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I always cringe when I look at my very first baby photo in this lifetime. I am referring to one that was taken at the hospital just a few short minutes after my birth. I weighed in at 7 pounds 9 ounces, and yet I look so small in this photo. My head is positioned slightly down and to the right. My eyes are wide open as I gaze out at this new foreign world with a look of fear and trepidation. Of course, I have no idea what I am focusing on, but I appear as if I am terrified to let my guard down. I need to maintain my awareness so I am not taken by surprise by anything in this new life. Of course, only my head and face are visible since I appear to be tightly swaddled in blankets, and the rest of my body is hidden from view. Of course, I can imagine that this is the way the nurses at the hospital had wrapped me but I wonder if I hadn’t nestled myself down further into the blanket as if I was trying to hide. Even in those first few hours of life, I may have  been trying to find a way to make myself invisible. I must have known already what challenges were to come. Though my mother had tried to keep a lot of secrets from me throughout my life, I don’t think she could protect me from what I had witnessed and experienced while in the womb.

Several decades after my birth, I had participated in a past life regression, which is the use of hypnosis and guided meditation to help people explore memories and experiences from previous lifetimes while remaining in a relaxed and open mindset. The regression is used to uncover and heal root problems, phobias, behaviors, mental health issues, or emotional patterns that seem to have no origin in the current lifetime. They could be from excess, leftover energy from former lifetimes.

Past lives are a concept I have always been fascinated with and so I was excited to participate in a lecture that was given by Dr. Brian Weiss, the renowned past life regression therapist, at a book convention for Hay House publishing. I really wanted to experience this phenomenon and was slightly disappointed when Dr. Weiss announced that he was going to try to regress the entire audience instead of just individual people. I didn’t think this would work for me because I always have a very hard time relaxing and closing my eyes when I am not alone. But I was still curious enough to give it a try. To my surprise,  I was immediately regressing as soon as Dr. Weiss began his past life regression meditation.

First, Dr. Weiss regressed everyone in the audience back to a time in their childhood. But then, the second stage was for all of the audience members to relive their time in utero. Witnessing myself back in my mother’s womb was traumatic for me because I suddenly realized that my mother never wanted me. My mother was not happy to find out that she was pregnant again. She had only been married for four years and was now pregnant with her third baby. My two older sisters and I were born in consecutive years, one right after the other. My mother was horrified and angry to find that she was pregnant again because she was locked in a horribly abusive marriage. She didn’t know how she was going to ever escape with two babies to take care of already, and the presence and energy of a third baby was even more discouraging. My mother was anxious and stressed and worried throughout her pregnancy with me.

Now, my mother and I have never talked about this. This was just information that came up during the regression, but I always knew my mother suffered with depression and anxiety, which had begun years before I was born. Mom had struggled with mental health conditions for most of her life and my sudden, unplanned appearance must have made her life even harder, especially when my parents would scream and yell and argue.

Research has shown that fetuses begin to hear muffled, low-frequency internal sounds (heartbeat, digestion) at 18–22 weeks and external sounds like voices and music around 27–29 weeks. By 30 weeks, fetuses can distinguish frequencies and respond to noises, with sensitivity increasing as they reach full term. 

I think about this research and I know that I had been witnessing my father’s emotional abuse and mother’s anxiety months before I was even born. I look at my baby photo and I understand that my mother’s mental health and my father’s violence is why I appear so anxious and nervous, especially as I know that my sudden existence may have contributed to my mother’s deteriorating mental health. I’m not angry with my mother; I just wish that we both could have celebrated in positive ways my transition into this world. But I seem to have been born in grief and sorrow. I’m not feeling sorry for myself. I’m sure many mothers and children experience these very same emotions. I am just trying to research the genesis of my own mental health issues and I think they started while I was still in-utero.

Even though the past live regression revealed some painful information, it provided a lot of insight as I continue to search for my own genetic and behavioral connections to a bigger universe. I am pleased I did the past life regression and I firmly believe that my own mental health conditions started at a time when my mom and I would have been the closest we would ever be.

• Lozier Institute (Detailed timeline of ear development and auditory nerve maturity).
• BabyCenter (Developmental milestones regarding external voice detection).
• HealthyChildren.org (Pediatrician-reviewed timeline of prenatal hearing).
• Flo.health (General overview of fetal response to noise).