Newborn Babies

Bizarre Facts Not Told

Newborn babies are gorgeous, well may be a little funny-looking at first. But there are some Bizarre Facts About Newborn Babies That Doctors Don’t Tell You.

These days, parents are inundated with information about babies before birth. After all, baby would have spent nine months in the womb. You have asked your doctor or midwife all the relevant questions, and prepared well. But there maybe some bizarre facts about your newborn that your doctor didn’t tell you.

Below are 10 more facts about the littlest humans that you may not know.

10. Newborns Have Monkey-Strength Grips


When a newborn baby wraps his tiny hand around his parent’s fingers, it’s such a precious and life-changing moment that it never even occurs to most parents to think, “Let’s see how high I can lift this thing before he lets go.” Fortunately, that’s exactly where a scientist’s mind goes, and they’ve found the answer.

As it turns out, if you lay a baby down and place your index finger in his palm, your baby will cling on with so much strength that, if you lift him into the air, he’ll hold on—and he won’t fall.


9. Gets hairy in womb


Sometimes babies are born with just a few tufts of hair on the top of their heads, or a fine 'peach fuzz' all over their tiny domes. This isn't what we're talking about. As it develops in the womb, a baby's entire body becomes covered in a thin layer of hair called 'lanugo.' Experts say that the hair helps regulate a body temperature in utero.

If baby is born looking like a werewolf-in-training, don't worry, it's perfectly normal. The hair will gently fall out over the first few weeks of the newborn's life. If your baby wasn't born covered in lanugo ...it already fell off toward the end of gestation, and the baby ate it.


8. Remember tastes when they were in utero.


As we told you earlier, newborn babies cannot taste salt, but they can taste other flavors, and they can taste those flavors while they're still in the womb, starting from about four or five months into pregnancy. Amniotic fluid is believed to be affected by the food the expectant mother eats, which, in turn, is believed to affect a baby's flavor preferences after birth

If a pregnant mom eats a lot of garlicky foods, for example, the baby will taste that in her amniotic fluid in the womb, and will have a good chance of being drawn to garlic-flavored foods after birth.


7. Baby drink their own pee


Babies start urinating in the womb a few months after conception. Where does it go - they drink it! More precisely, the urine mixes with the amniotic fluid surrounding the baby in the uterus, and by the third trimester of pregnancy, a fetus swallows about a liter of amniotic fluid every day.

Since a fetus does not need hydration or nutrition in the womb (that comes from mom via the umbilical cord) experts say this serves mostly as practice for swallowing and digestion. This means that every last one of us spent several months of our lives drinking our own pee.


6. They lactate


The drop in hormone levels that causes psueudomenstruation can also cause 'galactorrhea', a phenomenon in which newborns develop tiny breast buds, and actually lactate, producing tiny amounts of milk from their nipples. It can happen in boys as well as girls. Like pseudomenstruation, it's not dangerous or uncommon, occurring in about 5 percent of all newborns, and can persist for up to two months.


5. They menstruate


While still in the womb, babies are exposed to high levels of the female hormone estrogen. At birth, when the baby becomes "disconnected" from mom, as it were, those estrogen levels fall rapidly and in girls can cause what is known as pseudomenstruation, similar to menstruation in young and adult women. Sharp drops in estrogen and related hormones are in fact what triggers menstruation in adult women.

Mothers unaware of this phenomenon often freak out when they see a little blood in their babies' diapers, but it's very common and happens in about a quarter of all female babies, usually in the first seven days of life.


4. Have more bones than adults


Babies have more bones than adults might come as a big surprise. Around 90-95 bones more! A baby is born with around 300 bones, whereas a grown adult has 206 bones. The reason is related to why they lack real kneecaps: some of a baby's separate bones fuse together into single bones as they ossify in the months and years after birth. Example: the skull starts off as several separate bones that fuse together into one large bone by about the age of two.


3. Babies don't have bony kneecaps


If you x-ray a baby's legs, you likely won't see anything where the kneecaps should be, or it maybe a small, smudgy spots. While they do have kneecaps it’s just a structure of cartilage that eventually forms into a kneecap as we know it. The reason is that all bones start off as cartilage, and they harden over time. We are told that this lack of proper kneecaps is nature’s way of helping babies crawl as the cartilage absorbs the hard surfaces they encounter.


2. They cry, but shed no tears


Newborns cry an awful lot, but they can't shed tears as their functional tear ducts are still developing after birth. It is normal for them not to shed tears for the first few months. They can, however, produce "basal tears," the non-emotional tears that we produce constantly to keep our eyes moist.


1. They can't taste salt


Young babies are born with a well-developed sense of taste, but not for salt. Studies show that babies can't taste salt until they're about four months old. They can taste other flavors as well as adults can, especially sweet, bitter, and sour flavors. Some studies indicate that babies actually have more taste buds than adults do.

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