in the womb

this new documentary from discovery channel caught my eye the other night and effectively held me in rapture for about an hour, taking me away from my precious books. (yeah right!) "in the womb" it was called, and it chronicled every person's "greatest journey in life...before even being born." quite existentialist stuff if you ask me. but that is beside the point. the show was one of the most inspiring things ive seen since my school year began. (which doesn't say much at all, by the way.)

did you know that birth is actually an insignificant event in so far as the fetus' mental development is concerned? that at 30+ weeks, it can already recognize its mother's voice patterns so that its heart rate actually slows down when the mother repeats a oft-spoken nursery rhyme? that it already has a startle reflex of putting up its hand near its face and turning away when a loud noise is nearby? it already dreams, hiccups, sucks its thumb, frowns, smiles and all other things a newborn baby up to two months old does? wala lang, it might sound dorky to some people, but recent technological advances have indeed given us a better understanding of the intricacies and wonder of human life. ironically, instead of proceeding towards a future where man and machine will engage in an inevitable epic battle ala matrix or t2, our science has in fact brought us closer to our own detached humanity. but i digress once more.

i just realized for a fact how intrinsically wonder-full life is. i mean the show actually made me excited to have a baby. (well maybe not that excited.) but still, parenthood has to be the most natural thing one person can assume as a duty. as the show said, most other animals on this good earth have an easy labor and delivery of their offspring. furthermore, their babies can actually eat, run, walk and avoid predators as soon as they are born.
humans, on the other hand, have a natural labor process that is painful and protracted, owing primarily to the large cranial cavities of our heads which of course contain our brains. if our brains were but a little bit smaller and less advanced, there would be no problem. i guess it should be naturally harder to bring yet another wise-ass into the world. aside from that, human babies are born defenseless, fragile and totally dependent on their parents. maybe the powers-that-be ordained the natural order of things to be that way: so that a system of nurturing and care would be instituted, based not on mere animal instinct, but on powerful human choice through free will. babies, therefore, in the ideal sense, are born out of love into love.

such a conclusion is ironically reached however, with a view to how pregnancies are viewed today. if it's planned, well and good, but if it's not, or if it's out of wedlock, it's considered a dishonor and a burden, many women resorting to abortion as a result. why is that? has human society so changed that human lives have become such a point of emotional and moral contention? isn't a human life, by virtue of mere existence, enough to merit the good?
what to me is the real tragedy in the rising spate of teen pregnancies is not the immoral act that produced the baby, but the human negativity that surrounds the implications of such excesses. two kids make a mistake, then let us leave it at that! let them, through their guardians, be responsible for the consequences. but such furor over who was at fault more or who had the responsibility to prevent such a "tragedy" has been rendered moot and academic by the occasion of a promise of a new human life! nevertheless, the politicking notwithstanding, there is, in each new baby (including those born out of wedlock, indiscretion and the like), an infinite universe waiting to unfold. the parents may have made a "mistake" in the eyes of moral norms, customs, or family law, but a new child is always free from error or prejudice. or at least ideally.

"in the womb" taught me more than just the medical tidbits and the prenatal trivia involved in a usual discovery channel show. i came to view human life as something that is always beyond what present human convention has taught us to regard it as. it's truly a wonder-full journey of a lifetime that we all take even before we were born.

watch "in the womb" and make babies. hehe :-)