In the fifth month of pregnancy the baby's brain is completely receptive to all the stimuli, it is able to perceive and to process information through sounds, touch, light, taste, etc. Although your hormones will continue behaving in a decisive way during the whole pregnancy, he does not depend as much of them to start understanding the external world.

The stimuli that reach the baby promote the development of the dendrites that are the ramifications of the neurons in charge of the connections that form the neural network.

Have the grandmothers already told you if the baby will be boy or girl based on the roundness of your abdomen? The only one who can tell you the baby's sex is the doctor that sees it in the ecography. The aspect of the abdominal area is related with the form that the uterus takes as the baby grows. If there is a slightly more pointed area it is due to the size and the baby's posture, not to the gender.

Surely you no longer feel the nuisances of the previous months and your state of mind remains positive. The fears and anxieties of the first stage of the pregnancy don't torture you anymore, but there will be other fears and insecurities that will come to mind even if you want to banish them: Will I be good mother? Will my baby be healthy? Will I lose freedom after the baby is born? Will I be able to confront the childbirth with courage? Your body continues to change; you are surprised by the capacity to grow of certain parts of your body, as the breasts or the abdomen. Is it possible that you fear that you will not recover your figure after the childbirth or that you doubt your sexual attractiveness? Do you worry that your couple will continue to find you attractive? Are you afraid that he could be unfaithful? All these doubts are normal and common to all pregnant women.

Have you stopped to think if your couple also has doubts, fears or anxiety? Perhaps he is afraid of no longer being the lead character in your life. Already, the baby occupies a great part of your emotional world and he not born yet, it is normal that he wonders how he will fit in the new family constellation or if the baby will absorb all your time and attentions. On the other hand, he can feel a certain anxiety to think of the family economy, the space available in the house, in his own loss of freedom or in the changes that he will have to make in his way of life.

Although yours is a solid relationship and both have wanted more than any other thing to be parents, is possible that the fears and anxieties provoke tensions in your relations. The psychological load is always less heavy when it is shared; speak openly and sincerely on the topic. Speak, while you look at each other's eyes, about what each one feels: about one self, about the other one and about the baby's birth. Speak with the heart, with sincerity and listen in the same way. Introduce yourself under the skin of the other one to understand his feelings well. Don't feel guilty or make the other feel guilty for what you say. Ask for forgiveness if you consider it opportune and forgive from the heart.

Lastly, you can complete the following questionnaire separately. The answers can be shared or used only for an independent reflection.

You need read to read again the section on the family of origin of the third month of pregnancy, carry out the suggested reflections and converse in an open and flexible way on your respective forms of confronting tensions.

If up to now your couple has not been totally involved in the program of prenatal education, and he wants to do it with the intention of feeling better and to clearly establish his role in the new family, he can begin to do the relaxation routines to eliminate physical and emotional tensions. The musical sessions will provide him with harmonization and a bigger capacity to concentrate on what is truly important. He can write in his own emotions notebook, it will help him to discover feelings and hidden fears. To create his own statements will reinforce his self confidence and self-esteem.

There is no a single activity in the program that rules out the father's participation, in fact, all and each one of them will help him destroy his doubts and fears. Once this objective is achieved, he will be able to offer the emotional support that you need and it will facilitate his emotional bond with the baby. The top benefit is for the three of you because you will be able to create the best, healthier and more loving of family atmospheres.

What the baby hears and listens.

The uterus is a very noisy place: the flow and reflux of the liquids, the sounds of the stomach and the intestine during the digestion, breathing, etc. The baby constantly receives an acoustic bath; however, there are two main types of sounds for him: the heart beats and the mother's voice. With these sounds he maintains an attitude of listening, he applies his hearing to them.

Some prenatal programs state that it is important for the baby to receive masculine information. Based on the theory (that we don't share) that the intra-uterine boy or girl only perceives low sounds, they ask the father to speak addressing the mother's abdomen. Currently all the investigations coincide in saying that the baby is surrounded of the low sounds of the uterine environment to which he pays little attention and there is "imprinting" before the high sounds, that is, that the high sound stimuli are registered by the baby while most of the low ones go unnoticed. This, demonstrated scientifically, is normal since the nervous endings are sensitive to high sounds and are more numerous that those sensitive to the low sounds (25.000 sensitive to high sounds for about hundred to low sounds), the high frequencies spread easily.

On the other hand, for the father's voice to reach the baby through the abdomen keeping in mind the thickness of the uterine wall, he would have to scream and, certainly, it would not be a loving experience for them. The masculine frequencies reach the baby through the mother's auditory channel that produces vibrations in the coccyx.

Then, the communication of the father with baby depends on the listening conditions of the mother and always keeping in mind that high frequencies reach the baby more easily because they produce more vibrations than the low ones

Preparation courses for the childbirth

We recommend you that you consider the possibility of registering in a preparation course for the childbirth, if you have still not done so. You will find the course very effective, mainly from the practical point of view. Sharing doubts with the professionals that lead the course and with other future moms will be you of great help to live the pregnancy with more tranquility. Besides the correct physical preparation, the relaxation and breathing exercises will facilitate the contractions when the time comes, shortening the childbirth and avoiding suffering to the baby while he is born.

The active participation of your couple in the course is important to make him fully aware of his paternity and to be implicated in the pregnancy as something that also happens to him. If the father learns the techniques taught in the course, he will be able to lead you when the childbirth begins if the nerves dominate you and you feel disoriented. The courses are given in public and private centers. In both cases they are usually directed by midwives, although usually psychologists, physiotherapists, obstetricians or gynecologists also participate. The important thing is that they are professional experts in the topics of the course. You can get some information about the wide variety of courses that are organized in your health center, in your doctor's office, if you belong to a medical society, through other women that have been mothers recently, etc. The contents and the practices are similar in all the courses, both public and private, although the techniques can differ.

The courses usually take place throughout the third trimester, they are usually given in 9 to 12 sessions of two hours each and they usually include some postpartum classes after the baby is born. It is important that number of couples is reduced to obtain more personalized attention on the part of the professors. Lastly, it is very important that you practice daily at home the techniques learned in the sessions, this way you will end up doing the breathings in a mechanical way, without having to think of them when the moment of the childbirth arrives. 

ACTIVITIES FOR THE fifth MONTH

RELAXATION AND HARMONIZATION

If you have been doing relaxation routines from the first month, by this time you should achieve the state of conscious relaxation in a few minutes and you will have acquired more coordination of your brain with all the muscles of the body. Continuing with this activity will help you to attain an optimal physical and mental state to do other exercises that we will are going to recommend.

MUSICAL SESSION

Using your favorite music, listen to the session using headphones sometimes. When you don't use them test with different volumes and observe the reactions of the baby expressing his preferences. Try placing your hands on the speaker to feel the vibrations of the sound.

PORTION OF LOVE 

It is normal that, within the fears that you house, there is a concern about the health of the baby, it happens to all pregnant women. Share those fears with your couple and talk about it in the visit to your doctor. If the doctor considers it opportune, he can carry out an ecography and even give you the image that you have seen in the screen so that you take it home. Use that image as a real picture of the baby, place it in a visible place and you look at it as much as you want.

During this month, choose statements to dissipate the doubts that arise:

• I am a good mother.

• My son is healthy and happy.

• My body provides everything necessary one for the development of the baby.

• I am an attractive woman.

WRITING IN THE EMOTIONS NOTEBOOK

Write about the doubts and fears that are commented in the introduction of this month. If any concern does not come up with easiness, uses the techniques to involve the right hemisphere keeping in line the intervention of the left one.

TO FEEL BETTER

Self ocular massage

• Sit down before a table with the elbows on it. Place the hollow palm of the hand on the eyes without letting the light to pass. Keep your eyes open, seeing the darkness during a couple of minutes.

• In the same position, place the base of the palms of the hands on the brows. Inhale deeply and, when exhaling, it slip the hands from the interior to the exterior of the brows. Lift them when you reach the temples and repeat the movement four or five times.

• In the same position, it places the tips of the thumbs between the lachrymal and the birth of the brows. Press as much as it is comfortable for you with the thumbs during some seconds, later repeat the same pressure alternating the fingers.

• To conclude, place the tips of the middle fingers on the temples and, using the pressure of the fingers as a support, relax the neck and the head. Inhale deeply and when loosing the air rotate the fingers slowly in the sense of the needles of the clock.

Take care of your postures

Also to feel better you should learn how to carry out your daily chores taking care not to adopt inadequate postures that harm your health. To be pregnant doesn't mean that you are sick; you can follow your rhythm of habitual life, unless the doctor recommends some rest. Nevertheless, you should face all the tasks calmly, avoid big efforts and risky activities, do not be too demanding with yourself and don't adopt postures that provoke back pain.

• When you carry shopping bags or any other weight, distribute it evenly between the two hands and keep your back straight.

• Instead of carrying your handbag on a shoulder wear it as a bandoleer or substitute it for a backpack.

• When taking the shopping cart, place it before you and push it with the two hands.

• When ironing, cooking, or folding the clothes or doing any other activity standing, separate the legs a little and keep them something flexed. Shift the weight of the body from one leg to the other following the movements of the top part of the body.

• When you bend over to pick up something, place a foot ahead and lean flexing the knees and arching the back. When getting up, stretch the legs and try to have them make the effort.

• When mopping or vacuuming the floor, place the legs somewhat separate and flexed, with a foot slightly to the front. Balance the body shifting the weight of the body from one foot to the other, keeping the back straight. If you need to bend over to clean under a piece of furniture, lean by bending the knees.

• If you have to pick up a pail of water from the floor, the vacuum cleaner or any other similar weight, place a foot forward and flex the legs. Lift the weight little by little, stretching the legs and raising the trunk.

BREATHING EXERCISES

Throughout these months you have already achieved correct breathing domain. Carry on with the exercises, but mainly observe if you already incorporate the inspirations and expirations that you learned in an unconscious way in your daily life.

LIGHT GYMNASTICS

The abdominal muscles form a wall that, in vertical, extends from the ribs and the breastbone until the crest of the pelvis and, in diagonal and horizontal, from the sides toward inside. These muscles maintain the abdomen contracted, facilitate the movement of the trunk, and sustain the organs of the abdominal area and those of the low part of the back, serve as a point of support when you take impulse, they sustain the uterus and they will help you to push the baby in his birth.

Throughout the pregnancy, the abdominal muscles have to stretch out, from their central position, in all directions to house the baby and the placenta. This stretching is possible thanks to the relaxine hormone. The diameter of the waist will increase between 65 and 115 centimeters , and the longitude of the muscles between 30 and 50 centimeters . The dilation of the muscles is not painful, you won't even be aware of it.

It is very important that you exercise the abdominal muscles daily. Their strength will help you to maintain the tone in the abdomen and alleviate the back pain because they will sustain the front weight far from it. To exercise these muscles doesn't entail a risk for the baby if you carry them out correctly.

In the sessions of the previous months we described appropriate movements to strengthen the abdominal muscles. We advise you to do them daily. Besides these exercises, do two or three weekly sessions with the rest of movements of these sessions.

To make the sessions more interesting, we suggest some exercises that you can practice from time to time with your couple. Repeat each movement 10 times; breathe inspiring deeply through the nose when the body opens up and exhaling slowly through the mouth when the body closes.

• Lie down in the floor face up, with the legs a little open and flexed. Your partner should place himself before you and hold your knees while you try to separate them. With this movement you reinforce the muscles of the perineum and make the abductor, and adductor muscles and the buttocks work.

• In a squatting position stretch the arms toward your couple who is in front of you. He takes your hands and helps you to raise and to go down a little. If you practice this movement from time to time, in the last days of the pregnancy it will be very practical to help to position the baby.

• With both standing in front of each other, with the trunk bowed towards the front, the legs open and the knees a little flexed. You hold each other by the shoulders and you maintain the posture some seconds doing long, slow and deep breathings. Both will win in flexibility and rest your backs.

EMOTIONS, AFFECTIONS AND MATERNAL FEELINGS

In the moments of more receptivity of the baby, that they are usually between one or two hours after the meals, if you are relaxed, calm and receptive, communicate with the baby while you listen to some relaxing music.

Sit down comfortably, with the security that nothing or no one disturbs you. Place the hands on the abdomen, close your eyes and imagine the baby inside of you.

Mentally visualize his delicate body floating freely in the amniotic fluid. Notice his big head, the fingers and the toes, his delicate legs flexed.... Observe his face, how it moves the lids, how he opens and closes his mouth. Focus now in his chest; perceive the beats of his heart. Place the hand on your chest, feel your heartbeat and notice how it moves in unison with that of the baby. Breathe deeply and imagine how the oxygen reaches the baby through the blood flow. Observe how the blood transfers oxygen bubbles, along with vitamins and other nutrients, and how they arrive through the umbilical cord. Imagine that in that blood travel some heart shaped bubbles that transport your love, energy and fondness. The happiness and the emotion of providing all that the baby needs to grow healthy and happy.

Lastly, imagine that the baby, through the umbilical cord, sends you his love and gratefulness. Feel how all his fondness reaches you and enjoy that energy that connects you both.

Let yourself be taken by the music for a couple of minutes, feel the warm emotion that travels around all your body and, little by little, return to reality. 

LULLABIES

Continue to sing, alone or accompanied, to your baby. Emit the vocalizations recommended in the fourth month; sing the songs that you listen to in the radio, or the songs that you remember of your childhood. Try not to expose the baby to too much strident music, he will show you his displeasure

CARESSES OF LOVE

Objective: to become aware of your body and of the areas where the baby is developing, caressing him through the movements of the amniotic fluid.

In a comfortable position, standing or lying, pass your hands over the bony area of the pelvis. Feel the whole area, beginning with the hips and, as if it was a very soft massage, go down over the abdomen until you reach the pelvis. Feel comfortable and enjoy the pleasant massage, direct your well-being toward the organs of the pelvis. Close your eyes and visualize the whole area mentally while you feel the massage.

Continue with the massage up and down, from the hips to the belly. Use the visualization that you have exercised on the uterus. Imagine the baby in that pleasant landscape while you caress the area above the bladder where the uterus is located; relax the muscles of the area.

- AFFECTIVE CONVERSATION

Objective: The affective conversation seeks to help you establish a communication with the baby, perceiving his answers.

In any calm moment of the day, when his movements tell you that he is awake and active (after the meals); begin to establish a pleasant routine of loving communication.

Sitting, standing or lying tap softly with your hand on the abdomen. Follow a simple beat, as if it was a Morse message: "ta, ta, tee, tee ta." Repeat the same message three times, pausing after each one. Does the baby answer? Does he stop his movements when you tap?

If you don't obtain an answer, do not be discouraged, the baby does not yet know the communication mechanism. The following day repeat the same message "ta, ta, tee, tee ta", three or four times with the corresponding pauses. When the baby responds somehow, vary the rhythm of the taping. Do you notice any reaction from the baby to the change?

You can carry out this activity throughout the whole pregnancy. As the baby grows it is possible that he responds with a kick after feeling the taps. When this is a daily reality, change the area of the abdomen where you make contact to check if the baby also kicks in that place.

The communication can transform into a habitual and amusing game for both