[supercat]

In fact, you, as an alive individual organism, built your parts before they took on function, yet it was the individual you were conceived as that did the work to sustain you in the water world of your Mother's womb and then to sustain you in the air world you enjoy today.

One thing I've sometimes wondered: if one were to put some sort of physical (not genetically reproduceable) marker on the chromosomes of a mouse zygote, where would those chromosomes end up? It seems to be that early gestational development serves to build a 'scaffold' within which the 'real' organism will develop. Although the scaffolding shares the same genetic code as the developing organism within, they are separate and distinct entities which separate from each other at birth.

[MHGinTN]

Actually, my friend, the individual conceived builds the first organ that sustains his or her life through gestation, the placenta. The organ is discarded at birth, but it is an organ of the individual conceived.