The Visitor Within: the Science of Pregnancy Book

A Visitor Within: The Science of Pregnancy is the truly fascinating, scientific "nuts and bolts" story of how babies are made. Anyone who is contemplating parenthood or even reflecting on it after the event will be drawn into David Bainbridge's excellent popularisation of the whole business from AIDS to zygote via gender identity and sibling rivalry. Bainbridge trained as a vet which gives him a much wider view of pregnancy than medics get. His research into pregnancy in deer and the interactions between human babies and their mothers are not as disparate topics as you might think. To understand the whole story properly Bainbridge ranges far and wide across reproduction in other mammals apart from ourselves and even further back in evolutionary terms. After all, as back-boned animals, we have an amazingly long history--over 500 million years' worth--and sex is much older in origin, at least 1.7 billion years old to be exact. Pregnancy and birth, are for most of us miraculous and still rather mysterious. Like death, they are great levellers in society, something that we all experience. As Bainbridge says, "Pegnancy is a very democratic scientific challenge and it can inspire anyone." He certainly knows what he is writing about. As a breech birth baby, he was perhaps predestined to be interested in why human birth can be so difficult. For we are an evolutionary compromise, paying for our extraordinary brains with big heads that come at a painful and sometimes life endangering cost as any mother knows only too well.--Douglas PalmerRead More