The other night I was musing on what a nice, cozy place the womb must be, when it occured to me: maybe too cozy. Since we usually start sweating when the ambient temp is in the mid-80s, fetuses must be sweating up a storm in their 98-degree incubator.
This seems unlikely. I would guess Junior’s body-temp-regulation mechanism doesn’t kick in until he’s cut loose, so to speak, but I don’t know this.
Any takers?
Well one resource states “sweat glands develop” around week 13 or so…
http://www.shands.org/health/information/article/002398.htm
Other resouces I’ve read state that they start “functioning” around month 5 or 6…
I know preemies have more trouble regulating their own body temperatures than full term babies (hence the incubators.) I’m not sure if their inability to keep themselves warm enough would correspond to an inability to do cooling-type stuff, though.
It seems to me that a womb dweller would have absolutely no use for sweat as there is no air for it to evaporate into and take away excess body heat. It would be more likely that the baby’s body just doesn’t generate enough internal heat for it to be a problem, after all it doesn’t need to generate any internal heat as all the heat it needs is already provided by mum.