Significant Advice for Mothers
Imam Ja’far al-Sadiq (a.s.) has advised mothers that they should put their new born babies to sleep on their left side.
For centuries this advice was considered by many as meaningless and absurd since no one could see any use in putting babies to sleep on the left side of mothers. Some people even went to the extent of remarking that it was dangerous to carry out his instructions. Mothers may take a turn while sleeping and crush the baby to death. No one in the East or West took that advice seriously. Even during the Renaissance period, when scholars in Europe studied every theory critically, no one tried to find out whether it had a scientific basis.
In 1865, Ezra Cornell founded the Cornell University in NYK. In this university he set up under the department of medicine, an institute for the Research on New Born and Suckling Babies. A research scholar of this institute who travelled to different parts of the world, observed that mothers in every country carried their babies in the left arms.
Doctors in this institute observed that babies who are put to sleep on the left side of their mothers sleep more soundly and peacefully but those who are put on the right side, wake up every now and then and cry. It was reported that for the first few days after their birth, babies would have no rest at all, if they are not on the left side of their mothers.
After the invention of holography, holographic pictures of unborn babies were taken which revealed that the mother’s heartbeat reached the ears of the baby in the womb. Experiments were made of different mammals to find out the reaction of the foetus. All experiments showed that whenever the heart of the mother stopped beating, the foetus became restless and agitated, because it feeds on the blood, which comes to it with each and every heartbeat.
These experiments proved that unborn babies are not only used to hearing their mother’s heartbeat, but their very existence depends upon them. Heartbeats mean to them a constant supply of food. Stoppage of heartbeats signals starvation and death. They depend so much upon the heartbeat that even after they are born, they become restless, if they do not hear it. A new-born knows its mother’s heartbeat quite well and that is why it sleeps comfortably and peacefully, when it is on the left side of the mother and can hear the heartbeats clearly.
If the Cornell University had not been established and the research work on babies was not done, no one would ever have realised the scientific importance of the advice of the Imam that mothers should put their babies to sleep on their left side.
Imam Ja’far as-Sadiq (a.s.) was ahead of his time by 1,100 years. Indeed he had access to Ilm Ladunni (divine knowledge).
