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Asked by Mattdat rm15 to Lucy on 19 Jun 2018.
Question: What is the most dangerous thing to an unborn baby?
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Lucy Green answered on 19 Jun 2018:
I think this is a great question but really tricky thing to answer. Probably the biggest danger is something terrible happening to the mother since the baby is reliant on her for food and oxygen. But the whole process of development is important and there are lots of steps at which things could go wrong… a defect in the genetic code of the baby could be fatal, the food it gets, a disease (un-treated diabetes in the mum)… it is dangerous but many many babies are born just fine … that is an awesome feat of biology!
Take a deeper look here maybe https://www.nichd.nih.gov/health/topics/high-risk/conditioninfo/factors
Comments
953hetn25 commented on :
How dus alchol and smoking affect the baby 🍼
Lucy commented on :
OK so first off, the unborn baby has lungs but it doesn’t use them like we do – you know, to take in air and get oxygen into the bloodstream. Instead it gets oxygen from the mum’s blood … it passes across the placenta into baby.
If the mum smokes then this can stop the baby growing well, raise its heart rate, cause it to be born early. The chemicals in cigarettes can be carried straight to the baby….there are poisons and carbon monoxide, but also nicotine. Nicotine can act on blood flow through the placenta and the fetus itself. So the baby isn’t getting enough oxygen!
Now, the unborn baby’s lungs don’t need to do the whole oxygenation of blood job, but the baby still makes sort of practice breathing movements of its lungs… they are thought to keep fluid moving and help the lungs to grow. There have been studies to show that if them mum consumes alcohol there it stops the lung movements and the don’t grow as well…. so this can cause problems later with breathing.