Nothing is as interesting as learning how children develop and grow. Many people have their minds blown when they learned just how complicated a process baby development is. There is a lot more to infancy than you might think. Sure babies are cute, but they are incredibly complicated creatures. In order to develop normally, there are very specific needs that a baby’s parents need to meet and take care of. There is nothing simple about infancy and early childhood. Being a parent is easier if you understand what is going on as your child grows from baby to small kid to teenager and onward.
Did you already know that there are three hundred bones in an infant’s body? 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 adults believe that it is the fusing of the bones that causes them to lose their flexibility-they believe that the individual bones gave them better ranges of motions. If you stop to think about it, it does make some sense: when was the last time you could put your feet in your mouth? You can relax a baby with soothing noises, like the ones from wind chimes.
Your baby, in spite of not being able to talk right away, will amaze you with the range of sounds that he or she can make almost as soon as he or she is born. It takes a while for an infant’s voice box to finish forming, which is why it can make so many amazing sounds so soon! The flexibility of a new voice box is what makes the baby’s range better than an adult’s range. Babies quickly start to assign the sounds they make to the things that they want or need. This is how a baby’s mother can usually figure out what her child wants just by listening to the sounds her baby is making. A baby’s first word is usually one that he can make using the consonants made by the front of his mouth and a couple of vowel sounds. This is why "dada" is usually said before "mama"-because "mama" is harder for a baby to learn to say, but "dada" usually happens almost by accident!
Even though you want to avoid mercury, you can still have fish-just make sure it is a mercury free species! Many doctors recommend eating salmon regularly because it does not contain mercury the way other fish do and because it contains all sorts of healthy things that a mother needs for her growing fetus. 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.
There are all sorts of great and interesting facts about babies that are not common knowledge. The rapidity of baby growth is astounding to most people. Do you understand the minutiae of how a baby grows up? Has anybody told you just how many changes occur between when your baby is conceived and when he or she has a baby of his or her own? Your knowledge of babies is already expanding-don’t you want to learn more about this fascinating subject?