Buzz
From the early stages of pregnancy, your baby exhibits behaviors surprisingly similar to a newborn. He sleeps, moves, listens to sounds, and even has thoughts and memories. Here’s how it all unfolds:
Sleep Patterns in the Womb
Just like newborns, fetuses spend a large portion of their time asleep. By 32 weeks, your baby will sleep for about 90 to 95 percent of the day. This sleep is divided into deep sleep, REM sleep, and sometimes a transitional state due to his developing brain. During REM sleep, his eyes move back and forth, resembling the eye movements of an adult. Some researchers even speculate that fetuses might dream, possibly about the sensations they experience in the womb.
As birth approaches, your baby will sleep 85 to 90 percent of the time, much like a newborn.
By the ninth week of pregnancy, your baby begins to make her initial movements. These can be detected with an ultrasound, even though they won't be felt for several more weeks. By the thirteenth week, your baby may already be able to place a thumb in her mouth, though the sucking muscles are not yet fully developed.
Initially, your baby’s muscle movements are involuntary, but by the 16th week, voluntary movements begin. From then on, whether awake or asleep, your baby will move over 50 times per hour. She flexes and extends her body, moves her head, face, and limbs, and explores the womb by touch. She may touch her face, bring one hand to the other, grasp her feet, or feel the umbilical cord. By the 37th week, your baby has the coordination to grasp with her fingers.
In addition to these typical movements, babies may also engage in some more unusual actions, such as licking the uterine wall or 'walking' around the womb by pushing off with their feet.
Fetuses respond with movement to their mother's actions. For example, ultrasounds have shown a fetus bouncing when the mother laughs. Watching this, expecting mothers often laugh harder, which causes the fetus to move even more energetically!
Second or third-born children might have more space in the womb compared to firstborns, as a woman’s uterus is larger and the umbilical cord longer after her first pregnancy. These babies typically experience more motor activity in the womb and are often more active as infants.
By the 29th week, you should be able to feel your baby move at least 10 times per hour.
Learning and Memory in the Womb
Along with the ability to feel, hear, and see, comes the remarkable capacity to learn and retain memories. For instance, a fetus might be startled by a loud sound but will stop reacting once the noise becomes familiar through repetition.
Twins at 20 weeks gestation can be seen developing particular gestures and habits that continue into their postnatal lives. In one instance, a brother and sister were observed playing cheek-to-cheek on either side of the dividing membrane. By one year old, their favorite game involved taking positions on opposite sides of a curtain, laughing and giggling as they touched each other and played through it.
Studies have also shown that babies can sense and retain their mother’s emotional state. One Australian experiment found that unborn babies shared in their mothers’ emotional responses while watching a distressing 20-minute movie segment. Even when they were shown the same film up to three months after birth, the babies still displayed recognition of the earlier experience.
In the 1980s, psychology professor Anthony James DeCasper, PhD, and his team at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro conducted an experiment with a feeding device that allowed babies to hear one set of sounds through headphones when they sucked faster, and a different set when they sucked slower. The study found that, just hours after birth, babies already showed a preference for their mother's voice over a stranger's, suggesting they must have learned and remembered her voice while still in the womb. Newborns also preferred a story they had heard repeatedly while in the womb, over a new one.
Newborns can not only distinguish their mother's voice from that of a stranger, but they also prefer hearing her voice, especially the sound of it filtered through amniotic fluid, as opposed to air. Additionally, they tend to favor hearing Mom speak in her native language over hearing her or others speaking in a foreign language.
Babies in the womb are likely responding to the general sound of voices and stories rather than the specific words. However, the key takeaway remains: the fetus has the ability to listen, learn, and remember on some level, and, like most babies and children, finds comfort in the familiar.
The information on this website is intended for educational purposes only. It is not meant to replace professional medical advice or care. You should not use this information to diagnose or treat any health issues without consulting your pediatrician or family doctor. If you have any questions or concerns about your or your child's condition, please consult a doctor.
