What Every Girl Should Know

by Margaret Sanger

A slight pulsation is observed, showing the development of the heart. The head fold is formed by a gradual bending of the spinal column at the front end of the ovum, which we will now call the embryo. There are also formed at this time, processes which soon become arms and legs, there is a furrow on the face, pits for the eyes; all of which has happened in less than four weeks.

From this time forward development is rapid; the bones, which up to this time have been soft matter, grow harder, and all organs which were only outlined,

FIG. II.
Foetus in the Uterus at two months' pregnancy.

now become definitely formed. At the end of the fourth month it has grown to its natural shape. The remaining months it increases in size and gains strength. The uterus becomes enlarged, rises out of the pelvis and occupies the abdominal cavity. It takes forty weeks or 280 days to complete the growth of the human embryo, although the time may be two weeks more or less and yet be normal.

Let us see how the child has been fed all this time. When the ovum is fertilized and up to the eighth week it is fed by delicate branched threads, which form a covering for it. These threads are called “villi”, and dip into the uterine surface for nourishment from the mother to supply the embryo.

About the eighth week these “villi” have grown greatly intertwined into a mass of spongy tissue full of blood vessels called the placenta (afterbirth). This fastens itself to one side of the uterus, takes oxygen as well as nutriment from the mother and sends it through the umbilical cord to the child, the point of attachment being at the navel, the depression left on the belly of the child by the cutting of the umbilical cord at birth. In the same way it takes the waste product from the child to the mother, and she, in turn, throws them out of her system through the kidneys, bowels and skin. The child and placenta are both encased within a membraneous sac, which secretes and serves to hold a watery fluid in which the child swims.

The child is folded together with legs on the thighs and thighs on the belly, arms on the chest and head bent forward over the breast. Toward the end of the term it moves about slightly, often stretches a little, and has periods of rest when it scarcely moves, and again periods of great activity. A mother first feels the child move in the fourth or fifth month. Often the young mother at this time begins to worry over her acts lest something she should do might deform the precious charge she carries. This, as you can readily understand from its early development, is impossible, for by the end of the second month the child has been formed, and no mental impressions of the mother can alter its shape. Just as the nucleus of the male sperm has within it all the contributions which the father of the child can give it, until after it is born, so does the mother give it its physical qualities right at the beginning.

Whatever is to be inherited from the father must be within the substance of the spermatozoon at the time the ovum is fertilized. He has no further pre-natal influence over it.

It is interesting to observe that the children of so-called great men are seldom above the average in intelligence, where, on the other hand, almost all men of great minds have had intelligent mothers.