subject: Do You Know These Facts About Babies? [print this page] You should already know at least a little bit about babies. You understand that babies do not recognize most people right away. You know that they understand, instinctually, who their mothers are within moments of being born. Most people understand that each baby will develop at his or her own pace. 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. The truth is, however that there are lots of things about a child's development that most people do not know. A baby's infancy is an amazing period of time. The number of things that happen between conception and a baby's first complete sentence would astonish you. A baby's body might not look that complicated but it is an intrinsically complicated network of biology whose only goal is to keep developing!
Babies have three hundred bones in their bodies when they are born. After a person finishes growing up he or she only has two hundred and six bones. Contrary to how this sounds, you never actually lose bones-some of the individual bones that you are born with simply fuse together to form single bones. Many believe that this is one of the main reasons that a baby is so much more flexible physically as an adult-because the bones are able to move independently of one another in infancy. There is some logic to this-after all, when was the last time you could put your feet behind your head?
Music can be heard and recognized by babies even before they are born! Different songs can be recognized by the time an infant is thirty four weeks along. A baby can spend more than a month in utero listening to and appreciating different songs. Some women say that they will sometimes feel their babies moving to the rhythm of some music. So a person's musical preference does show up before the child is conditioned to like one type of music over another. Isn't that amazing?
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. Some think if a woman eats fish while she is pregnant that she will improve her baby's brain function and that her child will develop better communication skills than a baby born to a mother who did not consume fish while she was pregnant. This theory is still just that: a theory, so do not beat yourself up for neglecting your baby's brain if you don't eat fish, can't eat fish or simply haven't eaten that much fish during your pregnancy.
Common knowledge does not include very much in the way of baby development at all. Learning about infants and young children can be quite interesting. Parenting becomes far more enjoyable when you know a little bit more about how your baby is developing.
