Autism Spectrum Disorder Essay

During prenatal development, the prenatal environment can significantly affect the child development. Many of the effects will not be seen until the onset of adulthood diseases such as hypertension. Almost everything that the mother consumes including food, liquid, and even medication travels along the placenta to the fetus. In brief, anything that the mother is exposed to affects the fetus. During prenatal development, teratogens, an important agent that produce developmental abnormalities affect the growing organism resulting in physical and mental deviations. According to Cherry (2016), teratogens can cause a wide range of problems from low-birth weight to brain damage and to missing limbs. Therefore, in order to reduce and avoid these

One cause of this relationship is because stress hormones, passed to the fetus from the mother, impede on blood flow filled with oxygen and nutrients to the large muscles (Shaffer & Kipp, 2014). This takes away crucial supplies for the fetus to use during development. In addition, Prenatal Maternal Stress (PNMS) leads to shorter gestation periods, lower birth weight, and smaller head circumference. Project Ice Storm, a study on an isolated disaster and subsequent birth outcomes, illustrates this relationship. An ice storm in Canada’s St. Lawrence River Valley in 1998 caused numerous damages, fires, and deaths. The researchers addressed pregnant mothers’ distress from this catastrophic event and then analyzed the physical measures of the children. Through statistical analysis, the study demonstrates that gestational age was shortest when stress was exposed during the first and second trimester. This gestational age explained 42.6% of the difference in birth weight and 29.6% of the difference in head circumference between stress exposed and non-exposed children (Dancause et al., 2011). This study illustrates the direct correlation between a stressful event experienced by mothers and the health of the baby. Shorter gestation periods play a significant role in lower birth weight and head circumference that hinders the infant’s health. Prenatal

From just a simple ova to a new born baby the journey to get there isn't always short and simple . They will evolve to one the most complex organisms on the planet. Although some have a successful journey, some undergo wrong turns. Some processes are disrupted. They create disorders and many are formed the first weeks of growth.

Pregnant mice on gestation day (GD) 01 - 04 exposed to 200 mg/kg of BPA showed fewer implantation sites and mice exposed to 300 mg/kg of BPA eliminated the pregnancy. However, a strain of mice which is more susceptible to stress and implantation failure showed similar effects to the exposure to 100 mg/kg of BPA.

I chose to take a closer look at how teratogens have a great impact on the prenatal period. I am a pre-nursing student who wants to become a prenatal nurse. I believe it is imperative for me to understand the effects of all the different teratogens that expecting mothers may be exposed to, in order to prevent any complications. Moreover, teratogens can be described as agents that may cause harm or malformation to the embryo. Teratogens can be found almost everywhere and some are easier to avoid than others. I also want to identify which of and how the different theories that we studied are relevant to the impact of teratogens. I will be discussing an article from the Journal of Genetic Psychology: Research and Theory on Human Development titled

According to the article, the author argues that human development starts in the womb. I completely agree with this statement and believe that there is an interrelationship between mother and the fetus, that can affect body health and intellectual. The influences in the womb that resonated with me are the sources of stress and the impact of air. In the text, the author gives us a real life situation where they put pregnant women with normal mood and pregnant women with mental disorders in different situations. They measured the respiration, heart rate, blood pressure, and nervous system. They found the fetuses that were affected more are the ones with a depressed or anxious pregnant women. When one doesn’t have control in their mental feelings or actions, one can hurt others in the

Now you may be wondering but how does it affect the baby and the mother? Stress affects the baby in many ways. First, the baby could be born as a pre-term baby. The reason why the baby could be born as a pre-term is because whatever the mother’s mood is it goes to baby too. The baby then has to deal with the high levels of stress on its own. This causes the baby to not have fully formed organs. According to Dr. Wadhwa pre-term babies are susceptible to a range of complications later, including chronic lung disease, development delays, learning disorders, and infant mortality (Feature, 2005). The earlier the baby is born the higher the risk of breathing problems they have. The baby will also be born with disabilities. This disease is called cerebral palsy. Cerebral palsy is a general term for a group of permanent, non-progressive movement disorders that cause physical disability. Researcher found that when the mother is stressed out when pregnant it causes damage in the utero. Then when the child is now in adult they are at a high risk to have chronic health problems. They will also have heart diseases and diabetes. Mothers are affected by stress because it causes their brains to release hormones such as corticotrophin-release hormone, also known as CRH. CRH is what causes women to have a pre-mature labor. CRH does not only cause the mother to have a pre-term labor but she could also have a miscarriage. Stress causes the mother to cause allergic reactions with the chemicals

Furthermore, Gitau et al. (2004) found that fetal cortisol levels decreased in newborns delivered by cesarean section when compared to those delivered vaginally. In contrast Mears et al. (2004) reported elevated cortisol concentrations in assisted vaginal deliveries. Research has documented that there is some evidence supporting that birth mode determines stress response. (Taylor et al. 2000) As stated previously stress is psychosomatic, and causes or exacerbates a range of serious health issues. Knowledge of how our initial stress response at birth can modulate our reactions to stress could improve,

The development of the limbic system and the prefrontal cortex also appear to be affected by prenatal anxiety and stress. All this seems to support

The creation of a human being is a miraculous process. When many people hear human development, they tend to think about infancy or adolescent years when kids go through puberty, but the most amazing developmental processes take place in the prenatal stage. The amount of growth and change that occurs during the nine-month gestational period is almost incomprehensible. Prenatal development is broken down into three stages, the Germinal stage, the Embryonic Stage, and the Fetal stage. This paper will mainly focus on the embryonic stage because there is a vast amount of crucial development that happens during this period. The embryonic stage is also exciting because it is during this stage that the mass of cells that are supposed to be a human, starts to actually resemble a baby.

Because of possible harm to the resulting child, it is not ethically acceptable to experimentally manipulate the postimplantation human embryo. Therefore, most of what is known about the mechanisms of early human embryology and human development, especially in the early postimplantation period, is based on histological sections of a limited number of human embryos and on analogy to the experimental embryology of the mouse. However, human and mouse embryos differ significantly, particularly in the formation, structure, and function of the fetal membranes and placenta, and the formation of an embryonic disc instead of an egg cylinder. For example, the mouse yolk sac is a well-vascularized, robust, extraembryonic organ throughout gestation that provides important nutrient exchange functions. In humans, the yolk sac also serves important early functions, including the initiation of hematopoiesis, but it becomes essentially a vestigial structure at later times or stages in gestation. Similarly, there are dramatic differences between mouse and human placentas, both in structure and function. Thus, mice can serve in a limited capacity as a model system for understanding the developmental events that support the initiation and maintenance of human pregnancy. Human ES cell lines thus provide an important new in vitro model that will improve our understanding of the differentiation

One way I can expand my understanding of this topic is through additional research on the development of human embryos and in vitro fertilization.

From just a single cell, a series of moments of development have been adding up. While we all followed the same path through our first eight weeks in the womb, we all did it in our unique way. Each one of us is defined by this extraordinary time in our development, a time that continues to affect us all. From our first breath to our very

transferred into the host will often be completed during the early stages of embryo development

Although there is concern that raising a fetus in an artificial womb will impede on a precious relationship between mother and child formed during pregnancy, ectogenesis has benefits that far outweigh this apprehension. These benefits include advancement for women in the work force, greater safety during gestation (for both mother and child), greater safety during the