# Things about babies in the womb



## John Galt (Jun 7, 2015)

In my current WiP, the rate at which babies develop is related to a means of assassination. Yes, really. Without going into more detail, these are a few questions I've tried to research without any luck:
1. Do babies develop at faster rates during different stages of pregnancy? ie does he/she develop faster during the first 5 weeks, then slow down for, say, 10 weeks, then pick up again at week 25? Or does it remain a steady development throughout? If the latter is true, is there any way of hindering the growth rate for a period (easily)? 
2. What temperature does the baby experience? 
3. What pressure? Does it remain constant throughout its time in the womb? 

Many thanks. This will help my fetal assassins greatly.


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## aj47 (Jun 7, 2015)

1.  What does "Faster' mean in this context?  In the beginning, they multiply their size by a lot, doubling, tripling, etc.  It's not "faster" though.
2.  The body temp of the mother... that's why fevers during pregnancy are dangerous to the fetus (and it isn't technically a baby till it's born). If your characters are medical professionals, they'll tend to say "fetus' because of accuracy.  Parents tend to think of fetuses as babies, so your parent, relative, and friend-of-parent characters will use that term.  Does that make sense?
3. The baby is floating in amniotic fluid, a liquid.  It's like being submerged in a swimming pool.  The womb expands as there is more content (fetus plus liquid) so it's pretty constant.  And liquids aren't compressible.  The incompressible property of liquids is why hydraulic systems work.


My credentials are that I've had five babies and I'm married to an engineer.


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## John Galt (Jun 8, 2015)

Thanks. By faster, I meant general rate of size increase, but I've since refined the magic to get around that aspect. 
On 2: It was a long shot to think that maybe, just maybe, there'd be a slight enough fluctuation in womb temperature to give me a leg-up with the means of murder, if you will. But that's been smoothed out.
For 3, I was shooting equally as long as with 2. But some revisions have since cut pressure out (was actually looking for the relative density of the amniotic fluid and if that changes ever so slightly leading up to the later stages and the fluid's development - in terms of composition).

Thanks again


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