For babies-to-be, life's just one long slumber party

Sorry, proud parents-to-be - your baby's kicking in the womb doesn't mean it's wide awake and ready to take on the world.

It's having a very deep sleep but it's not even having dreams, say scientists studying what babies get up to in the womb.

"I don't think they are ever awake. I don't think you can wake them up," said Auckland University foetal physiologist Dr Laura Bennet.

Her colleague, Massey University animal welfare scientist Professor David Mellor, said: "The foetus is unconscious throughout pregnancy, right up to and including birth."

He said it took several gasps of air for a newborn to boost oxygen levels enough to gain full consciousness.

The oxygen led to a reduction in adenisone, a chemical produced by the placenta which kept the foetus unconscious in the uterus.

The findings were presented to the Medical Sciences Congress in Queenstown yesterday.

They are based on ultrasound studies of human foetuses, experiments on animals, brain recordings from animal foetuses in the uterus and human foetuses during labour, and observations.

Dr Bennet said the data suggested foetuses did not experience pain.

Potentially painful procedures are sometimes performed on foetuses.

In-utero surgery on the foetus is a developing area in the United States.

Little is known about giving foetuses drugs for pain, she said, but some evidence suggested the drugs could harm brain development.

Dr Bennet said it had been assumed foetuses experienced pain because of evidence that they withdrew limbs from touch, and because stress hormones rise in response to potentially painful experiences.

But these were automatic reflexes - like responses to stimuli such as their mothers' voices. To experience pain required awareness and therefore consciousness.

Professor Mellor said some paediatricians thought the fact that prematurely born babies were conscious and experienced pain meant that foetuses of the same gestational age would too.

"We're saying that's a mistake. The intra-uterine environment is so different.

"The brain's conscious functions are suppressed and inhibited."

The placenta and the foetal brain produced natural sedatives and anaesthetics, he said.

Professor Mellor started investigating the topic after slaughterhouse workers asked him if animal foetuses suffered after the mother was killed.

He said the foetuses would not suffer - as long as their lungs did not start inflating.

Napier woman Fiona Tindall, who is 26 weeks pregnant, was surprised by the finding. Her baby boy kicks regularly late in the afternoon and just before she goes to bed. If she touches her stomach or if her three-year-old daughter leans on her the baby kicks out "kind of like he's saying get off".

He also moves a lot when she is listening to music, particularly strong female voices.

"It does feel like he is wide awake when he is moving. I suppose you respond to things when you are sleeping anyway."

The research met scepticism from College of Midwives midwifery adviser Norma Campbell. "They're not unconscious. Consciousness is not necessarily awake," she said.

"They definitely respond to touch."

Rise and shine

If a baby really has spent nine months in the womb sleeping, imagine its shock at awakening.

First breath.

It's cold compared to the womb.

It's spacious after the womb.

It's noisy.

It's glaring, in the cold, harsh light of a hospital.

Pin prick on the heel for the Guthrie test to check for an inherited blood disorder.

Handled by midwives, doctors, then parents.