn't handling it too well. It's always a big battle between us, we both know when he is going to cry and prepare ourselves for the moment. I start singing and bouncing around the room, he adjusts his head to watch himself in the mirror. It’s kind of remarkable how two individuals without communication know exactly what is going on. As he finally began to fall asleep he starred deeply in my eyes, and I thought to myself how great it would be to be able to interview him. His memories of the womb were fresh and he probably knows exactly what his grand entrance felt like. I began to think about the irony in the idea behind interviewing someone our own age, someone who has neither given birth or has experienced being born recently. It got me thinking about how little we know at our current stage and how a six month old probably knows more.

After interviewing three of my friends they all seemed quite naïve about the subject of birth. I find it kind of ironic that all three of these girls want to have babies and yet know so little about it. It’s like if you decided to buy a car and knew nothing about how it worked until you had signed the papers and were in the drivers seat. I know a baby and a car are not at the same level but it still does pose as sort of strange. I am very curious about how a baby knows when it’s time to say hello… I decided to ask my friends to see if they had any knowledge on the question. My friend K.B. said, “They don’t, there are certain stages in a human and the first stage is called the sensory motor stage. The most they know is who their mom is, but they aren’t aware of actual existence or their own existence, so there is no way that they know when to come out.” I decided to look up what exactly sensory motor stage was and found that it happens when the baby is already out of the womb. Then I asked my friend E.R. the same question, she said, “Babies know when to come out of the womb when they are ready to come out of the birth canal, which usually occurs at about nine months.” Her understanding seemed about the same as mine and so I asked my friend R,F., “Honestly, I have no idea. Scientifically, babies are expected to come out of the womb approximately 9 months after conception. Spiritually, I know that some people believe G*d "tells" the baby the time to be born. Although I am not exceptionally religious, I believe babies know to come out after 9 months because we as humans are designed that way, so perhaps there is some sort of greater force delegating these things.” I decided my best bet was to look it up myself… Surprisingly enough there was hardly any information on Google except for websites like answers.com… I found a website called kgb answers which said, “When the placenta can no longer feed the baby, the mother's body releases oxytocin, a hormone, which causes contractions and soften the tissue of the cervix.” Considering the little I know about birth this seemed like the most logical answer I could find.

At a more intellectual level of birth I wonder if the baby I sit for is even truly living at this point. Most of us come in and out the same way. Someone else feeds us, someone else changes us and we cry hoping for the comfort of someone else. Is this really living or are we merely waiting for beginnings and endings? I posed the question to my friends, K.B. said, “When we experience adrenaline, whether it’s on a rollercoaster or we just performed a play, essentially when we reach that level of excitement. I think we are living but until that moment we aren’t alive.” I wondered though what if a person never rode a rollercoaster or performed a play, would that mean they went their whole life without actually living? However my friend R.F. felt the complete opposite, “I think we truly become alive the moment we begin breathing after being born, because alive does technically mean living, not dead, breathing, etc. There are a great many things people do to feel alive, myself included, but I don't think one is not truly "alive" before experiencing them.” Defining life by a scientific variable seemed sort of odd to me as well. E.R. responded by saying, “One is truly alive the moment they begin to develop in the womb. Scientifically, when a mother is pregnant she is no longer just responsible for her own health, yet is responsible for the health of her child who lives off her nutrients.” I found it interesting that all three of them thought life began at very different stages. It made me realize that a question such as this one is honestly defined by each individual, for the moment we decide to become alive, will be the moment we start to truly live.