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The little scar in the middle of your abdomen marks the place where, for about nine glorious
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months, all the nutrients you needed to grow and develop and survive flowed straight into
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your bloodstream while you just floated around in a sac of amniotic fluid. But have you ever
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wondered what was going on with your other bodily functions while you were in that enclosed
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space? To put it a little more bluntly, did you, you know, pee and poop in there?
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The answer to question #1 is yes, definitely: embryos start peeing after just two months
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of development, around the time they first begin swallowing--and, therefore, drinking--amniotic
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fluid.
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This does essentially mean that fetuses spend seven months drinking their own pee, but that's
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actually not as gross as it sounds. For one thing, urine--unlike feces--is sterile, so
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it doesn't contain bacteria that could make the fetus sick. Also, the waste products we
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normally get rid of by urinating, like excess nitrogen, are instead filtered from the fetus
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and delivered, through the umbilical cord, back to the mother for disposal.
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And what about the waste we normally get rid of by pooping? Well, mom takes care of that,
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too - indirectly. She digests food before it gets to the baby, absorbing nutrients like
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sugar and protein into her bloodstream and then passing those nutrients to her fetus
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through the umbilical cord. So most of the potential poop products stay with the mother.
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The fetus's digestive system isn't totally empty, though: some waste does go there and
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get broken down by acidic bile in the small intestines, producing a slimy, sticky greenish
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mass called meconium. But, unlike the large intestine of everyone outside a womb, a fetus's
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large intestine is mostly sterile and devoid of the billions of bacteria that break down
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our waste and make up as much as 50% of the brown pulp known as feces.
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So the green, sticky mass that forms in a fetus's small intestines eventually becomes
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a green, sticky, and mostly bacteria-free mass inside the baby's first dirty diaper.
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And in a way, it's the first--and last--clean poop in anyone's life.