The year is 1999 and your mother is walking down the street with her Sony portable CD
player in her hand listening to Ricky Martin’s “Livin' la Vida Loca.”
She doesn’t know it yet, but when she turns around the next block she’s going to bump
into a guy on the street.
That guy is your father to be, and while he prefers the Red Hot Chili Peppers over Ricky
Martin, these two folks are going to chat and they are going to get along.
Fast forward two weeks and they are on their first date.
In approximately eight weeks the two are going to get it on, and while they never wanted
to rush things, in the heat of the event they didn’t use contraception.
Your life is a movie in the making and you are “Coming Soon”.
So, first of all, did your parents jump the gun in making love after just eight weeks?
Well, it’s hard to say because scientists can’t tell us when the best time is to make
out like that.
Should people get intimate right away, or should they wait to know each other first?
It all depends on what people expect from the relationship.
Is it going to be about physical stuff only, or are the couple going to try and be together
for the long haul?
In a study conducted by the Journal of Sex Research, 11,000 American adults were interviewed
about how things started out.
These folks were not yet married but they were in what is called a serious relationship.
76 percent of those people had been together more than a year and 93 percent reported that
they had already made love.
51 percent of them were like your mom and pop, in that they waited a few weeks before
they did it.
38 percent of people said they did it pretty quickly, like in a few days or one or two
weeks, so it shows people can stay together and jump into bed early.
11 percent said they made love before they even knew anything about each other, meaning
they met in the street or some other place and rushed straight to the bedroom.
We guess after they performed the life-giving dance they then said, “Hi, my name is…”
Your parents might not have known, but they will have had certain values about making
love which psychologists call “sociosexual orientation.”
Some people might have what’s called a “restricted” orientation., meaning they feel like they
have to get to know someone before they can be intimate.
These are your 51 percent people, not the 11 percenters.
Unrestricted people tend to set fewer rules for themselves, but psychologists tell us
their relationships might burn out faster.
So, just remember, before you were born your existence rested on the psychology of your
parents.
You are a direct result of libidinal urges and sexual orientation.
Now we must say here that some people believe in pre-existence, meaning you were always
going to be born.
That the world in its mysterious ways always had you planned.
This is kind of left field thought, and we can’t really prove if it’s true or not.
What we do know, though, is that your pop’s sperm met with your mother’s egg.
We won’t spend too much time on this because we discussed it in our “What happens when
you are born” show, but when your father got a rush of blood to his head he released
millions and millions of sperm but only one of those things managed to meet your mom’s
egg.
You were a result of a great gauntlet which took place in your mother’s body.
You mother’s egg left the ovary and this is called ovulation.
It went to hang out in the fallopian tubes and went to see if there were any sperm there.
It’s almost like a repeat of how your mom and pop met on that street.
In this case a sperm met the egg and voila, now we have something called fertilization.
The sperm and egg now take a trip down the fallopian tubes and head to the uterus.
Cells form into a kind of ball and this is called a blastocyst.
It’s the most basic version of you, like you 1.0.
For two or three days this thing hangs out in the uterus, and then it attaches to the
side of the uterus and this is called implantation.
This is when pregnancy is made official.
You are not guaranteed at all, though, because things can go wrong in the early days.
In fact, the first 0 to 13 weeks are the most dangerous for you, and 80 percent of miscarriages
happen in this timeframe.
But in this case there is success.
We should say that when this success occurs hormones released in the woman’s body will
prevent her uterus from shedding.
In the cases when the magic didn’t happen and the sperm and egg didn’t get it on,
that lining of the uterus will leave the woman.
These are what are called periods.
Your mother might only know she is pregnant when she misses her period.
“Hmm,” she told your pop to be, “I think something is happening.”
Some women don’t feel any other effects, but others might feel tired, or nauseous,
or feel a bit tender around their milk-giving glands, or perhaps not be able to take a number
two.
So your mom along with your nervous pop went to the pharmacy to get a pregnancy test kit.
These things are pretty accurate, and they test the level of something called hCG in
the urine.
You don’t know what that is, so we’ll tell you.
It’s a hormone and its full name is “Human chorionic gonadotropin.”
Its produced by the placenta after that thing called implantation.
Now the scene is set for your mother to walk out of the bathroom with that plastic gizmo
in her hand which has a plus sign on it confirming she is pregnant.
The next three seconds and the expression on your father’s face are perhaps some of
the most important seconds that the two people will ever share.
In your case of course both your mom and pop were over the moon.
You are soon to become their little bundle of joy.
But wait a minute, what actually are you?
Are you him, or her, or something in between?
Well, the answer is you are a bit more her in some respects.
This is because of tiny cells called organelles.
It is the organelles that are responsible for producing energy for the cells that are
called the mitochondria.
Mitochondria takes food and makes you, it’s like a little factory that produces you.
You take a lot of energy to make, and so the mitochondria gets very busy.
The mitochondria is your mother’s, so you are more her than your pop we might say.
This doesn’t mean that you will be more like your mother, and we’ll get back to
this later.
First we must ask why you were born male or female.
Did God choose that?
Was it something to do with your mom or dad’s genes?
The evolutionary angle is that the natural world gives you slightly more chance of being
born male because the world needs around the same number of males and females.
One professor told the BBC why there are slightly more males born than females, “At every
age, in almost every time and place, a man is more likely to die than a woman,” she
said.
But outside of evolution there are other factors, and they might even include your mother’s
diet or even what position they were in during your making.
It could be about the woman’s ovulation cycle or the age of your parents.
All these things matter when it comes down to if the sperm that reaches the egg was carrying
either and X or Y chromosome.
Females are the X and males are the Y.
It’s thought nature instills equal opportunities in how many X and Ys are produced, although
there are theories as to what to do to plan for a male or female baby.
We won’t go into those today because we want know more about what you will be like.
This is now quite exciting because a little war takes place in the womb.
We are basically a composite of our mom’s and dad’s, like half of one and half of
the other, but not all genes have equal power.
Some are more dominant, so while you might be 50/50 in terms of DNA, genes express themselves
differently and this is called epigenetics.
According to science, fathers pass on more of their genes to you in their sperm.
This is what we are told: “While each parent technically contributed
half of an offspring’s genome, approximately 60 percent of the dad’s genes were more
expressive than the mom’s.”
It gets strange, though, if you believe scientific studies cited by The Smithsonian.
Listen to this: “As sperm traverse the male reproductive
system, they jettison and acquire non-genetic cargo that fundamentally alters sperm before
ejaculation.
These modifications not only communicate the father’s current state of wellbeing, but
can also have drastic consequences on the viability of future offspring.
You got that didn’t you, your father’s state of mind plays a part on if you’ll
be born and what you’ll be like.
The Smithsonian explains that in your father’s sperm there is intel, and that plays a part
in the production of you.
His mental and physical health at the time of inception will partly be inherited by you.
Because your father’s genes are expressed slightly more than your mother’s, scientists
tell us you have more chance of inheriting things on his side, such as quirks, and in
the negative, disease.
Your father’s genes are like invaders inside the woman, and he wants dominance.
He kind of gets it, too.
One scientist articulately explained it like this:
“While mom recognizes half of a baby’s genes — those that are similar to her own
— the other half, from the father, are alien.
That’s why women who are pregnant are immunocompromised and at risk of serious flus and other illnesses.
In order to stop themselves from destroying the tiny fetal invader, their bodies have
to impair their own healthy immune system responses.”
In the past some studies suggested that babies will end up looking more like their pops because
in evolutionary terms the father needs to know the baby is his and he’ll look after
it.
Moms of course have a much better chance of knowing who the father is.
This is called the “paternal resemblance hypothesis.”
While this seems to make sense, a lot of other studies refute it.
The Scientific American cited other research that found the opposite was true.
That babies will look more like their moms so if the father really has been cuckolded
he won’t know and will still look after the baby.
Still, the prevailing theory is that because our father’s genes express themselves more
we are slightly more likely to inherit things from him whether it be the shape of our nose
or his history of violence.
That said, genetics experts can’t predict what you’ll look like.
This is no exact science and while the father’s genes may express themselves more it’s still
not certain what you will inherit.
You might get your mother’s blue eyes or you might get his brown eyes.
If we are talking about something like hair color it gets quite confusing, so we’ll
let a scientist explain.
She said this: “If a father carries only a dominant gene
for brown hair and the mother carries only a recessive gene for blond, their children
should all have brown hair, but some of their grandchildren are likely to be blond.
Reason: The kids inherit both sets of genes, which can combine with blond genes from their
mates to produce fair-haired offspring.”
It all depends on each parent’s genetic combinations, and we cannot be sure which
genes will get passed on.
When it comes to personality it’s even more confusing, because while genes you inherit
affect how you’ll turn out we can’t exactly know what will happen.
You might be more like your mom, or your dad, or have a lot of traits neither of them have.
Studies have shown that twins often have similar personalities, but they are also original
in their characters or intelligence.
We can predict some things, but at the end of the day you are unique and might be a surprise.
Some things are more strongly inherited than others.
So, we can better predict your height or chance of being overweight more than we can predict
temperament or blood pressure.
Make no mistake, a lot is going on before you are born.
You are history in the making and this furnace from which you are created has many hidden
depths of complexity.
Can you add anything to this?
Do you think you’re more like your mom or your pop?
Tell us in the comments.
Also, be sure to checkout our other video What Happens When You Are Born?
Thanks for watching, and as always, don’t forget to like, share and subscribe.