In an interview on Life Before Birth – and life after it

Your next book is The Fetal Matrix.

This is a bit more specialist. It’s a more recent book which discusses the possible evolutionary reasons for why the fetus in the womb maybe especially sensitive to its environment. The authors develop the concept of the “predictive adaptive response”, suggesting that this is an additional evolutionary mechanism to prepare the offspring for the environment in which it is going to find itself. Instead of traditional evolution, which involves mutation and natural selection over many generations, this occurs more rapidly and more reversibly. For example, we now know that if a mother is stressed while pregnant her child is more likely to be anxious and to have readily distracted attention ( as in ADHD). These outcomes are undesirable in our society but this book helped me to understand how being extra vigilant (more anxious) and more distractible, may have been protective in the wild with dangerous predators about.

It might once have been adaptive to have small babies if there is less food around, but if you have a small baby now, for another reason, there is a mismatch and the child will eat to catch up and become fat. Stress is just as big a factor for low birth weight as smoking. This book shows that there is epigenetic change depending on environment – not a change to the basic structure of the gene but a change that can be passed on even to the grandchild generation dependent on environment.

So stress is purely destructive?

Yes. There is no advantage to this that I can see.

What about the actual birth? Is Caesarian birth less stressful?

Yes. A Caesarian is better for the baby because it is less stressful and the babies tend to be more peaceful. Vaginal births are supposed to instigate breathing more quickly though.