And really why? After all, the baby has absolutely nothing to complain about, while he is surrounded by absolute comfort.
Children learn a lot even before they are born. For example, swallowing, sucking a finger – these skills will be very useful to them in the very first minutes of life. Babies learn to respond to various stimuli: they begin to recognize the voice of their mother, understand when a light source is directed at them, are afraid of loud sounds, feel vibration and touch on the stomach, do somersaults when they want to move. Scientists learned all this by analyzing ultrasound records. And also – children begin to cry long before birth.
How could you possibly find out? Indeed, in the mother’s stomach, the baby is surrounded by amniotic fluid, which reliably protects him from viruses, bacteria, external irritants and all kinds of troubles. A kind of water cradle, what kind of tears are there. However, crying is not only tears. They will appear in the baby only a month and a half after birth. There are other signs that the baby is crying: he frowns and makes a characteristic grimace, opens his mouth and jerks his chin as if making an intermittent convulsive sigh, as if sobbing, and pauses as he exhales, as if calming down.
For this phenomenon, scientists have come up with a special term – neonatal cry. It differs from a cry after birth in that the baby still does not know how to make sounds. By the way, in one case, the study showed that the child began to cry at the moment when labor began – this was his reaction to the onset of contractions and the discomfort associated with them.
In fact, crying is a very important skill for children. In order to cry, it is necessary for several body systems to work harmoniously at once. After all, both muscles and breathing are involved in crying. Therefore, crying is an important milestone in the development of the fetus. This ability means that his brain, nervous system work and develop as it should, without deviations.
A cry means that the baby is able to:
recognize external stimuli,
divide irritants into potentially dangerous, that is, negative, and safe,
respond to stimuli in a variety of ways, from moving to trying to call for help.
“Crying is literally a survival mechanism. They guarantee that the child will be able to make it clear that he is feeling bad, uncomfortable, he needs help, ”the scientists say.
This skill – crying – is mastered by the baby as early as the 20th week of intrauterine development. By this time, he already knows how to coordinate respiratory movements, move his jaw, tremble his chin, stretch the tongue and swallow. In addition, babies born prematurely can cry too. Even those babies who were born at the 24th week can already make appropriate sounds and react to noise from the environment.
True, the mother cannot feel the baby crying in her stomach in any way, unlike the infant hiccups. It can only be seen on an ultrasound scan, but the likelihood that you will be able to catch this very moment is small. After all, children have a lot of important things that they are busy with in their mother’s belly, and crying is only one of them.
And here is how crying looks like on a three-dimensional ultrasound. Just look at how this baby frowns! By the way, this video is on viewed more than 1,8 million times. So this baby became a star even before birth.