DC 2007-04-02, In The Womb 子宫日记 1

This baby has come to the end of a nine-month-long journey. She can already taste, hear, smell, touch and learn. After 266 days, her soft cocoon has grown increasingly cramped and uncomfortable and there is only one way out into an unknown world of bright lights, loud noises and cold air, and there is no turning back.

This is her story, as seen from inside the mother's womb, from the moment two cells fuse into one to the birth of a baby girl in just nine months.

This baby is about to begin the journey of a lifetime, having spent nine months hidden in her mother's womb. In just 38 weeks, she's transformed from a single cell into trillions with over 200 specialized types, organized into the incredibly complex form of an infant girl.

Using new 3D and even 4D scanning techniques, a window has opened on the womb, allowing us to see fetal development unfold before our eyes. Real footage and computer imagery based on scientific observation take us on a journey inside the womb as it's never been seen before and reveal that the fetus behaves in a much more complex way than previously imagined. During her odyssey in the womb, she will smile, recognize her mother's voice and maybe even dream. The mother provides the shelter and the basics--food, water and oxygen, but the real star of the show is the fetus herself, building, dividing and growing according to an intricate set of plans created at the moment of conception.

Here is how it begins, during ejaculation, a mature healthy man expels up to 500 million sperm inside a woman's vagina. Each sperm carries a precious cargo--the father's genetic code. A man's testes are constantly at work, churning out over a thousand sperm every second. The quality of these sperm depends on the man's lifestyle. If you avoid smoking, excessive alcohol, hot bath, even tight underwear, you will produce stronger, healthier sperm.

Coffee, on the other hand, appears to stimulate sperm to swim further, faster and harder. It's a slow journey for the sperm, the smallest cell in the human body. They travel one tenth of an inch per minute and there are hurdles at every turn. From the vagina, they pass through the cervix, up into the uterus and on into the fallopian tube where the woman's egg, the largest cell in the body, awaits.

words and phrases:

cramped: Uncomfortably small or restricted.

odyssey: An extended adventurous voyage or trip.

churn out: to produce mechanically or copiously.