The heart, digestive system, backbone and spinal cord begin to form also the placenta begins to develop. Hands with web between the fingers have formed during the second month of pregnancy (8 weeks). The heart is functioning. Eyes, nose, lips, tongue, ears, and teeth are forming. Baby is moving even though the mother cannot yet feel the movement.
INTRODUCTION Prenatal development is defined as the process of growth and development within the womb, in which a single-cell zygote, that is, the cell formed by the combination of a sperm and an egg, becomes an embryo, a fetus, and then a baby. Conception occurs when the genetic material of the sperm and egg unite to form a single-celled zygote. This happens in the fallopian tube as the egg travels down the uterus. At this point, pregnancy occurs. It is the physical condition in which a woman’s body is nurturing a developing embryo or foetus.
By 30 days, the baby will be a quarter of an inch long. They will have a brain, eyes, ears and mouth as well as the kidneys, liver and umbilical cord. The baby’s blood is pumped round the body by the heart. During the second month, the embryo increases from 5mm to 40mm. during the sixth week, the fingers and toes will start to grow and by the seventh week, the baby has its own fingerprints.
For fertilization to take place, sperm must be present either a couple of days prior to or on the day of ovulation. Sperm must first cross the barrier of the cervix, which will be thin and watery if the woman has just ovulated. Once the sperm have traversed the cervical mucus, they travel up the moist lining of the uterus into the Fallopian tubes. Since only one of the Fallopian tubes contains an egg, many sperm travel in the wrong direction. Fewer than 1,000 sperm out of the millions in the semen reach the Fallopian tubes, and only a few dozen actually reach the membrane of the egg.
By definition, a “Designer Baby” is a genetically modified, unborn child. Basically, they are children who have been “designed” with the desired sex or characteristics. Scientists continue to learn more about the human genome, and as they do reproductive technology continually advances to levels that we never imagined. Researchers linked to Bionet point out: Advanced reproductive techniques involve using InVitro Fertilization (IVF), which is where eggs are fertilized by sperm in ‘test tubes’ outside the mother’s body in a laboratory. The type of sperm (X or Y) that fertilizes an egg can be chosen, which is used to determine the sex and genes of the baby.
Embryonic Stem Cell Research A stem cell is a type of cell that can give rise to more cells of its kind, with at least one type of specialized cell. Human bodies possess different kinds of stem cells in different stages of life, and embryonic stem cells exist only in the first few weeks of human life, when humans are embryos. Embryos are fertilized eggs formed when a human egg and sperm fuse together and begin to undergo cell division. After about five days from the first division embryos develop into a hollowed-out ball of fluid that contains around 150 cells called a blastocyst. A part of the blastocyst will become the placenta, which will serve to nurture the growing embryo.
As the eye is not able to make anymore, the cones move fastest to the fovea in the first 2-3 months of life and enable the new born to see clearer. The lack of maturity in this area at birth suggests that the visual filed of new-borns is blurry and fairly colourless (Hainline, 1998) The optic nerves communicate information from the retina to the brain for decoding. The optic nerves, although lacking their myelin coating, are all formed in the womb before birth. The myelin coating on the nerve cells speeds up the electrical impulses by insulating the nerve. When there is a lack of myelin
Statistics and Pro’s and Con’s of Having a Designer Baby Related For around $12,400, a couple can use in vitro fertilization and choose whether to implant a male or female embryo in the mother's womb. Nearly 8 million babies are born every year with a birth defect. In this number, around 3.2 million of the infants grow up and live disabled. Furthermore, in the United States alone, birth defect statistics claim that these in-born abnormalities are the leading cause of infant mortality in America. Given this fact, many expectant parents are asking, “Where do these defects come from?” What are the common birth defects?
The swelling will be there for about ten days before becoming flabby and then shrinking away again. This informs male chimpanzees that she is ready to mate. As for courtship behavior for the male chimps are when Male chimpanzees may shake tree branches or display erect genitalia if they are ready to mate The female chimpanzee has a period of eight to nine months that they are pregnant after mating, which is very similar to humans. Chimpanzees usually give birth to a single offspring but as for twins to be born is rare but still possible. Females remain fertile for their entire lives.
It is true that nature is the basic factor in affecting early human development. On the one hand, genes determine our personal characteristics: our genes program our growing cells and “they decide our sex, the colour of our skin, and hair and general body size. These genetic determinants are expressed in development through the process of maturation” (Atkinson et al., 1996). On the other hand, newborns can obtain some innate abilities, such as hearing, smell, taste and vision. “Infants can discriminate differences in taste shortly after birth … [and they] can also discriminate among odours” (ibid).