Radiant Motherhood: A Book for Those Who are Creating the Future

by Marie Carmichael Stopes

If, as seems to me unquestionably the best and happiest relation, the man and woman who are creating a child are doing so deliberately, consciously and with acute interest, a mutual knowledge of the principal stages through which their child passes should add greatly to their interest and the intensity of their feeling.

From the first moment of its conception, indeed often for months before this has been possible, their child is to the loving pair a living entity of whom they may speak.

The active egg cell, which is ready for fertilization, is produced in one or other of the two ovaries, which lie internally and cannot be touched or reached in any way without operating upon the mother; they have no direct contact with the outer world. These two ovaries each communicate with the central chamber, which is called the womb or uterus and this is a strong muscular organ, into the walls of which the attachment of the minute embryo fastens, and within this chamber the growing embryo gradually fills the space reserved for it. The womb or uterus has a connection with the outer world through the lower mouth called the os, which opens into the vaginal channel. This os or mouth with its rounded lip can just be felt at the end of the vaginal channel.

Fertilization consists in the actual penetration of the egg cell by the male sperm, the nuclei of which unite. As I have elsewhere described (Married Love, Chap. V) the numbers of male sperm provided in any act of union outnumber by millions those actually required, because for each single fertilization one egg cell combines with one sperm cell. The egg cell or ovum is very large in comparison with a single sperm; nevertheless it is itself a minute, almost invisible protoplasmic speck, measuring rather less than 1/120th of an inch in diameter, and roughly spherical in its shape—a minute pellet of jelly-like protoplasm with a concentrated centre or nucleus. The single sperm which unites with it is a still more minute fleck, and is little more than a nucleus with a film of protoplasm round it, and a long cilium or hair-like continuation which it lashes to and fro, and thus propels itself or swims towards the egg cell. Judging by analogy, it leaves this tail outside the egg cell on the mutual fusion. The nucleus of the sperm and of the egg unite in a very complex and precise manner. In other organisms, and probably also in human beings, the entry of a single sperm to the egg cell shuts out the possibility of other sperms fusing with them, because directly it has been fertilized, the egg cell exudes a film of substance which antagonizes the other sperms, and which ultimately forms a filmy skin around itself.

From the moment of the fusion of the nuclei of the male and female cells, active changes and nuclear divisions are in progress. The egg cell, which is free, travels slowly to the allotted place in the womb or uterus of the mother, and there it settles down in the tissue of the wall and attaches itself. Until it has attached itself firmly to the wall of the uterus, conception proper has not finally taken place, and a fertilized egg cell may be lost through want of a capacity to attach itself to the womb, or through some nervous or other disturbance of the walls of the womb, which throw it off after it has been attached. The distinction between the actual moment of fertilization (or union of the male and female nuclei) and of the final attachment which secures true conception is an important one, though frequently overlooked. Sometimes the failure to conceive a child may not at all be due to lack of fertility and readiness to unite on the part of the egg cell and sperm cell, but may be due to some nervous or other influence on the wall of the uterus, which consequently throws off the ovum before it has firmly settled into its place there.

A few days after conception, and when the ovum has attached itself to the proper place, a definite zone of tissue begins to form which, growing and altering with the growth of the tiny developing child (which is now called the embryo), forms a medium of transmission between it and the mother through which pass the substances used and excreted by the embryo in its growth.

After fertilization, intense and rapid activity takes place in the nuclei of the cells, first in the united nucleus of egg and sperm cell, and later in the nuclei of all the resulting division cells. The nucleus of the sperm cell is supposed to contain twelve chromosomes which go through a formal rearrangement and mingling with the corresponding chromosomes in the egg cell. As a result of the complete fusion and intermingling of the male and the female factors on fertilization, all the resulting divisions of cells which follow derive their nuclei partly from the male and partly from the female nucleus of the parents. Thus, if it were possible to trace the history of every tissue cell in the body of your child, we should see that each nucleus of all the myriads that compose its structure would ancestrally consist of part of the many sub-divisions of the nuclei of both father and mother. Thus to speak of one side of the body as being male in its inheritance and the other female, is the most unmitigated nonsense, though this idea formed the basis of a recent book.

The rapidity with which the first cells grow to form tissues, once they have been stimulated by union is very great, and from the ovum, which on the day of fertilization is only 1/120th of an inch in size, the growth is so rapid that it is ten times as big at the end of fourteen days. By that time the length is one-twelfth of an inch, and it weighs one grain. By the thirtieth day the tiny embryo is already one-third of an inch big, and were it practicable, which, of course, it is not, to remove it living from its bed of tissue in the mother’s womb and examine it, even with the naked eye, and still more with a magnifying glass, it would be possible to see the rudiments of the legs, head and arms which are to be.

By the fortieth day the embryo is about one inch in length, and the shape of the child, which it is to be, is quite clearly visible. Dark points are to be seen where later it will have eyes, nose and mouth, and there is already a hint of its backbone.

Meanwhile, as may be realized, although to have grown in forty days to the size of an inch from a minute speck 1/120th part of an inch is a great and rapid achievement, nevertheless the existence of a thing one inch big within her makes little outer difference to the mother, and all the earlier weeks and months of the growth of this tiny organism do not yet take more visible effect on the mother’s body than to enhance its contour. After the first child this effect is less noticeable, and a woman may be unaware that she is about to become a mother. The first sign in a really healthy woman generally is in the form of her breasts, which sometimes begin to enlarge by the second or third week. It is said that the more healthy and perfectly fitted for motherhood a woman is, the sooner her breasts show signs of the effect of the developing embryo but, particularly with a woman who has already borne a child, there may be no external sign until at least three months have passed.