The Womb​—Our Marvelous First Home

WHAT a marvelous place, your first home! Warm and cozy. Well stocked with rich nourishment. Safe and secure.

You spent months there, thriving and growing. Soon, though, your quarters seemed to be getting tighter and tighter, till one day you could barely move. Likely, by that time you were even standing on your head! Then, all at once, you felt yourself being squeezed by powerful forces, and you burst through the door of your home into the cold, noisy, brightness of the outside world.

You don’t recall any such experience? No doubt you do not. But you owe your life to that wonderful place in which you were housed​—your mother’s womb. It was perfectly designed with you in mind, providing all the nurturing and protection a developing baby needs. So why not journey back and take a tour of that marvelous first home of yours​—the womb?

A Warm Welcome Awaits You

Your life probably began while en route to this fine home. A ripe ovum from your mother traveled down a tunnel called the Fallopian tube. Meanwhile, millions of sperm cells from your father were on their way up the same road to meet this egg head-​on. One sperm succeeded in fertilizing the egg, and thus you came to be you.

By this time preparations for your arrival were already under way. The walls of the womb, or uterus (Latin uter, for “bag”), had been preparing themselves, and the place was fairly brimming with nutrients. The lining of the uterus had swelled to twice its normal thickness, with a soft spongy coating.

After three or four days, you passed over the threshold of your new home. To you​—a pinhead-​sized cluster of a few dozen cells called a blastocyst—​it might have seemed like a sprawling cavern. Inside, however, the space is quite small. Actually, the uterus is a hollow organ, smooth and pinkish, about the size and shape of an upside-​down pear.

This would be your home for the next 270 days or so, and your mother, even at the expense of her own body, would provide you with the nutrients you need to grow and develop till it was time for birth. Several weeks would pass before your mother even realized you existed, and it would be another three to four months before her belly would protrude enough for others to notice.

After a free fall into the uterine cavity, you floated around for three more days. Finally, you attached yourself to the uterine wall. Enzymes from the blastocyst digested the surface cells of this plush lining, called the endometrium, and you sank down and nestled securely in the velvety depths. Had an egg not been fertilized and implanted in this lining, the uterus would eventually have shed it and expelled it from your mother as the menstrual flow.

Coping With Rejection

Marvelous processes were now at work to ensure that your stay was a pleasant one. For one thing, you needed protection from your mother’s own immune system. Scientists are still puzzled about why your mother’s body didn’t consider you a foreign intruder and attack you. Normally, the complex rejection system springs into action at the first sign of any invader.

Nourishing and Nurturing Continue

Consider your insatiable appetite for nourishment, especially during these early stages. In your first eight weeks of life, you increased in length about 240 times, and your weight grew to a million times more than at conception.