another reason that it helps to know his / her name beforehand.
   To be able to express yourself intellectually in your day to day life is also important. I know how frustrating it can be at home with only children to relate to for days and weeks on end – without other adults for intellectual intercourse. During pregnancy, although some mental faculties are reduced, others are enhanced. It is important not to feel verbally repressed or tongue tied, and to speak your mind when necessary.
   The effect of a mother’s Vishuddhi on her baby is her ability to rationally and intellectually. Like all things, pregnancy has its rational elements as well as its non-rational. Balance is the key.
   Vishuddhi also assists the mother in maintain-ing purity around the child, not as in neurotic household cleanliness, but to shield the sensitive baby from any ill effects of the gross, external world.

Ajna
   Ajna Chakra relates to the pineal gland, pituitary gland and the states of higher mind or intuition, the sixth sense. These days, many people are stuck at the Vishuddhi level of mind: intellectual pursuit, data, statistics, information, research, debate, talkfests, rational explanations. These things are understood by many to be the highest mental faculties we can aspire towards, whilst intuition and talk of the “higher mind” are considered mystical nonsense. A pregnant woman receives a natural boost in these intuitive areas and will feel much more sensitive to the “vibes” around her. This time is an ideal opportunity to tune in and “get the messages” from her baby and beyond, where normal mind cannot go.
   It is important to exercise these higher levels of the mind through the practise of meditation because you will be called upon to use them during a natural labour when your intellect goes into definite hibernation! Rather than relying on someone else’s intellect in the room, or holding on to your own by suppressing pain through anaesthetics, nature has given you a way to know what you and your baby need, as well as a way of handling that pain through endorphins secreted by the pituitary.
   Ajna is also the Guru’s chakra so if you have a spiritual teacher, a guide, a guardian angel or a guru (living or passed on), allow yourself to be guided through your pregnancy by that link with an entity of higher consciousness. By tapping into that higher consciousness, and exercising it within yourself, the woman initiates that relationship of mother as first guru to her child.
 

   Some of the best techniques to help balance Ajna Chakra are Anuloma Viloma, Om Chanting, Trataka, Jala Neti.

Sahasrara
   Sahasrara is the realm of beyond humanness. Here one knows one’s relationship with the source or the creator of life itself. Knowing in yourself that you are simply an agent or a channel through which your baby comes, is the experience of Sahasrara. It is a feeling of destiny, of surrender to God or the oneness. With this attitude, your children are not your own. You are simply their “bringer”, and their “up-bringer”. On behalf of the power vested in you by your maternal nature, you are their guide – their first worldly guide (i.e. parent) and their first spiritual guide, or guru, as the yogis call it.

	~First Trimester (0 - 12 Weeks)~

Foetus at 5 weeks - 1.5 cms length.

Foetus at 12 weeks - 8 cms long.

Discovering You’re Pregnant
   Whilst it is understandable that many women use a medical diagnosis to confirm pregnancy, such tests are actually a very gross, and usually unnecessary, way of knowing. As explained in Chapter 3 in the sections on the “Physiology of Fertility” and “Natural Fertility Awareness”, a woman closely observing her fertility cycle can definitely tell no later than 10 - 14 days after her last ovulation whether or not she is pregnant. A good understanding and observation of the luteal phase means you don’t really have to wait one or two cycles for absence of menstruation to be sure.