Prenatal Roots of Indigestion

How do we digest the unpalatable? In these challenging days of the 21^st century, we are bombarded not only by chemically tainted food, water and air, but also by the ever-present threat of climate change, greedy businessmen and irresponsible politicians. How do we assimilate all of this without becoming ill or overwhelmingly stressed?

There is so much discussion and discovery recently about microbiomes and the importance of healthy microbes in our digestive tract and elsewhere in our bodies. Our microbiome is now understood to be established as we pass through the birth canal and then make contact with mother’s skin and drink her milk. Even before that, however, in the womb, we are beginning to establish a microbial population. We are also beginning to digest.

Prenatal Toxicity

Prenatally, we are nourished initially by fluids within the mother’s body. As a tiny blastocyst on its way to the womb, we take in fluids of the fallopian tube and then drink of the “uterine milk” within the womb. At implantation, we burrow into the uterine wall where we can make contact with maternal blood vessels and glands, which become a new source of nutrition. Eventually, we develop an umbilical cord reaching out to the placenta. Ideally  what we received umbilically is all nourishing. Unfortunately, many babies encounter toxic substances arriving via the umbilical cord along with the oxygen and nutrients they need.

Toxins may derive from parental smoking, alcohol or recreational drug consumption, or from environmental pollution. Maternal stress, particularly if chronic or extreme, also has toxic effects on the little one in the womb. Babies prepare for the world they will be born into. If they marinate in a high level of maternal stress hormones, their little bodies and nervous systems prepare for a highly stressful life. They tend to be born with high sensitivity to stress. Their brains may develop areas designed for dealing with stress, like the amygdala, more fully than those supporting reasoning and social engagement, like the prefrontal cortex. They may even be born with more muscle mass and less brain and often have difficulty with learning and behaviour problems as reach school age.

Birth Interventions and Digestion

Stress at birth reinforces prenatal experience. A highly medicalized birth is inherently stressful, with mother being away from the familiar, safe surroundings of home, and instead being in a cold, noisy, overly bright hospital setting with too much stimulation. The stress of being in such an environment, augmented by the speed and urgency of birth attendants interferes with opening of the cervix, and the relaxing, nourishing pace of natural birth. Mothers may even be told they must not eat while in labour in case they need to receive anaesthesia. How is this digested? Both mother and baby may become hungry and weak, disempowered by medications, external authoritative voices, and medical interventions. The health-supporting massage of moving through the birth canal and important dose of microbes delivered in the process may be disturbed or completely missed by interventions like Caesarian section, forceps or vacuum extraction (ventouse).

Mother’s milk may also be replaced by formula. Breastfed babies receive the special benefits of colostrum, a pre-milk substance designed for newborn babies. When milk does come in, it changes its composition throughout the day, with increased substances supporting alertness during the day and sleep at night. Babies given formula or pumped milk may receive something with a similar taste and texture to milk sucked directly from mother’s breast, but it is different. Sucking on a bottle also may also alter oral development which could also affect later digestion.

All of these conditions challenge the original blueprint for developing digestion. It is important to acknowledge that sometimes these unnatural situations are unavoidable or even life-saving. Too often they are simply convenient or preferred for extraneous reasons.

Umbilical Affect and Toxicity

Coming back to what baby receives umbilically, it would be unusual for it to be entirely nourishing as mothers inevitably encounter stress and some challenging emotions. Babies receive these feelings biochemically via the umbilical cord. They also receive the sense of being loved, welcomed, wanted and celebrated, or not.

Umbilical affect is a term first coined by pre- and perinatal psychology pioneer Francis Mott and later used by Frank Lake and one of my mentors, William Emerson. Referring to feelings received umbilically by the baby, umbilical affect varies from positive to negative to strongly negative.

The more negative affect little one is exposed to, the more challenging it is likely to be to stay open to receive what is nourishing. Like any organism, we tend to withdraw from noxious stimuli. This creates a double bind, an impossible situation, for the prenate. What comes in umbilically for nourishment and growth arrives with what is toxic or unpalatable. Withdrawing the toxic means not having necessary nourishment.

The Gut Tube, Boundary Confusion and Mother Earth in the 21^st Century

Unable to reject what is noxious and still survive can lead to confusion around what is good for me and what isn’t. This is the process of digestion. The gut tube, forerunner of our digestive system and some other organs, becomes responsible for choosing which substances to absorb and which to eliminate. The gut may be considered a major boundary between inside and outside, as are the lungs which also develop from the gut tube. Not surprisingly, boundaries are confusing for those of us who have endured strongly negative umbilical affect or toxicity.

Coming back to the challenges of life in the 21^st century, we see a modern world where humans are not living in harmony with the planet we live on and depend on for survival. When we have suffered in our relationship with mother in the womb, or at birth, or throughout childhood, that difficult relationship may be projected onto others we encounter in life and also onto Mother Earth. Our toxic, irresponsible treatment of the earth has perpetuated the experience of double bind, toxic nourishment and a need to protect ourselves or collapse under the pressure of external authoritative voices telling us what is good for us.

Nourishing the Gut

How do we digest our experience? I find that acknowledging how our ability to digest may have been altered or wounded as it was developing is a useful first step. It then becomes possible to begin to differentiate between the extreme dependency of the little one and the relatively empowered state associated with my current age. I might then even be able to reassure and take care of the frightened helpless little one within me and begin to make more intelligent, responsible choices as an adult. As I settle under the defensive sympathetic activation, my parasympathetic nervous system comes back online to support digestion and other essential functions not associated with emergency survival. I may even begin to perceive with greater clarity what is safe and nourishing and what is truly toxic.

I invite you to consider what is challenging for you to digest in your life just now. How might it relate to your early experience?

If this territory is peeks your interest, I invite you to join me in a special webinar class I am offering Sunday, October 20^th, 2019 called Nourishing the Gut: Exploring the Gut Tube with Continuum. The video recording will also be available afterwards if you are not able to join us live. Please click here for details.

Image from: Blausen.com staff (2014). "Medical gallery of Blausen Medical 2014". WikiJournal of Medicine 1 (2). DOI:10.15347/wjm/2014.010. ISSN 2002-4436. [CC BY 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)]