• Question: Do babies feel pain in the whom and during their birth?

    Asked by batman to Tom, Matt, Hugh, Douglas, Antonia on 21 Jun 2010 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Antonia Hamilton

      Antonia Hamilton answered on 21 Jun 2010:

      After 25 weeks of pregnancy or so, babies certainly respond to things they don’t like, and would pull away if something hit them. studies on premature babies also suggest they do better if give pain relief. but babies don’t have a fully developed brain and process pain in the same way as adults. so they can feel the immediate OWW but they don’t have the “what happened? who hurt me? that’s not fair?” response that we might have.

    • Photo: Matthew Hurley

      Matthew Hurley answered on 21 Jun 2010:

      Yes babies can feel pain. We previously thought that really premature babies couldn’t feel pain, although there is some suggestion now that they can. So if premature babies can feel pain, so can babies in the whom.

    • Photo: Douglas Blane

      Douglas Blane answered on 21 Jun 2010:

      Pain is a hard thing for scientists to study, because you can’t measure it with an instrument.

      You have to rely on what people say and do. So does that mean that if someone can’t tell you they’re in pain then they can’t be?

      Clearly not. So if an person or animal has a well-developed nervous system and reacts to things that would cause pain in us, then saying they can’t feel pain is daft or dishonest.

      Babies in the womb pull away from objects like needles that would cause pain in us and they have well-developed brains and nervous systems. So they do feel pain. There isn’t a switch that’s turned on when a baby is born that suddenly makes it start to feel pain at that instant.

      So the hard question is when do they start feeliing pain in the womb? There is some evidence that it’s before the 24-week abortion limit in this country. But there’s a lot of debate about it. The science as I’ve said is hard to do.

      Babies certainly feel pain during birth. So does the mum. And so let me tell you does the dad. I’ve done it twice and it’s painful, amazing, scary and wonderful 🙂

    • Photo: Tom Hardy

      Tom Hardy answered on 21 Jun 2010:

      I’m sure there is a little discomfort during the birth and babies in the later stages of development do have nerve endings so can feel, but there is nothing to cause them real pain.

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