The Soul Ages: The Pre-Infant Stage of Development.

According to the primary source I’m studying at the moment [The Michael Teachings], among others, there are seven soul ages—five of which we complete on the physical plane. These make up the levels of development we move through as we make our ways back toward the All that Is.
First, a little background:
When each of us splinters off from the All that Is we begin what I call the Walkabout. First, we decide whether we will include the physical dimension in our itinerary. The downside to that route is the fact that it’s lots harder to traverse the physical than it is to steer clear of that course. The upside is that it’s ‘faster’ than taking the more leisurely route that doesn’t include the run through the physical realm. So, those of us who are impatient tend to choose this track—even though it’s harder work.
Once that decision is made, we tour several planets. We can hang around on each one for as long as we wish just checking it out.

For what it’s worth, the planet Earth doesn’t have many of these new ‘fragments’ checking it out these days.
Once the general population reaches a certain average age [about the age we, collectively, are now] most fragments lose interest in joining the game-in-progress.
The planet is looking tired—there’s a massive clean-up that needs to happen—and folks who didn’t have a part in making the mess generally aren’t interested in cleaning up after the rest of us.
Also, it’s not much fun playing catch-up when almost the entire planet’s-worth of souls are so far ahead of you. So, the odds of a new infant coming here are pretty remote at the moment.

Anyhow, once the fragment has made the decision to go physical and chosen a planet, it needs to slow w-a-y down — lowering its vibration to a level that can be contained in a body. If it didn't do this it would tend to burn the body out within a very few years—maybe sooner.
Then, it hunts around for a body that isn’t spoken for already. It spots a pregnant female and begins hanging around her. At this point, there’s no accumulated karma, so any pregnant mother will do. Depending on how impatient the fragment is, it may jump right into the body and remain with it throughout the pregnancy. A far more common option, though, is to touch base with the growing fetus occasionally—just to check on its progress. Otherwise, the fragment goes on about its business of checking out the planet, hanging out with friends, giving its personality its final tweaks [more about how we build our personalities and so on in later posts].

Actually, any fragment can opt out at any time during a pregnancy and, in fact, has about two years after birth to make its final decision about whether to remain in the chosen body. So, even after birth, if the fragment finds that the situation it has been born into isn’t what it had in mind after all, it can bail out. A number of re-absorptions, miscarriages, stillbirths and crib-deaths can be accounted for by fragments deciding that they had made a mistake and starting over with a new body [often even with a different family]. This is true at any soul age—not just during the first incarnation on a planet.
Once the fragment has committed itself to its first body, it is on its way and, most likely, will complete the physical incarnation cycle and will do it on whatever planet it started out on.

Next post: The Infant Soul.