When a couple produce a child, how delighted they and their family and friends are! But — at the risk of being a “baby-shower-pooper” or a “stork-party-pooper” — the reality is that the parents have actually only passed on something that was previously handed down to them — life! 

The complex “mechanics” of the development of this new life is not in the parents' remit, so to speak! 

But how much do experts not know about the development of a child in the womb? Take a look at some of the mysteries that are still unsolved:

🎻Cells on stage — no conductor in sight

• Mystery: How trillions of cells self-organise into precise structures with extraordinary fidelity.
• Challenge: Scientists really only have a limited understanding of how a baby develops in the womb (technical note: e.g. signalling pathways such as Wnt, Hedgehog, and Notch), but the complex choreography — how cells “know” where to go and when to differentiate —is still elusive.
• Analogy: It's like listening to a grand symphony without knowing or understanding how the score was composed.
   

🧠Brain is online, user is still “Loading...” 

• Mystery: When and how consciousness begins.
• Challenge: Doctors can track brain wave activity in a person (using EEG), but the emergence of subjective experience —consciousness — remains elusive.
   

🧩Microbes: The first to the Baby Shower

• Mystery: How and exactly when the infant microbiome (our very own internal community of essential symbiotic microorganisms) is established.
• Challenge: The old assumption that the womb is sterile is today seriously challenged (e.g. scientists have found microbial DNA — evidence of our friendly bacteria — in foetus samples like placenta, amniotic fluid, and meconium — the first stool passed by a newborn). Evidence suggests microbial exposure and its symbiotic relationship with the baby begins during development in the womb (if not then, when?) — (See the article 'Symbiosis in Living Things' available in the book).
• Implication: This has profound consequences for immunity, digestion, even brain development, as well as the evolutionary narrative of selection of the fittest.
   

The development, from a single cell, of a beautiful child unfolds automatically, guided by instructions embedded in every human cell — requiring no conscious input from the parents following conception. This intricate process, amazing in its precision and complexity, has repeated itself across generations: from parents to grandparents, stretching back into the deep past, to a time when only a handful of humans walked the earth.

But this raises a profound question: Where did the original life (or rather, lives) come from, for this marvellous cycle to begin? — (See the article 'Daddy, where do babies come from?').