Читать книгу Child Development From Infancy to Adolescence - Laura E. Levine - Страница 215

 4.1 What happens during the three stages of prenatal development?

 4.2 What are some risks and health issues during pregnancy?

 4.3 What happens during the process of labor and delivery?

 4.4 How do newborns function, and what threatens their well-being?

 4.5 How do people experience the transition to parenthood?

From the moment a sperm unites with an egg in the process of fertilization, the complicated process of development begins. As you learned in Chapter 3, that moment determines the genetic makeup of the new individual, but from that very moment the fertilized egg, or zygote, also begins interacting with the environment. What happens in the prenatal environment of a woman’s womb over the next 9 months has a tremendous effect on the course of development. As you’ll see in this chapter, the process has some built-in safeguards that help ensure the newborn is healthy and fully ready to enter the world, but the system is not perfect, and the number of potential prenatal threats is substantial. Fortunately, we know a great deal today about ways to help a mother go through her pregnancy without complications and get the newborn off to the best possible start in life.

In this chapter, we describe the process of prenatal development. We also look at the experience of birth from the perspective of the parents and infant and see how the couple handles the transition to becoming a family.