A New Born's Instinct...

I apologize to the mods if this is in the wrong forum, I am currently running on 61hrs on 3 hrs sleep.

Anyways to the point, my question is...

Early this morning I witnessed the birth of my beautiful baby girl (Fayth), and as beautiful as the experience was, my ever inquisitive esoteric nature kicked in.

After the initial tests and what not, I lay there with my new born daughter, gazing at her when a thousand questions filled my mind, some of which I hope can be answered here...

!) How is it they can go from an environment, solely sustained via a cord delivering there necessary sustenance from there very moment of conception, to instinctively knowing how to breath..

2) How is it she immediately took to the breast as if she had done so a thousand times before..

3) My partners breast provide the essential liquid (colostrum) for the first day and then immediately develop milk when necessary the second day..

To me it (the circle of life) just seems so planned, practiced and rehearsed, I personally would call myself an Eclectic Christian, and believe in Intelligent Design, but am in turn perplexed by other theories on the inherent abilities that children are born with...

In addition I wish to add upon further thought.....what else could we be programmed to do, it is clear we are programmed for breathing, swallowing, sucking etc. It is self evident we are pre-programed prior to conception, imbuing us with some sort of prior knowledge of the basic survival skills, could there be further skills we are born with that have no demand for in the times we live in, and deteriorate through age? I mean we could each originally possess some evolutionarily diluted form of Second Sight (As according to Robert Kirk 'The Secret Commonwealth') when we are conceived that gets somewhat suppressed by the constant reinforcement that "there are no such thing as monsters"

Either way I'm looking forward to the responses and I sincerely hope this does not turn to a Creationist vs Darwinist debate.

And once again, I reiterate, I am operating off very little sleep, and am just somewhat curious and trusting enough to share this with my ATS Family

Lemme know what you think...

HYESTMR
"Have You Ever Seen The Mathyn Rain?"

Congratulations! Try to get some rest. You're going to need it with a newborn.

The answer to the instinct question is usually explained in terms of 'pre-wired' neurology. Automatic response pathways in the brain, that didn't require learning or adaptation to form. Interestingly, I just found some evidence that this also occurs in a parent's brain. We all have a specialized region of our brain that reacts differently to the faces of infants. Perhaps a basis for the adult instinct to nurture and protect?

Now, a possible brain basis for this parental instinct has been reported. This research was led by Morten Kringelbach and Alan Stein from the University of Oxford and was funded by the Wellcome Trust and TrygFonden Charitable Foundation. The authors showed that a region of the human brain called the medial orbitofrontal cortex is highly specifically active within a seventh of a second in response to (unfamiliar) infant faces but not to adult faces.
www.sciencedaily.com...

reply to post by Mathyn Rain


congratulations...........
best catch up on some ZZzzzzzzzz lots of up in the nights for you from now on.....
all good though

heh yeah plan to get a few zzzz tonight, but yeah the subject of "pre-wiring" has just been fascinating me, something which I shall pursue of clear mind and sober thought after a few days sleep