Growing babies. Part 1, War in the womb.

Presented by child psychologist Laverne Antrobus, this is the first in a two-part series looking at pregnancy, in particular the theory of 'fetal-maternal conflict' which sets the fetus and the mother in a battle for survival. The programme uses high-tech 3-D filming techniques to show what happens in the womb during conception and the growth of the embryo, then fetus. Profesor Charlie Loke likens the fight for survival of the trophoblast cells of the placenta to the ruthlessness of cancer cells. Conditions such as morning sickness, gestational diabetes and pre-eclampsia fall into the category of conditions relating to fetal-maternal conflict and can make a mother extremely unwell, even to the point of potential death. Recent research places a lot of the most dangerous conditions as eminating from problems in the placenta. Genetic conflict in the womb is also looked at as the imprinted genes of the mother and father battle against each other to control fundamental features of the unborn baby such as its size. This kind of conflict in the womb is also thought to affect the way we behave later in life as conditions such as Prada-Willi Syndrome are now thought to be caused by the conflict and damage of imprinted genes.