6 Weird and Amazing Facts about a Newborn You Probably Didn’t Know

Babies are super cute and adorable, but did you know they are born with taste buds at the the roof, back and sides of their mouth, in addition to their tongue? Weird huh? Here are 6 more amazing facts about a newborn you probably didn’t know.

1. Babies grow mustaches that they eat in in the womb

When a fetus in the tummy reaches four months, it develops a mustache that, over the course of a month, spreads over its entire body. This hair is called lanugo. The register tells us that this hair may fall off over the course of your pregnancy, and is eaten by baby and digested, which makes up part of the first poop. If it doesn’t fall of, that is probably the reason why some babies are born with a lot of hair that eventually falls off over the next few weeks of life in the outside world.

2. Babies can recognize mum’s voice at birth

When a baby is born, their hearing isn’t 100% effective. The middle ear is still full of fluid which tends to impair hearing to an extent. The one sound they are however able to recognize is the sound of mama’s voice. They respond to this sound above all others. Various studies have come to show that newborn babies respond best to high-pitched, exaggerated sounds and voices, a trick they learnt and developed well in the womb. Which explains why they prefer a woman’s voice at birth, but as they grow, they adapt to daddy’s voice and other close relatives.

3. Newborn babies don’t shed tears from the first few months of their lives

Even though one of the things they do best within this period is to cry, they do not shed tears. Why? Jennifer Shu, M.D., co-author of the American Academy of Pediatrics’s book Heading Home With Your Newborn tells us that the tear ducts and glands of a new born work well, they produce only enough tears to lubricate and protect their eyes. You’ll start to see teardrops when your baby is between 1 and 3 months old.

4. Babies have more bones at birth than adults!

Surprisingly enough, babies are born, with 300 bones at birth. Their bones fuse as they grow and, eventually, the will have 206 bones, which all adults have.  Several bones will fuse together as the baby grows. For example, the skull at birth comprises several bones that actually overlap and fuse together into one large bone by about the age of two.

5. Baby girls menstruate!

While in the womb, baby girls are exposed to high levels of the female hormone, Estrogen. At birth, when the baby becomes detached from mom, those estrogen levels fall rapidly and can cause what is known as pseudomenstruation. This is similar to menstruation in young and adult women. Most mothers are scared 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.

6. All babies are born too early

Lise Eliot, neuroscientist and author of What’s Going on in There? How the Brain and Mind Develop in the First Five Years of Life (Bantam, 2000), in her research concludes that all babies are born too early. If it weren’t for the size limitations of a woman’s pelvis, babies would stay developing in the womb for considerably longer. Similarly, pediatricians label a baby’s first three months of life as the “fourth trimester” of pregnancy to emphasize how needy, and void of social skills, babies are at this stage.