9 Months That Made You

Episode three journeys through the final months in the womb — a time when we grow strong and develop our vital survival tools for our first breath. For most, this is when our cartilage changes to form a skeleton of over 200 bones, but very occasionally it doesn’t. Meet Jannelly, who was born with no bones and was saved from the brink of death by a drug trial, which made medical history by creating “manufactured bone” for the first time. Our brains develop at an extraordinary rate by week 27, with an estimated 100 billion new connections every day, creating the foundations for our memory banks. This happens at a time when the unborn baby is beginning to hear and it could just be that early attempts at memory and recall might begin around this time, inside the womb. Indeed, external forces can affect us in the womb in many ways. We survey the very latest in epigenetic research which shows how the womb environment leaves its mark, maybe even altering your DNA.