Previous Page  185 / 304 Next Page
Information
Show Menu
Previous Page 185 / 304 Next Page
Page Background

40. Life and Death Before Birth

-–

A Journal Account

I have personalized this stark journal account to

dramatize the humanity involved:

Week 1 -- This is the first day of the rest of my life.

My parents do not know it yet as I am as tiny as a

grain of sand, but it is I, for sure. And I am to be a

boy. I shall have brown hair and brown eyes. Much

has already been determined, even the fact that I shall

love.to

run and play. My human life has beg_un. It's

an amazing thing. Even before implantation, the

gender of my new life can be determined. And at

implantation, my new life already consists of hundreds

of cells. Additionally, I have developed a protective

hormone to prevent my mother's body from rejecting

me as foreign tissue.

Week 2 -- There are those who say I am not yet a

real person and that only my mother lives. However,

I am real, just as a small slice of bread is not truly the

whole loaf. My mother is, and I am, too. My new life

has developed its own blood cells. The placenta is part

of my new life and not of my mother. Toward the end

of this week

I

will experience occasional pulsations of

a muscle that will become my heart.

Week 3 -- My mouth has been formed, and I can

open it. In less than a year, I shall be laughing and.

two years from now talking.

~

would be ungrateful ·if

my first word

I

said wasn't "Mama." My eyes are

starting to develop, too. The foundation of my entire

ner\lous system has been laid out. What a week this

third week has been! My heart began beating all by

itself. From now on it shall gently beat for the rest of

my life without ever stopping to rest. After many years

it will tire.

It

will then stop, and I shall probably die of

old age as all mortals do because their earthly parents

167