THE CHANGES WHICH PRECEDE, ATTEND AND FOLLOW CONCEPTION AND CHILDBIRTH.
From the moment of conception, during the months of gestation, at the
time of childbirth and after, changes of great interest take place in
the germ of human life and in the body of the mother. Her body is
marvelously fitted for the reception and development of the ovum, the
embryo and the fetus through the various stages of fertilization,
germination, development, maturity, to the time of the eventual exit of
the child into the outer world to begin its own independent life.
Something of the adaptation of the body of the mother to its marvelous
purpose may the better appear if we think of some of the greatest
mechanical achievements of man.
A watch is one of the best products of human ingenuity. It has taken
nearly six thousand years to produce it. It is a wonderful piece of
mechanism, yet it is, after all, not a complex product like the human
body. If a watch could be constructed that could oil and renew its own
parts, so as not to stop or break, or need repairing or oiling or
cleaning, such a product would be more complex. But if, in addition to
running on uninterruptedly for a long series of years, or almost an
entire century, suppose it could be so constructed and constituted
that, without interrupting the orderly movement of its works or its
accuracy and correctness, it should, at intervals, produce other watches
like itself. Truly such a watch would be a marvelous complexity. Yet
just such a complexity is found in all the forms of vegetable and animal
life about us. Interesting as is the study of life at any stage, it is
specially interesting and impressive during the periods which preface,
accomplish and follow the wonderful period of gestation; and it is
specially important that the individual who stands so closely related to
this profound and awe-inspiring mystery as does a young husband should
have such knowledge of what this condition has to teach as comes within
the realm of human understanding--both because of its importance to his
own happiness, the happiness, safety and well-being of the mother and
her offspring, and because such knowledge will tend to purify the mind
of those gross and debasing thoughts which too frequently cluster about
the most important and most sacred relations of married life and the
endearments of home.
Something of what these changes are which precede, attend and follow
reproduction in the human family may be beautifully seen in a
conservatory or garden, or even learned from the frail flower that
blooms by the roadside.
When, in the springtime or summer days, the plant has reached its
maturity, as instinctively as if it foresaw in the coming days of autumn
and in the ice and snow of winter the possibility not only of death but
of total extinction, its entire nature centres in one grand struggle to
escape pending extermination and live, if not in its own body, yet in
the life and beauty that shall be reproduced in the plants that are
already begotten in the longing for the perpetuity of its own life. The
dual parent-nature is quickened. Forgetting the present, and longing for
a place and a part when the warm and quickening breath of spring shall
again usher in a new day of life and beauty upon the earth the plant
henceforth lives, not for the present, but for the future; not for
itself, but for those that are to be. The buds begin to form. The plant
has learned the purpose of being and throbs with the mystery of life. In
the thought of death it has learned to live. In fear of extinction it
has learned to perpetuate and multiply itself a hundredfold. The flower
unfolds. The dual parent-nature of the plant lives with intensity in
their common effort. The flower is in a passion of beauty, in an agony
of splendor, perfuming the nuptial hour with a sweetness that distills
upon the air, arresting the hurrying steps of all who pass by. Who shall
dare to interrupt that ceremonial, whose ruthless hand shall dare defeat
that high and holy purpose? The fragrance invites the bees and insects
to the nuptial feast. For them there is pollen and nectar in abundance.
They bear gifts of quickening pollen from other plants, or swing the
anther censers that waited the coming of expected guests. The corolla of
beauty screens the enchanted participants. The ceremonial is over, the
hour is ended. The ovules have felt the thrill of life, the beauty
fades, the fragrance is gone, the wedding-garments are laid aside, and
henceforth the father-nature and the mother-nature of the plant live not
for themselves, but for the life they have begotten, and the plants that
shall be. Their joy abides, and they live in the glad hope of
participation, in the succeeding resurrection of the life and beauty and
fragrance that is to await the coming of another springtime.
What we have written in allegory takes place in fact. Every intelligent
observer has noted the depth of color, passionate beauty, and sweet
fragrance of the flower as the hour approaches when the stigma awaits
the pollen which is to fertilize the ovules that lie hidden away in the
ovary or pod. When that union has been effected the flower fades, its
petals fall off; the calyx, which as a vase held the corolla erect in
its splendor, but which remains to shield and protect the ovules or
little seeds which are being formed and perfected, now droops, turning
toward the earth. Is this a sign of sadness, or that there is no longer
any joy in life? No, no, not at all. It is the evidence of its fidelity
to the sacred trust that has been committed to it. It has found a new
joy, a more abiding happiness. Then it held up the corolla that the sun
and the angels might look in upon the happy and holy beginnings of life,
while now, in the protection of its sacred trust, it turns down, that
it may shed the rain and everything that might intrude or hurt the
tender plant that is so mysteriously encased in that pod that enlarges
with the growing life that is within it.
What is true in the reproductive life of plants is also true in the
reproductive life of man. The changes that take place at the moment of
conception and during the period of gestation are full of marvelous
beauty and profound mystery. The bright eyes, the ruby lips, the ruddy
glow on the cheeks, the comely attire, the attractive manner, the
persuasive sweetness, the subtle but indescribable attractiveness, are
manifestations in human life of what may be seen and studied with such
impressiveness in the reproductive life of the flower. The changes which
follow may not be as immediate; and while, to the unknowing and
unobservant, they may not at first be totally unobserved, yet to the
devout student they are quite as manifest and pronounced as in the
flowers; and the study of these changes which attend the beginning, the
growth and the completion of reproduction is one of great interest to
every intelligent person, although its clear presentation to those who
have no knowledge whatever of the subject is attended with some
difficulty.
As the birds at the mating season put on their most gorgeous plumage,
sing their sweetest songs, and in the building of their nests work in
sweetest accord, so it is also in human life. When the nest is
completed, the eggs laid, and the incubation or hatching begins, the
plumage soon loses some of its lustre, the songs become less frequent,
and the parent birds prepare for the feeding and care of the bird-life
that is soon to fill the nest.
But all this quickening of life and growth that takes place in the egg
within the nest under the warm body of the mother-bird, in the human
mother takes place within the nest or cradle which God has prepared
within her body. Her young is of a higher order. The protection and
preservation of the unfolding human life is more important, and hence
the greater care displayed in guarding and nourishing it.
The future mother, whose nature only recently craved her husband's
caresses and embraces, now, perhaps all unconsciously to herself,
changes, to fit her for the better completion of the sacred and holy
work which God has assigned her. The eye loses somewhat of its lustre,
the cheek its ruddy glow, and her entire being something of that
pervasive sweetness which but recently made her peculiarly attractive.
But to the intelligent husband and true father she is none the less, but
rather the more, an object of love and adoration; and if she is
intelligent, and understands the high and holy nature of that which is
being wrought within her own body, and the exalted honor which God has
bestowed upon her in making her a co-creator with himself, she will not
manifest the belligerent and uncompanionable spirit which too often
characterizes the bearing of some women during this period of unfolding
life.
While it is true that the changes which accompany this period are more
marked in woman than in man, yet when we remember that a close study of
the reproductive nature of man in married life discloses a
responsiveness to her condition and desires, it will readily be
understood that during the period of his wife's gestation his nature is
measurably moderated by her condition, for in health the reproductive
nature of man is responsive to the promptings of his wife. The poet
wisely says:
"As unto the bow the cord is,
So unto the man is woman.
Though she bends him, she obeys him;
Though she draws him, yet she follows--
Useless each without the other."
Where existing facts in any particular case are discordant with this
poetic figure the causes can usually be found in an abnormal passion in
the man, or a measurable absence of sexual inclination in the woman,
frequently caused by ruinous modes of life and dress. While human beings
are generally very different in this respect from the lower animals, yet
something of what these changes are may be suggested by noting the
changes which take place in bird life. As the wave of life rises to its
crest in the male nature, every department of his being is aroused to
greatest activity and perfection. His plumage becomes lustrous, he sings
with sweetest note. In some of the animals the intensity of his
vitality bursts out in a growth of great antlers; but when the mating
season is passed the plumage fades; the antlers drop off as the receding
tide of life sets in. These marked changes among the animals are by no
means paralleled in man; yet there are semblances or faint shadows of
them in the modifying of the male nature.
While such external and manifest changes as we have indicated are taking
place, marvelous things are being wrought within the mother's body. The
ovum or egg (for that is what it truly is), after it has left the place
where it matured in the ovary, is impregnated by the spermatozoAśn,
which, in its restless search for the ovum, presses forward from the
place where it was liberated in the vagina, up through the womb, and out
through the Fallopian tube toward the ovary; or the ovum may pass
through the Fallopian tube and into the womb, to await for a brief
period or a few days the coming of the sperm or spermatozoAśn, without
which it must remain incomplete and perish.
God might just as easily have ordained that the ovum should be complete
in itself, and that, without any intervention or co-operation, at
appointed intervals the mother should bring forth her offspring. But
there were reasons why this should not be. The begetting and bringing
forth of human life involves issues too vast to be committed to a single
individual. Without a defender or protector during this period when the
mother is rendered measurably helpless by her condition, would imperil
the safety and even the life of both parent and child. Two must share
the risks and the responsibilities. The father, during this period and
that which follows, is to bear the burdens of life largely alone. He is
to provide food and shelter. He is to be the guardian and the defender
of his more dependent companion. Should exposure or peril result in the
death of the mother, the child must not be left without a natural
guardian and caretaker. This young life is too precious to be exposed to
possible peril. Its care, its nurture, its education is too important
even to be risked with a single parent. The mother might "forget her
sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her
womb," and it was important that the child should then have another, who
is bound by natural and moral obligations, and by bonds of personal
interest and tenderest affection, to care for it. This double parentage
gives the child four grandparents instead of two, and eight
great-grandparents instead of four. In this wise way the child is knit
to many in an obligation to nurture and care for it, should necessity
arise. If physical, mental and moral infirmity should exist in the
mother, the force of such infirmity must be reasonably broken by a new
stream of influences which tend to liberate the child from any
inheritance of incapacity. If the father is wicked or worthless, the
child is to find its defender and caretaker in its mother; or, should
the mother possess these bad qualities, the child may find in its father
its defense and help. The life and well-being of the child is so
important that it must have two chances to be well-born and well-reared.
But this relation of interdependence is not only for the well-being of
the offspring, but for the highest physical, intellectual and moral
development and well-being of both parents. Parenthood comes not only to
the mother, molding, fashioning and perfecting her in every department
of her being, but when intelligently and reverently assumed, when
discharged with fidelity and self-denial, it has its priceless
endowments for the father as well. In view of the Creator's full and
sacred purpose, who shall dare invade, or even lightly assume, the
far-reaching responsibilities which God has united to parenthood? "What
God hath joined together, let not man put asunder."
What intelligent man or woman shall dare trample under their feet all
the sacred relations of life, and call into being an immortal spirit
whose temporal and eternal destinies are to be affected by its advent
into a world that is waiting to brand it because begotten of an illicit
union? What husband or wife can regard with dishonor, or dare debase,
the God-given powers of reproduction?
But to return to the subject of the changes which take place within the
body of the mother during this period of wondrous interest. When the
spermatozoa have been liberated in the upper portion of the vagina at
the cervix, or small opening which forms what is called the neck of the
womb, although such minute microscopic objects that when laid end to end
it would require five hundred of them to make an inch in length, yet,
with that wonderful activity of which we have written in a previous
chapter, they immediately seek the doorway into the womb, that
mysterious chamber where the ovum may naturally be expected to await
their coming. We correctly think of persons, and not of things, as
possessed of intelligence and acting in accordance with reason, but this
mysterious natal chamber within the mother's body appears instinct with
intelligence. It seems almost as though across its portals were written,
in a language which every object and every spermatozoAśn might read, the
prohibition: "None save those who bear the gift of life may enter or
tarry within these portals." The ovum may remain for a period, and the
spermatozoa that seek the ovum may enter, but neither may tarry unless
each yields itself to the other in that mysterious union which results
in life. Apart or alone, after a brief period, they must alike be cast
out; no idler may tarry there; but that semblance to innate intelligence
which rejects or casts out any incomplete part as a foreign substance
accords a hearty welcome to the ovum that has been quickened into a new
life by the entrance of a spermatozoAśn. No mother ever embraced her
newborn child more lovingly, or regarded it with greater tenderness,
than the womb receives the quickened ovum. When the ovum is quickened,
every fibre of being thrills with a new purpose. A royal place is
speedily prepared for the safety, nurture and development of the ovum.
The entire nature of the mother now centres upon the accomplishment of a
special work--that of developing and bringing forth the new life
begotten within. Great changes are to be wrought not only in the ovum,
but the enlarging life and new necessities are to be met by
corresponding changes in the womb itself. Not only is the minute speck
of life which is laid within this human cradle to develop into a
fully-organized human being, but the cradle is to enlarge with the
growth of its occupant, and respond to the varying needs of the
unfolding and developing body within.
It will require the aid of a microscope to discover and observe the
object of our search and study. The egg of the bird bears some
proportion to the size of its producer, for in them is stored up the
nourishment which is to maintain the unfolding life that can be fed in
no other way until it has reached an advanced stage of maturity, and has
broken its shell and emerged into the outer world. The human egg is so
small that it would require two hundred and forty of them laid side by
side to make one inch in length. They contain the nourishment which is
to foster this minute beginning of human life for a brief period, after
which it is to derive all its nourishment from the mother. Her food is
to furnish the material for its upbuilding. Its blood is to flow from
her heart. The egg of the bird is encased in a porous covering through
which pure air, with its transforming power, is to find its way to the
developing life within; but this human egg and the life which it is
designed to unfold must owe all to its mother. Her lungs must impart the
oxygen it needs, and her body must minister to every function of the
body of the child, until after a period of months, when it shall have
reached that stage of development when it is prepared to enter upon its
own independent life in the outer world.
This minute germ of human life, this egg so small that a thousand could
be laid upon a ten-cent piece, this atom, which under the microscope
shows a speck of oil and albumin, which in the course of a few brief
months is to constitute a complex human organism, with all the perfected
parts and wonderful adjustment of a human body, already contains the
elements of a new human soul. Embodied in this undeveloped human germ is
the future man or woman. Here are all the elements which are to make the
successful mechanic, the farmer, the orator, or the statesman. Ingrained
in these forming tissues may be scrofula, consumption or insanity. Here,
already, are the inheritances which are to determine whether this being
shall be temperate or intemperate, chaste or licentious. The moral
nature has already received that bent which will incline it to reach out
after God and heaven and holy things, or which will incline it downward
to all that is base, destructive, and that tends to death. The history
of this immortal being is already measurably outlined in the past life
of the father and the mother. What they have been in their thought, in
their character, in their being, that their child is largely to become.
This outline is now subjected to modifications by the thought and life
of the mother during the few months while the body of her child is being
unfolded, fashioned and developed beneath and so close to her own heart.
During these months, her life is to tell both upon the body and the soul
of her child.
During the brief period while the germ within the fertilized egg is
being nourished by the vitellus or yolk of the egg, great changes are
taking place in the soft and delicate linings which surround it within
the womb. While, of course, the greatest changes which take place during
the period of gestation are chiefly within the ovum or egg, yet those
which take place in the body of the mother herself are more manifest,
and scarcely less marvelous. The mucous membrane within the walls of
this enclosure begins to thicken; the small vessels which compose the
structure of the inner surface begin to multiply, enlarge, and lengthen,
until they are manifest to the unaided eye. This soft, velvety lining
becomes thick and rich, but loses none of its softness and delicacy.
Every preparation is speedily made, and the fertilized egg finds
lodgment in the thin, delicate folds of the membrane in the upper
central portion or dome of the womb. The folds begin to grow about the
egg, partially enclosing it, and shutting it off from the general cavity
of the womb. At last the borders of this growing envelope meet, and form
a complete and distinct enclosure. This thin, transparent tissue, which
constitutes a living envelope or sac, shuts off the egg or growing
embryo from the rest of the cavity of the womb, which its increasing
proportions are soon completely to fill.
The original membranous lining which covers the entire interior of the
womb, and which has now become thickened or tumefied, as medical men
say, is technically called the decidua vera, while that portion of the
membrane which forms the sac that surrounds and encloses the egg is
called the decidua reflex. These are known as "decidua," which means
"not permanent"--a word applied to those things in nature which after a
period drop away, as leaves, teeth and horns, which are shed or fall
off. So the decidua reflex is to pass away with the birth, and the
decidua vera is to change back again into its normal condition.
The egg, which during this period has considerably enlarged, begins to
throw out upon all sides threadlike tissues, by which this germ of life
becomes attached to and grows into the mother-life upon which it is
engrafted.
It is through these filaments that the fluids which are to nourish and
develop this unfolding life are imparted from the mother and received
by the embryo.
As the attachment between the sac which encloses the egg more firmly and
securely adheres to the walls of the womb the filaments which had formed
upon all sides of the enclosing sac begin to disappear, except upon the
side in contact with the womb. Upon that side they become more
pronounced, and in the third month the permanent attachment known as the
placenta, through which the embryo is to receive its increasing supply
of nourishment from the body of the mother, begins to be formed. The
placenta is circular in shape, from one to two inches in thickness in
its thickest part, and about six or eight inches in diameter. It forms
the temporary medium of communication between the life of the mother and
that of the child, and, properly speaking, is not a part of either. It
is formed for a temporary use, which terminates with the birth of the
child; and at that time the placenta, the umbilical or navel cord, and
the membrane we have named, constitute what is called the afterbirth.
The placenta is a flat, soft disk which is attached to the walls of the
womb connecting the embryo by the navel cord, through which it respires
or breathes, and receives nourishment, and discharges the worn-out
particles of matter. It is through this attachment or cord that an
intimate connection is established between the growing life of the ovum
and the currents of life which flow in the mother's body. Through this
placentic cord the embryo receives oxygen and all the elements necessary
for its growth, upon the one hand, while, upon the other, it also
transfers to the body of the mother the carbonic acid gas and other
impurities which in the process of life are necessary to be thrown off.