Our top 10 baby facts
They demand attention and they cause stress, worry and sleepless nights, but there’s no doubt that they are the centre of our universe. Babies have got us wrapped around their teeny, tiny, adorable little fingers… and… where were we? Right! We devote unparalleled amounts of time to their care (much to our other halves disappointment.) Each baby is a wonder – and it turns out this is no illusion – babies truly are quite startlingly well designed and this is before they’ve even reached adulthood! We’ve been looking into facts and statistics about them and we really enjoyed it! So here you go, our top ten baby facts:
- Although adults have 206 bones, babies have around 300! This is because many smaller bones fuse together during growth to form larger adult bones.
- One in 2000 babies are born with some teeth (usually lower incisors).
- Babies cannot usually cry tears for the first three week of life and many do not cry ‘properly’ with tears until two months of age or beyond. This is because their tear ducts are underdeveloped at birth.
- It is thought that more than 80% of babies have birthmarks of some kind.
- By the time babies begin to crawl, whether they are left or right handed becomes clearer. Around 10% of the population are born left handed and 1% are ambidextrous.
- A baby’s eyesight is thought to be just as good as an adult’s, however their brains cannot process all the visual information picked up. Babies are most receptive to things within an eight to fifteen inch range at a month of age. Before this, everything is probably blurry.
- The human head grows fastest during the first four months of life, due to rapid brain growth.
- Babies can grasp from birth – this instinctive reaction is behind one of the most touching things babies do – gripping the fingers of caregivers.
- First borns are usually lighter weight than any siblings which follow them.
- Newborn babies gain between four and eight ounces of weight per week.
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Babies really are amazing little things…
We’re well into May now and can feel summer round the corner! We were having a chat in the office and decided May would definitely be the best time to be born; the weather is starting to warm up (but isn’t too hot for poor full-term mums-to-be), it’s almost half-way to Christmas (evening out the wait for/cost of presents) and future birthdays can be spent outside, in the sunshine.
An America study found that babies that are born in May usually weigh on average 200 grams more than other babies! Whilst it’s not quite certain why this is, once your little bundle of joy is born they’ll grow quicker than you ever thought possible. The development that you’ll witness really is astounding and we hope you’re looking forward to it!
A Unique Fingerprint
Each baby is completely unique and this starts from the very moment of conception. The pads of your baby’s hands and feed are developing as early as 6 weeks old and they will have fingerprints by 12 weeks! These loops and whorls are individual patterns caused by pressure from your womb as well as the rate of your baby’s growth and, to a certain extent, inherited shapes. There is a 1 in 64 billion chance that your child’s fingerprints will match someone else’s (even identical twins, though the same size and shape, will have tiny differences in their prints) which we think is worth the title ‘Interesting baby fact #1’!
On the Move
Once our little ones have mastered crawling and cruising, the unstoppable toddle begins. On a constant quest of discovery to explore all that the exciting world has to offer, the average toddler can take an impressive 176 steps per minute! No wonder we’re all shattered by 10am! Once on the move toddlers begin to develop skills that allow them to bend down and eventually pick up & carry things whilst walking, enjoying this new and exciting stage of independence. The stage at which babies crawl, cruise and toddle will all vary, but whenever they achieve these milestones they are keen to move on to the next stage in their amazing development.
Image Credit: http://bit.ly/1jciCbG