Do You Know These Facts About Babies?

It's a fair assumption that you already know some things about babies. You know that they take a while to recognize people. You know that they understand, instinctually, who their mothers are within moments of being born. You already understand that no two babies are going to develop at the same exact rate. There is no set schedule for walking or talking or eating solid foods or sitting up or any other "first" in a baby's life. You might be surprised to learn that there are plenty of other things to learn about child development and babies. A baby's infancy is an amazing period of time. Even within the first few years of a person's life there are millions of fascinating changes. Babies might not look like they do much all day but under the surface they are working like crazy to grow up!

The heart is usually already pumping by the time a woman finds out that she is pregnant. A beating heart is usually completed (at least rudimentarily) by twenty one days of life. It usually takes until right about this milestone for a woman to learn that she is pregnant. Are you impressed that it only takes biology twenty one days to build a beating heart from something that starts out as a single celled organism? Isn't it marvelous that biology made the foundation of your most important muscle in such a short time?

In spite of taking a few months to start forming words that adults can identify, the range of sounds babies can make is amazing. These sounds are possible because the baby's voice box isn't finished forming until the baby is older. It is due to this that a baby can make more sounds than an adult can make. It doesn't take long for a baby to learn how to assign a sound to an object or idea. It is because of this that a mother is able to learn what a child wants just by listening to him cry for a few seconds. Typically, most of a baby's beginning vocabulary will consist of easy vowels and consonants that he can make using only the front of his mouth. It is because of this that a baby's first word is usually "dada" and not "mama": dada is easier to imitate and is almost always a surprise to both the parent and the baby!

Even though you want to avoid mercury, you can still have fish-just make sure it is a mercury free species! By now you've probably had a bunch of your friends as well as your doctor tell you that you should be eating salmon because it contains a bunch of healthful properties that you and your baby need and it is mercury free. There are those who say that a woman who eats fish regularly during her pregnancy will give birth to babies with better developed brains and a better capacity for communication than babies carried by women who did not eat fish regularly during their pregnancies. If you do not eat or particularly like fish, don't worry-none of this has been scientifically proven as fact yet.

There is a ton of baby development knowledge that most people don't know. Oddly, many adults are better able to approach a situation calmly if they have a lot of knowledge on the subject at hand.

Learning everything you can about babies and infant development will help you feel more prepared for parenting. What are you waiting for?