The Secret Life of Babies: How Our Prebirth and Birth Experiences Shape Our World

by Mia Kalef

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Author: Mia Kalef

Publisher: North Atlantic Books

Paperback:
ISBN 10: 1583948031
ISBN 13: 978-1583948033

A bold affirmation that we are sentient before conception and in the womb, The Secret Life of Babies reveals author Mia Kalef's groundbreaking findings: babies are able to remember their earliest experiences, this consciousness precedes the physical development of the brain itself, and medical interventions during birth—like forceps and Cesareans—can imprint our relationships with the world and disconnect us from our sustainable place in the ecosystem. Kalef provides a six-step protocol for detecting these individual imprints and taking reparative steps for physiological and emotional balance and release. This book offers us an articulate guide to a transformation that can restore our essential nature.

From the table of contents:

Foreword by Andrew Feldmar
Introduction: The Myth: Science and Experience
The Quest: Sparking the Conversation
Who Is This Book For?
A Song Worth Singing
PART ONE: Science
Chapter 1: The First Principle: Babies Remember Their Experiences
The Controversy
A Place to Begin and End: Returning to Wholeness
Essential Nature
Essential Movements
The Mechanisms
The Model
Perspectives and Purposes
Chapter 2: The Second Principle: Consciousness Precedes the Brain Architecture That Supports It
The Biological Paradox
Brains, Fields, and Development
The Effects of Chemical and Emotional Fields
Chapter 3: The Third Principle: Babies Are Our Barometers
Dominance versus Emergence
Historical Cultural Indicators
Present-Day Cultural Indicators
PART TWO: Experience
Chapter 4: The Fourth Principle: It Is Never Too Late to Heal
The Vision Horizon
Preparing the Way
Reclaiming the Body: The Path Home
The Prototype
PART THREE: Marriage
Chapter5: The Intuitive Recovery Project
The Anatomy of the Intuitive Recovery Project
The Project
Chapter 6: Summary

Review

“A gifted healer and passionate writer, Mia Kalef combines scientific findings, personal intuition, and therapeutic insights for a fascinating view of prenatal experience and its lifetime consequences, the multigenerational and social influences that shape it, and the healing of its potentially traumatic imprints.”
—Gabor Maté, MD, author of In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction

“Dr. Kalef's book is a work of art. It is full of tales that ring true, that make sense, that are full of heart, that smack of authenticity. Kalef masterfully mixes personal and clinical experience with current literature throughout, saturating the reader with a sense of the continuity of our lives and the meaningfulness of our adult behavior.”
—Michael Trout, director, Infant-Parent Institute

“At a time when our cultural lack of understanding of the birth process has reached an extreme degree, the world needs practitioners such as Mia Kalef.”
—Michel Odent, MD, author of Childbirth and the Future of Homo Sapiens

“Mia Kalef provides major evidence for the existence of sentience and experience in the womb. She defends with good arguments that our collective denial of this truth impacts negatively how we deal with pregnancy and prenatal mother-child interaction, which itself leads to severe disturbances in our relationships with ourselves, each other, and the global community of life. She provides clear and efficient procedures to help us recognize and overcome early traumatic imprints so that we may be in harmony with the stream of life. This book is a firm and reliable plea to reevaluate the secret life of babies and see how they are emissaries of a lost wisdom that has the power to set us on a more wholesome and balanced course.”
—Jaap Van Der Wal, PhD, author of The Embryo in Us, and former professor of anatomy and embryology, University of Maastricht, Holland

“Mia Kalef has written a book that brings science to a level from which everyone can understand and benefit. She cites interesting studies from around the world…animals, the human species, history, and various cultures. With vivid and yet simple depictions of how prenatal and birth experiences can support a person's/family's quest for change and health, her words remind us that it is never too late to heal.”
—Judyth O. Weaver, PhD, somatic and perinatal therapist, and co-founder and professor, Santa Barbara Graduate Institute

“It’s a pleasure to read Dr. Kalef’s comprehensive and empathetic book, in which she describes the deep influences human early life have on later physical, emotional, and social conditions. She describes the social and historical backgrounds for why we don’t know this and invites us to her Intuitive Recovery Project for finding a new, more sustainable personal connection to these concepts. This great book helps us understand the very real social implications of the prenatal time and to deepen our understanding of ourselves within in it.”
—Rupert Linder, MD, past president, International Society of Prenatal and Perinatal Psychology and Medicine, and specialist for gynecology, obstetrics, psychosomatics, and psychotherapy

“Dr. Mia Kalef's The Secret Life of Babies is an illuminating read, and a revelation. Not only a book for new and expecting parents, Kalef's book will make readers think about the circumstances surrounding their own birth and how this could be the basis of some of the traumas and inhibitions, and even addictions they experience as adults. Incorporating both detailed case studies and broader overviews of history and culture, the book is a wake-up call for people to pay more attention to prenatal and perinatal conditions and take a hard look at the way that society treats women and mothers, and ask themselves if it's time for a change.”
—Jenny Uechi, managing editor, The Vancouver Observer

About the Author

MIA KALEF is the founder of Emerging Families, a program of therapy, education, and research for the pre- and perinatal period. She works with families throughout the childbearing years to resolve the effects of pre- and perinatal challenges, and with adults retrospectively. She is a lifetime member of the Association of Prenatal and Perinatal Psychology and Health and is in private practice in Vancouver, Canada. The author lives in Vancouver, Canada.

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The Secret Life of Babies: How Our Prebirth and Birth Experiences Shape Our World