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smell perception of any kind. All of that changes during the third trimester. The tissue plug is replaced with snot (mucous membranes)—and lots of neurons hooked directly into the perceptual areas of the brain. Mom’s placenta also becomes less picky, granting permission for more and more smell-mediating molecules (called odorants) to enter the womb. Because of these biological changes, the olfactory world of
your baby becomes richer and more complex after the sixth month of gestational life. Your baby can smell the perfume you wear, and she can detect the garlic on the pizza you just ate.
    As a newborn, your baby will actually prefer these smells. The preference is called “olfactory labeling”. This is the basis for an odd piece of advice: Immediately after your baby is born, rub her with her own amniotic fluid before washing her with soap and water. It will calm her down, studies show. Why? As with sounds, smells remind babies of the comfortable home they were inhabiting for the past nine months. That’s because smell and certain types of memory form powerful neural linkages in the human brain. (Indeed, many mothers can identify their own newborns based on smell alone.)
Balance: 6 weeks
    Here’s something you can try at home if you are eight months pregnant or if you have a baby younger than 5 months old. If the infant has already arrived, place him on his back. Then gently lift up both legs, or both arms, and let them drop back to the bed of their own weight. His arms will usually fling out from the sides of his body, thumbs flexed, palms up, with a startled look on his face. This is called the Moro Reflex.
    At eight months of pregnancy, you can usually observe the Moro Reflex internally. If you are reading this in your soft bed, go ahead and roll over; if you are seated, stand up. Feel anything dramatic? A fetus is capable of executing a full Moro while still in the womb. These actions often incite it.
    The Moro Reflex is normal and usually occurs if an infant is startled, especially if he senses he is falling. It is believed to be the only unlearned fear response humans possess. It’s important that an infant has these reflexes. The absence of a good solid Moro can be a sign of a neurological disorder. Infants need to be able to do it within five months of birth. It is time-limited, though; its persistence beyond five months is also a sign of a neurological disorder.

    The Moro demonstrates that a great deal of motor (movement) and vestibular (balance) abilities have already been laid down by eight months. Vestibular abilities allow muscles to be in constant communication with the ears, all coordinated by the brain. You need a fairly sophisticated form of this communication in order to do a Moro.
    Babies don’t start off capable of doing full-tilt gymnastics, of course. But they are capable of “quickening,” which is a flutter of embryonic limbs, about six weeks post-conception (though the mother usually can’t feel anything for another five weeks). This movement is also important. It must occur, or your baby’s joints will not develop properly. By the middle of the third trimester, your baby is fully capable of deliberately commanding her body to perform a coordinated series of movements.
Taste: 8 weeks
    The tissues that mediate taste (“gustatorial sensations”) don’t emerge from your embryo’s tiny tongue until about eight weeks post-conception. That doesn’t mean your baby simultaneously acquires the ability to taste something, of course. That doesn’t happen until the third trimester. Once again we see the reception-before-perception pattern of sensory development.
    At that point, you can observe some behaviors familiar to all of us. Third-trimester babies change their swallowing patterns when mom eats something sweet: They gulp more. Flavorful compounds from a mother’s diet cross the placenta into the amniotic fluid, which babies in the third trimester swallow at the rate of a quart a day.