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In: Biology
The oxygen that the fetus needs to survive is provided by the mother via the umbilical cord. In essence, the mother is breathing for the baby through her own lungs, with some of her oxygenated blood being sent to provide oxygen for the baby.
I think the key point is it gets oxygen from its mothers blood, I don’t think we breath from the amniotic fluid in the sac.
i might be wrong , in which case i’m about to learn something
The lungs in a fetus are collapsed. No blood is circulating inside them and no fluid is being swallowed into them. So it’s incorrect to say a fetus breathes fluids.
The fetus can survive with fluid in the lungs because its blood is being oxygenated by the mother’s blood supply via the umbilical cord.
To actually survive via oxygenated fluid in the lungs we would need assistance in getting old fluid out and new fluid in, but we could possibly do it with something like [Perfluorocarbon](https://phys.org/news/2017-03-liquid-closer.html).
A fetus can’t breathe fluid. The umbilical cord provides the oxygen they need (through oxygenated blood).
That said, I’m not familiar enough with how the transfer of oxygen into the lungs works to say whether or not it would be possible to create a liquid that the lungs can get oxygen out of.
As people already pointed out fetuses don’t use amniotic fluid to get oxygen at all.
However there is research into methods of using highly oxygenated fluid as a a less damaging method for long term artificial respirators in hospitals.
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