Breath deep.
I think it's the only way to control my fear.
Bruno is about to take a dramatic leap of faith.
Crossing a ravine 840 metres above sea level.
And he's going to do it on a rope just 2.5cm thick.
It's really much like flying.
You can see the birds passing next to you
or you can hear the birds sometimes.
Yeah, I love this feeling.
It takes extraordinary youth, courage, fantastic sense of balance
and he's able to do this because he has all those things,
but he also has something which grew inside him
when he was still in his mother's womb.
Bruno's daring feat is only possible because of the intricate
and precise alignment of each part of his body.
Every muscle, every joint and every link in his spine
are working as one to give him phenomenal balance.
All had to come together perfectly
when he was taking shape in his mother's womb.
What Bruno has done is he'd taken skills we all have
and he has honed them to the Nth degree through great hard work.
But he's also dependant on a series of critical events
that happened to him during the first weeks that he was in the womb.
Events that have shaped how he has turned out,
events that also shaped how you turned out.
Everything about us...
..every breath...
..each digit on our hands...
..one or many...
..female or male...
..each one of us was built in a series of make-or-break moments.
And we can now hone in on the weeks, days, even hours
that show us how our lives were shaped...
..and the time before we were born.
The nine months when we walked
the most important tightrope of our life.
This is the story of the making of you.
In this episode, the beginnings of life.
Eight crucial and perilous weeks from the moment of conception
to the assembly of the vital organs and the formation of the human body.
- Who was born first? Who's the eldest? - Me.
- Then me. Then me. - Then me. I'm the youngest.
One minute between each of us.
Polly, Jessica, Elly and Georgie are incredibly rare.
From a single egg came one set of instructions
that should have built a single person.
But in their case, it led to four genetically identical sisters.
- 64 million to one, the odds of my pregnancy. - Yeah.
That was the odds of the pregnancy to actually go through it
and survive it. It was one in billions, he said.
You just deal with it, don't you?
You've got no choice. You can't say, "No, I'm not going to do this."
Well, I suppose you could.
Sometimes we used to ask, "Why did it happen?"
It must have happened to us for a reason, so we just got on with it.
Freaks of nature.
What happened to them is exceptional.
But their journey started in the same way as ours.
With the meeting of a single egg and a single sperm.
Soon after, two sets of genetic instructions, half from each parent,
combined to create a unique genetic code for one human being.
Cells divided and divided again.
Until around day five...
..when there would have been a few hundred interconnected cells...
..it was then that the girls' story dramatically departed from ours.
It was sort of arms and legs and it was all a bit...
- ..incomprehensible, I suppose. - Yeah. - I couldn't fathom out what was what.
I don't think the sonographers could find out either, could he?
- No. He went a bit... - Ashen.
Yeah, I suppose that's the right word.
He said, "It's a multiple pregnancy."
We sort of smiled, thinking, "Oh, twins. Boy and a girl."
Happily every after, sort of thing.
And he said,
"No, this is really serious. There's four babies in here."
The chances of survival were very slim.
- That's what he said. - Yeah.
Events like this are so unusual
that doctors really can't explain how they happen.
One suggestion is that
the vital communication between cells broke down.
And so, four distinct clumps of cells
began to behave independently from each other...
..and against all the odds,
each went on to build a separate human being.
What's the best thing about being a quad?
Having the best sisters in the world.
Not being alone all the time.
Yeah, having people there,
cos if I didn't have any sisters, I'd be really sad and lonely.
I could help you.
Quite honoured, most of the time.
Apart from when they're playing up.
- It was your fault anyway. - Yeah. I guess so.
Polly, Jessica, Georgie and Elly will forever be defined
by the forces that long ago split one embryo apart.
But going from no children to four...
- Yeah. - Massive jump.
Hey, girls.
Hi, girls. You can come in and say hi.
- Come here. - Hi! - Hi, filmers!
- Hello. - Hello. - I just wanted to see you.
200 hours after conception,
and deep inside every cell, there are changes taking place.
Changes that could determine the length of life itself.
So, why do you think you have lived so long?
And why did God decide you?
This is Mr Kamatura and he is 90 years old.
Considering life expectancy around here is less than 60,
that is a very impressive age to reach.
And as you can see, he is absolutely spry, bright and he tells me
the only thing that's wrong with him is pain in one of his toes.
Now, the reason for his long and prosperous life,
there are lots of possible explanations, but one may well be
what happened to him in his mother's womb
within days of his being conceived.
In fact, the secret to Mr Kamatura's longevity
may be down to the time of year he was conceived.
The same season as baby Nuha...
..who is just moments old.
Hello, there. Hi.
How is he?
Does he look like your husband?
Can I pick him up? Thank you.
Hello, young one.
How are you?
So this is the youngest member of the village
and he was born on the 5th of May.
And that is relevant,
because that single fact could effect the rest of his life.
Well, it's not to so much when he was born, but when he was conceived.
So going back from May, that means he was conceived in August.
Now I'm reasonably sure if I had been looking out of
the window on that day, I would have seen rain.
He's gone quiet.
I bored him to sleep.
Baby Nuha was conceived in the wet season, which in this part
of the Gambia runs from July to November.
Different foods grow in the wet and the dry season and it seems that
what a mother eats around conception can dramatically alter
the life span of her baby.
At this time of the year there are plenty of calories around
in the form of grains like couscous and rice,
and these form the staple of their diet.
In the rainy months, you also get a lot more green vegetables.
And it turns out the amount of green veg you eat during that
critical period around the time of conception
can have a significant impact on the rest of your life.
And we know it's extraordinary fact because of a study
which has been running in this part of Gambia for nearly 70 years.
Babies here have been monitored
all the way through childhood and into old age.
And it's thrown up some startling findings.
Initially it appears to be no difference between children
conceived in the wet and the dry seasons.
But that changes from the age of 15.
# Early in the morning
# Praise the Lord
# Good morning, Mr Michael
# Good morning, friends. #
Shockingly children conceived in the dry months are up to
seven times more likely to die as young adults
than those conceived just a few months later.
Thank you very much.
So how can a mother's diet so close to conception
have such a huge lifelong impact?
Well, during the first few days of life, the genes inside your cells
are getting ready to send out instructions.
Orders to build new tissue in your rapidly growing body.
It's a critical moment because these instructions aren't set in stone.
We're familiar with the idea that genes are something you inherit
from your parents, a bit like a family heirloom,
and they sit there, unchanging and permanent.
But this may not be entirely true.
In fact, we now know early in life, some genes are switched on
while others are switched off.
At this vital time, if a mother eats a diet rich in leafy green
vegetables it provides a cocktail of chemicals...
..which bind to strands of DNA
and changes forever how some of our genes work.
And this in turn can permanently effect
how parts of our body are built.
Now, I think that is an utterly amazing thought
and it really makes you think that you are what your mother eats.
Or at least what she was eating
when you were just a tiny little embryo, just a few cells big.
And this may explain the dramatic differences in life expectancy
in this part of the Gambia.
Scientists have recently shown that babies conceived in the dry season
have a key gene that's overactive...
..which could make them less able to fight infection.
But when a mother eats leafy green veg,
it seems to dampen down this overactive gene.
The long-term impact of a mother's diet is most striking here,
but the same thing happens to all of us.
It is a wonderful event, a huge, joyous celebration of a new life.
But the real purpose of the research here is to try and identify
the right mix of vitamins and nutrients
which, given at the right time, will switch on and off
the right genes to ensure that children, wherever they are in
the world, are given the best possible start in life.
15 days and until this point, every cell has basically been identical.
But now they start to take on new identities
and begin to transform into over 400 different cell types...
..that will make up every part of the body.
Any errors at this critical moment can have serious consequences.
One of my earliest memories is actually a stranger staring at me
and asking my family questions about me.
I didn't understand why they were looking at me in a certain way.
And growing up, I didn't understand why people treated me differently.
In school, kids would be really afraid of me.
If I was around them, children would run away.
I didn't really have a lot of friends growing up.
Let's just try a couple more of these.
Melanie Gaydos is an international model.
I look like the First Lady.
You do.
With her striking appearance, she's broken down many barriers
to make it in the world of fashion.
That looks great. It looks beautiful.
Yeah.
I was born with a genetic disorder called ectodermal dysplasia.
It affects my skin, hair, teeth, nails.
Melanie's life and her career was shaped by what happened to her
27 years and five months ago,
when she was just a small bundle of cells.
It happened when Melanie's cells first started to change into
the specialised cells that form the different parts of her body.
We all began as three layers.
At the bottom, we have cells which will build guts and liver.
In the middle are cells destined to become kidneys, muscles,
bones and blood.
And at the top, cells which will make skin, hair, teeth and brain.
For Melanie, this top layer did not develop as expected.
Very nice.
I don't grow a lot of hair.
My nickname when I was younger was actually Tweety Bird,
because I had no hair, except for three long hairs
that sprouted from the top.
When the cells in Melanie's surface layer became specialised,
something went wrong.
Her skin became extremely sensitive.
Her teeth crumbled and her hair grew inwards.
And this, understandably, has had a dramatic impact on her life.
I really didn't think I had a future.
I really thought that something really bad would happen to me.
I never... I never thought about how I would kill myself.
I really think I never let myself think too clearly about it,
because, if I thought about it clearly,
then I probably would have done it.
Obviously, I'm still alive
and I still kept going.
I think my own personal strength is
really what helped me continue my life,
because I didn't have anything else
to look forward to.
I knew that,
through being an artist,
that was something that I wanted to do and something I wanted to be
and it really gave me hope
that my life could continue
and my life could change.
Melanie has never known the exact cause of her condition.
Today, she's finding out.
So, we got your results back
and we found a change in your gene.
- Again! - We found a change in the TP63 gene.
- This change we found in you isn't just a normal variation... - Right.
..in the gene, but something that may be causing your condition.
- So, it's a new form. - Yes.
And maybe a new form of ectodermal dysplasia.
- You're very unique. - Right.
That this change is your change...
That sounds very great. It's amazing news.
It's quite cool to find that I may be the first
and, really, truly, the first ever of my kind.
Melanie's genetic test has revealed her TP63 gene has a change within it
that is so rare, it's never been seen before.
And this could be responsible for her striking appearance.
It left her unable to produce enough teeth, hair and skin cells
to make these parts of her work normally.
So that is where my genetic make-up really comes into play
and when everything is formed.
Yes, and that happens very early on.
Melanie's entire life was changed by one tiny thing
which happened over such a brief moment,
when her body was being built, cell by cell by cell.
This moment has shaped her past,
but she refuses to let it define her future.
I do feel beautiful.
It's not something that
is easy for me,
but as time goes on,
it's something that
grows stronger and stronger every day.
If I could turn back the clock to when I was in the womb,
to the gene that created me,
I don't think I would.
It is the way that I am
and I love my life regardless.
A couple of weeks in and you should now be a few thousand cells,
and you've reached another critical point,
because this is when the genes that promote your growth
should switch on.
Most of ours are a blend of our parents,
not surprising, as we inherit one copy of almost every gene
from our mum and our dad.
But the genes for growth behave differently to the rest,
because some of the growth genes we get from our mum are switched off
while those from our dad remain on.
The genes you inherit from your father are programmed
to make you big and strong,
because that's what dads want you to be,
but the genes you inherit from your mother
are programmed to make you a little bit smaller.
After all, she's going to have to carry you
and eventually deliver you.
The balance between these two usually ends up
with a normal-sized child.
But, sometimes, this tug-of-war
between our parents' genes can go awry.
I think it was probably after about the 20-week scan
and they said that the baby was big.
And then, when we went back for the next scan,
she was still big and it sort of went from there, really.
She just got bigger and bigger.
Nell is just seven years old,
but she's head and shoulders above her contemporaries.
She's almost as tall as her brother, Seth,
who is two years older than her.
She was nearly five weeks early and she was 8lbs 6oz,
so, yeah, she was pretty big
and in special care with all the sort of 2lbs babies.
Yeah, she was.
Seth used to go running in to visit her
and you wouldn't have to tell him which cot,
because she'd be in the big one.
"It's the big one, isn't it?" "Yeah, the big one."
So he'd run to the big one and that would be Nell.
Early in Nell's life,
her development took a different course to the rest of ours.
Instead of inheriting one copy
of her father's most powerful growth gene,
she inherited two.
The extra set of instructions telling her body to grow...
..meant she just grew and grew and grew.
Within a few hours, you could tell she had a very big tongue.
It was protruding out outside her mouth. Her stomach was huge.
It was just really massive.
That's probably when we first noticed.
Then people started mentioning over the next day or two, you know,
that genetically there may be something wrong.
Because of the extra gene Nell inherited from her dad,
she overproduces a growth hormone called IGF-2.
As well as accelerating her normal growth,
it also means she's at greater risk of developing cancer.
Today she's come to have a check up on the organs
which are most at risk, her kidneys.
Hiya, we're going to have a look at your tummy today, yeah?
OK. I'll tuck that up under there like that.
Right, well, there's the kidney.
What we're looking for is to make sure
that the kidney is developing normally.
'They confirmed that there was abnormalities in her kidneys
'and she was probably, or quite possibly,'
going to develop a tumour at some stage.
That was quite scary, yeah.
Yeah, very... Yeah.
Yeah, very scary.
- So we've lived with that, really. - Yeah.
I suppose we just wondered when she was going to get...
We used to think, "Oh, it'd be better, actually,
"if she got the tumours when she was three,
"then the treatment and then she'd start school..."
That sounds mad, but that's what we thought.
Cos you just assumed at some point that it was going to happen.
That looks a lovely, normal kidney.
I'll just measure the size on it now.
What does that mean now for the future?
Well, at her age now,
her risk is no different from any other child of her age.
Lovely. That's great.
So now she's seven,
the increased risk of developing tumours is almost over,
and Nell's exceptional growth will start to level off.
'Yeah, pleased. Really pleased. Everything was fine.'
You sort of get a bit more happy that you know everything's fine,
everything's going to be OK.
Come on, Nell!
For now, Nell's making the most of her height advantage,
racing against children two years older than herself.
Go on, Nell. Keep going.
Well done. Excellent.
I started off slow, but then I started to get a bit faster.
I was coming second, but then I was trying my hardest, so I came first
against the other girl. She was trying her hardest.
But I beat her.
She's just a superstar.
She beats the boys, the girls.
She's quicker than you.
Smile.
My father-in-law has said he's going to put a tenner on her
winning a Commonwealth Gold in some event.
In ten years' time, yeah.
- He's going to go to the bookies and see what the odds were. - Yeah.
They were at millions to one, or something,
so he was going to put £1 on.
Just 450 hours have past,
and already some of the most critical moments that define us
have taken place.
Cells have rapidly divided and are becoming specialised.
And genetic changes have happened
that will reverberate throughout our lives.
But this collection of cells is still a long way
from the human it will become.
The intricate organs of the body now have to be assembled,
and it's vital they end up in the right place.
One of the striking things about human beings is
that from the outside, we look pretty symmetrical.
We've got two legs, two arms, two eyes
and our faces also look quite symmetrical.
But when you look beneath the surface,
then you see some pretty striking differences.
The heart, for example.
You normally feel the beat over here,
while the liver, which is an enormous organ,
goes from your nipple to your nipple then right down your ribcage,
so it's mainly over on the right side.
It's even more striking when you look at a body scan.
I've got one here, which is rather beautiful.
A sort of work of art, isn't it?
This funny boot-like structure here is the heart.
Strangely enough,
the layout of our internal organs is determined
by tiny hair-like structures called cilia,
and they're found on just a few hundred cells right in the middle.
Around day 19, the cilia spring into life,
spinning clockwise,
creating a leftward current in the fluid around them.
No one really knows how
but this current switches on genes which are on the left side
and, in time, these genes tell the organs of the body where to go.
But occasionally, things don't go to plan.
MUSIC: Power by Kanye West
# I'm living in the 21st century Doin' something mean to it
# Do it better then anybody you ever seen do it
# Screams from the haters Got a nice ring to it
# I guess every superhero need his theme music... #
I went to the hospital, the nurse was doing some type of test on me,
and I think she couldn't find a pulse where it was supposed to be.
- COMMENTATOR: - 'Foye on the drive.
'It's Randy Foye.
'Makes it two in a row, this one from downtown.'
Randy Foye is in his ninth season playing pro basketball.
He's had a long and successful career.
But there's something else that's special about Randy,
something which happened when he'd been in the womb for just 19 days.
Usually everyone's heart is on the left side.
My heart is on the right side,
my liver is on the left side,
so everything is basically a mirror image in my body.
You all hear it?
Can you hear it ba-bum-ba-bum?
That's your heart. That's your heartbeat.
- Can you hear it? - Yes!
Randy is incredibly rare.
Just one in every 10,000 people have organs
that have ended up on the wrong side.
In Randy's case,
at the moment when his cilia were supposed to spin,
sending his organs to the correct place,
they didn't spin at all.
Without his cilia to direct things,
the genes that should have been activated on the left were
instead switched on on the right,
and so everything that should have gone left went right.
And vice versa.
This could have proved fatal.
I'm extremely blessed and lucky to be a perfect mirror image.
Randy is luckier than he knows.
If only a few of his organs had swapped sides his insides would
have become tied in knots.
He might not have survived.
He certainly wouldn't have become a champion basketball player.
What about now?
Where I grew up is tough, like the murder rate is extremely high,
like you see a lot of adversity,
you see, you know, family members on drugs.
- COMMENTATOR: - 'That's time.'
Being able to play basketball has saved my life.
BUZZER SOUNDS
CHEERING
21 days.
The embryo is still a flat disc
which bears little resemblance to the human it will become
but now it begins to fold, creating a tube.
The two edges come together to form the spinal cord.
The body is beginning to take shape.
And right in the centre,
a collection of tiny muscle cells is assembling into a new organ.
It's no bigger than a grain of sand but it already beats.
RHYTHMIC BEATING
And remarkably, at just five weeks, it's possible to detect.
- Are you feeling a bit nervous? - Yes, I just want to make sure everything's OK.
Because you don't show any signs,
it's just you always have that element of doubt, don't you?
So, yeah, it'll be a very exciting moment.
Katie and Mike have come to find out
if they can hear a new heart beating.
- Let's say hello to your baby. - Wow.
'It's a time when some women may not even realise they are pregnant.'
- The first thing you'll see there is a lovely little heartbeat. - Whoa!
- That is really weird! - Wow.
Congratulations. Wow.
'Yet another heart has sprung into life.'
That is absolutely stunning.
I came along here, I wasn't sure quite what I was expecting to see
but that is absolutely mind-blowing. It is so small!
One centimetre, it is the size of a pea,
and that heart is beating away like nothing.
I can't take it all in!
- That little thing there... - It's just so clear.
Yeah, it's so clear and it's only five weeks.
RHYTHMIC BEATING
- There is something extraordinary about the heart, isn't there? - Yes.
More than anything else...
- It kind of makes it... - ..seeing it doing that. - ..real.
'From this moment onwards,
'blood will be continuously pumped around the body.'
'If all goes well then this tiny heart will go on growing
'and keep on pumping for the next 80 years or so.
'IF all goes well.'
So if we decided that we didn't want to go ahead with the operation,
what would be the outcome with the baby, then? Would it survive?
The heart pumping chambers will dilate
and eventually don't work and no blood will go down to the rest of
the body, to the kidney, to the brain
so the baby actually won't survive.
So the operation is life-saving and is necessary.
Hannah and Adam's baby is due in about a month.
But at some point, early in the development of their child's heart,
something went wrong.
Shortly after being born, she will need a major operation.
So this is your baby's heart now, at 36 weeks.
As you can see, the right pumping chamber is rather large
in comparison to the left.
The baby's just moved.
Moving.
My life's almost seemed as if it's flipped upside down.
We went there all happy,
sort of looking forward to seeing a bit more in-depth
pictures of the baby and then, all of a sudden,
we were being told that actually your baby's got an issue with the heart.
Well, at first we were just both too distraught really
to understand what was going on.
I don't really suppose you can sum it up any better than just saying,
"Yes, your baby's broken."
It was at their 20-week scan that Hannah
and Adam first discovered something wasn't right.
The baby's aorta, the main artery that takes blood to the body,
was too narrow so blood couldn't get through.
While the baby is in Hannah's womb,
she is coping because a bypass vessel keeps blood flowing,
but after birth, this bypass will close
and without 24-hour medication their baby won't survive.
We sort of...didn't really know what to do with ourselves
more than anything. It was...yeah, quite...
It has been a massive rollercoaster, really.
But yeah, we're confident that the team at the end can fix it,
almost put a plaster on it, um...
..and then we can carry on with our happy little family
that we first sort of planned.
But things don't go to plan.
Their baby, who they have named Amelia, arrives three weeks early.
She is rushed to intensive care at Bristol Children's Hospital.
Four needle holders.
One, two, three, four.
Even though Amelia is tiny, a surgical team decides
the operation has to go ahead as soon as possible.
Two, four, six, eight.
Dr Pandey is having to operate on Amelia's heart
while it is just a couple of centimetres wide.
She is going to remove the narrowing that is causing all the trouble.
This is the moment when the life-threatening defect
in Amelia's artery is finally repaired.
It went well, we are pleased.
Small, but...?
Yeah, a tiny baby, so as expected all the structures were small,
but we managed to repair it.
So, yes, as far as I am concerned, the repair looks good
and let's see how she grows.
The next few weeks will be critical...
..as they wait to see if Amelia's tiny heart recovers.
Only then can life at home with her parents begin.
She sings to herself late at night
and it makes you feel like the luckiest person in the world,
given everything that has happened.
And even at three in the morning
when she is screaming her head off, when you look in there and
she just gives you a little smile, it just makes it all worthwhile.
You actually just forget about the time
and that you've actually got to be up in two hours for work
and that you've just spent 20 minutes,
half an hour having a cuddle.
It is not until we give her a bath and you remember when you look
at her scar how much she has been through
in just three months of her life.
That makes you feel like a special parent and makes you...
..value just that little bit extra how much she has been through
and the fact that she is actually still here after everything.
AMELIA CRIES
In just six weeks, so much has happened.
But it isn't until the end of the six weeks that we start to
look distinctly human, when our hands and feet begin to emerge.
At around 38 days, cells within two flattened paddles
at the end of each limb slowly die away...
..revealing five perfectly-formed digits.
Or sometimes - just sometimes...
..six.
Meet the Da Silva family.
At a critical moment when their hands were first sculpted...
..they got more than the rest of us.
Instead of five digits on each hand, they have six.
In fact, out of 26 members of the family,
14 have one extra finger on each hand.
- How many children do you have? - How many children? Three children.
- OK. - It's not just children because... - Yeah.
- And do all the children have...? - Three.
- Three. - Three.
I think it is good because my hands are bigger than other hands
and I have a better grip.
I can hold a ball much better than people with five fingers.
Well, it is only difficult for me to wear gloves,
so I have to buy two gloves, cut one finger from a glove,
put it on the other so I can have a six-fingered glove.
CHEERING
Although this family's anatomy is unusual, it is
essentially the result of the same process that builds all our hands.
For something which is as sophisticated as the human hand,
the process by which it comes about is surprisingly simple.
It starts off with this sort of paddle-like structure
and then, under the influence of the protein with a gorgeous name,
sonic hedgehog, your digits grow.
If you have too much sonic hedgehog, you might - you just might -
get an extra one over here, like that.
And this is how the Da Silva family we ended up with six digits.
Several generations ago,
a random genetic mutation expanded the position of
the all-important sonic hedgehog protein
that tells fingers where to grow.
So, while the hands were being built,
they got an extra set of instructions to grow a finger.
- So, you are deprived, are you? - Yeah, I am not lucky.
- You're not lucky, you've only got the five. - I really...
- I would really like to have another finger. - Another one just over there?
It's a thing all of my family have.
It's something that makes me me, so I wouldn't change it.
That, I wouldn't change it.
Yeah, it's who I am.
This makes me who I am.
In just eight weeks,
the most astonishing metamorphosis has taken place.
From a single cell, a series of moments
in our development have been adding up...
..each bringing us a step closer to the person we will one day become.
But there is still a long way to go
and one more piece of the jigsaw has to fall into place,
which will allow us to walk upright throughout our lives.
As our feet are being sculpted, our hips are also being precisely
aligned so we can stand, walk and run.
But we still couldn't balance in the extraordinary way that Bruno
is able to without something called the vestibular system.
The vestibular system is what is keeping him upright, but it also
talks to your brain and it talks to your eyes,
so that even as he is moving there, he is actually seeing the world
in a sort of completely seamless, stable fashion.
I mean, it really is extraordinary.
Deep inside the head, a maze of looping tunnels is being
carved out and filled with fluid to form the inner ear.
This is what gives us a sense of balance
in even the most precarious of situations.
And with these last few developments,
the furious shifting of cells stops.
Though not yet fully formed,
all the critical structures of the body are in place.
Tiny and fragile and not yet conscious,
but one single cell has now become a human foetus.
However we made it through our first few months in the womb,
we did it our own unique way.
Each of us has been defined
by this extraordinary time in our lives.
A time that continues to affect us all from our first breath...
..to our last.
You have packed an awful lot into the first eight weeks and this has
undoubtedly been the most dangerous period of your entire life.
You still have a rudimentary brain but with arms,
legs and an upright spine, you are for the first time
looking undoubtedly human.
Next time, the middle four months,
when we become a unique individual as our face,
sex and even personality take shape.
The Open University has produced a poster exploring how developments
in the womb can affect your life and your health long after birth.
To order your free copy, please call...
Or go to...
..and follow the links to the Open University.