baby facts

100 mind-blowing baby facts for new moms

Babies are amazing!

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They light up the room with their smiles!

Some of them will intrigue and surprise you.

They are simply adorable!

Well, I have come up with 100 mind-blowing facts about babies that will leave you surprised.

Let’s get started.

  1. Newborn babies don’t shed tears because the tear ducts produce little tears to help lubricate and protect their eyes. Expect to see tears between 1 – 3 months.
  2. Babies have more bones than adults. They have 270 bones while adults have about 206 bones. As the baby grows it reduces in number.
  3. Newborn babies are nearsighted.  Their vision allows them to see things or people very close to them.
  4. Newborn babies urinate every 20 minutes. That is about 72 times a day. Wow!
  5. They don’t know what salt tastes like because their kidneys are not yet developed. They taste salt when they are about 4 months old.
  6. Babies’ normal breathing rate is much more than the adult. It is 40 times per minute while an adult breathes between 12 to 20 times per minute.
  7. Babies understand some words you speak to them. In fact, they know the meaning of words around age 6-9 months.
  8. Babies are naturally good. They are born to be good.
  9. Babies use a lot of diapers. It is estimated that a baby will use about 320 diaper changes in the first month of life. In one year, they will use about 3,360 diapers.  That is a lot of money!
  10. Babies have a good sense of taste because they have three times as many taste buds than adults. They pick their sense of taste from the diets the mom eats during pregnancy and while breastfeeding.
  11. Babies can read minds. They can pick up emotional communications and they learn fast too.
  12. Their fingerprints are formed from the womb
  13. Babies lactate because of the mother’s hormone – estrogen that is passed onto the baby. This causes the breast to swell and cause lactation.
  14. Newborn baby girls have periods. Surprise! Yes. It is caused by the estrogen hormones produced by the mother that is passed to the child. It causes a small discharge of blood known as pseudo menstruation.
  15. The environment affects babies’ brain development.
  16. Babies believe that objects seize to exist when they are out of their sight. It brings to mind the phrase – out of sight, out of mind. It changes when they are 4 to 7 months.
  17. Babies develop hair known as lanugo and eat it in the womb when they are 4 to 5 months in the womb. It is part of their first poop when they are born.
  18. Babies double in weight in their first five months of life. This is because all they do is eat, sleep, poop and grow. Their weight triple when they are 1-year-old.
  19. The size of a baby’s eye is 75% their adult size when they are born. That is why their vision is 20/400 when they are born and it reduces to 20/20 by the time they are 6 months old.
  20. Babies born in May have more weight than those born in other months of the year.
  21. Most newborn babies sleep with their eyes open.
  22. Baby boys get an erection when they are in the womb and when they are born. Weird! Isn’t it?
  23. Babies don’t have bones in their kneecaps. The kneecaps are made up of cartilage. The bones are not developed until they are a few years old.
  24. Babies can breathe and swallow at the same time from birth to 7 months of life.
  25. Babies have a soft spot on their heads that bulges and pulsates. It is known as the fontanel.
  26. Babies are strong. Their grasp is strong enough to hold the entire body in an upright position.
  27. Newborn poop consists of mostly liquid with some mustard seed texture mix. That is why it blows out often.
  28. Babies forget all the things they did when they were infants and up till three years of age.
  29. The sucking reflex present in babies helps them to suck automatically. It leaves when they are 6-8 weeks old.
  30. If you stroke the cheek of a baby, it moves its mouth automatically towards your hand. It is called rooting reflex, and it also disappears when the baby is 6-8 weeks old.
  31. Place a newborn baby on its mother and it will find the breast for feeding. It happens because the smell of the amniotic fluid is like that of the breast.
  32. Babies cannot control their head. This is because they have weak neck muscles and motor skill that is not yet fully develop. These are responsible for neck control.
  33. Babies start smiling when they are 2 months old
  34. Babies have stranger anxiety when they grow to 6 months of age. They can recognize strangers at such age and so they sometimes cry when strangers carry them.
  35. Children between 1 year and six months to 2 years like eating non-food substances such as chalk, mud, charcoal. It is not abnormal.       
  36. Babies understand the sound of the music they hear while in the womb and they can recognize it for up to 4 months after birth.
  37. Babies are born with the instinct to put everything their hand touches in their mouth.
  38. Babies don’t dream in their first few years of life.
  39. A newborn baby has about a cup of blood in its body at birth.
  40. Babies come with natural abilities to swim but it quickly disappears after some time.
  41. Babies cry with your accent
  42. The brain of a year-old baby is half the size of an adult brain.
  43. Babies laugh a lot. An average baby can laugh up to about 300 times a day.
  44. Babies’ brains prepare for speech long before they spoke.
  45. Babies can crawl immediately after they are born.
  46. Babies rely on scent to identify their mother.    
  47. Each baby’s cry is unique. A mother can identify the cry of her baby just three days after birth.
  48. Babies can read tones and respond to them appropriately. If you shout at your baby, they feel scared, but if you talk with a smile at them, they smile back.
  49. Babies have sharpened ear at birth. They can hear and determine the source of sound around them.
  50. Newborn babies have coping mechanisms. They can cope when they are hot or cold. If they are cold, they will curl around to generate heat and when they are hot, they fling their arms and legs to get some breeze.
  51. Newborn babies have an advanced sense of touch. A baby that is 25 weeks can respond to touch.
  52. Birthmarks are normal, not an exception. About 80% of babies are born with birthmarks.
  53. A newborn’s eyesight is as sharp an adult’s.
  54. Babies turn their heads when they are full to show you it is enough. Funny! Isn’t it?
  55. A newborn baby’s head is about 25% of its entire weight.
  56. Research revealed that when a mom and the baby face and look at each other, their heart rates coordinate in seconds.
  57. Newborn babies have more reflex. It makes them startle whenever there is a loud noise. They raise their heads and extend out their arms and legs. Then they cry.
  58. The grasp reflex makes a baby grasp every object placed in their hands tightly. It lasts up to 5 or 6 months.
  59. Babies, especially a year old and 3 months recognizes when you are angry. So, avoid shouting in their presence.
  60. Babies at 7 months old can mirror other people’s behaviors.
  61. Babies take three months to adjust to the world outside the womb.
  62. Babies sneezes a lot because it helps them to clear their air passage of congestion and air-borne particles.
  63. Babies’ head grows quick. At birth, the average newborn has a head circumference of about 14 inches. But by a year old, the head becomes about 18 inches. It means half of the growth of a baby’s head takes place before they turn 1.
  64. Naptime boosts babies’ memory
  65. Babies grow well when there are about three consistent caregivers taking care of them.
  66. Babies who watch DVDs and videos learn six to eight vocabulary words than those who don’t.
  67. Babies have a built-in warning system, so follow the clue and not what the experts say.
  68. Babies have difficulty to stop crying once it starts. So follow their clue and provide what they need before they cry.
  69. Babies can’t speak, but they can communicate by waving bye-bye, clapping, pointing, etc.
  70. Babies have a foot size half the size of their adult size at one-year-old.
  71. Babies start sucking their hands from the womb when they are around seven weeks.
  72. Want to increase your chances of having twins? Then eat more yams. Lol. It is not scientifically proven. But it happens in Africa. A tribe that eats more yam has high rates of twins and multiple births.
  73. Baby boys typically weigh more than baby girls. The average weight of a newborn boy is 7lbs.10 oz while that of the girl is 7 lbs.2 oz.
  74. A newborn sleeps for about 16 to 17 hours a day. They do 2 to 4 hours per sleep when they are still young.               
  75. Babies stop growing rapidly after the first year. If they continue at the initial rate, they will be as tall as Nelson’s Column in London. Lol.
  76. Babies are monochromatic. They see one color or different shades of one color. Everything around them is black and white.
  77. A baby in the womb can send stem cells to the mother to repair her damaged organs.
  78. A baby’s brain makes use of 50% of the glucose in its body
  79. Babies can survive the first few days of life eating nothing.
  80. The second or third child may have more room to grow and stretch in the womb than the first baby.
  81. If you respond well to your baby’s conversational patterns, it will help them talk sooner.
  82. Most of your newborn baby’s hair may fall off in the first few weeks of birth and grow back a year later.
  83. Not all the baby’s birthmarks will appear after birth, some will develop later.
  84. Newborn babies are active for only 3 mins in every 1 hour.
  85. A newborn baby’s language can start with only one syllable voice of his mother.
  86. Newborn babies change eye color. They grow with a different color after 6 months of life.
  87. Newborn male babies may have breast buds because of the mother’s estrogen.
  88. Newborn babies are born with no bacteria in their bodies.
  89. Babies are referred to as preferential nasal breathers. In their first few months of life, they can only breathe through their mouths when crying.
  90. Babies have a basic knowledge of Math and physics.
  91. Babies are slow to warm up to their environment after birth. They take 5-10 minutes to become used to a new environment. But when they are 6 months old, they can adapt in about 30 seconds.
  92. A newborn’s stomach is about the size of a hazelnut. When they are 3 days old, it increases the size of a large marble. At 10 days old, it becomes the size of a golf ball.
  93. Babies lose 5-10 percent of their body weight after birth. But they gain back the weight within two weeks.
  94. Baby’s first poop is known as meconium. It is sticky, dark green and thick. It differs from all other poop that will come later on.
  95. Newborn babies cannot differentiate between daytime and night time.
  96. Baby boy’s brain grows faster than girls in the first three months of life.
  97. Newborn babies have cold hands and feet. This is because their circulatory system is not well developed at birth. It supplies blood first to the most important organs of the body before the hands and legs.
  98. Never kiss a baby on the ear. It can lead to a cochlear ear kiss injury that can cause deafness.
  99. Newborn babies who are breastfeeding poop more frequently than those on formula. This is because breast milk is a natural laxative.
  100. Babies don’t know their own reflection when looking at a mirror. They think it is another similar-looking friend. They get to differentiate it when they are a year and six months old.
  101. Babies are cute!

Wow! How many of the mind-blowing facts about babies do you know? Which ones are new to you? Share with me in the comment section below.

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