Newborn Wonders: 5 Curiosities about Your Baby's First Days of life

No matter how much experience we have as mothers, the first days with a newborn are always unique. Inadvertently, we tend to make comparisons with other babies. But still, this time period is one that is full of curiosities.

The day our baby is born will no longer be just one more day on the calendar. It will forever be marked as our child’s birthday. And the celebration begins the moment he comes into the world.

What happens after a baby is born

It doesn’t matter how much time we’ve spent planning, the arrival of a new baby can turn into an unending chaos. We begin to forget all of the plans we made, and all we can think about is our little child.

At the same time, your baby is also adapting to life outside of the uterus. If you think your life is changing, remember that your little one’s life has just been completely transformed.

Scientists have already discovered that the fetus can perceive some things that happen in the world outside the womb. However, he can’t even begin to imagine the changes he’s about to encounter.

Have you ever asked yourself what it must be like to breathe inside of the uterus? Or how these functions are modified. How do our babies see and hear us? The following will better explain how they feel.

Hair, eyes, mouth and heart

• A baby’s hair is so fragile that it can fall out just by rubbing against the sheets. That’s why many babies quickly become bald. Soon new stronger hairs will begin to grow
• A newborn baby’s tear ducts are not open, which means that babies cry without tears during their first days of life
• A baby’s lips are so delicate that small blisters may form around them due to suckling
• In the first days of life, a baby’s heartbeat is very fast. In fact, their hearts beat up to twice as many times per minute as an adult’s heart – between 130 and 160 times a minute

The breathing apparatus

• One thing we don’t do as adults is breathe and swallow at the same time. But in his first days of life, a newborn baby can do both at once. They maintain this ability until they are six months old in order to be able to breast feed.
• You might worry because your baby sneezes frequently, but they do so in order to clear their respiratory ducts
• Newborns don’t know how to breathe through their mouths. They only breathe through their noses.
• Newborn babies are capable of holding their breath under water. They even have an instinct to swim. But this ability soon disappears.

Newborn hygiene

• As their sweat glands are not yet mature, newborn babies do not sweat during their first days of life.
• The breath of a newborn baby will always be fresh. This is due to the fact that they don’t have teeth. Bad breath begins to appear due to the accumulation of bacteria in teeth

Your baby’s senses during his first days

• Babies recongnize their mother and other details through their sense of smell. The sense of smell is their most developed sense
• After four months in the mother’s womb, a baby is already able to shield himself from light and can respond to loud noises
• Small babies can only focus their vision up to 9 or 10 inches from their faces. This just happens to be the same distance between the mother and baby during breastfeeding.

Physical growth: Weight and size

• When your child is suffering from a cold, he doesn’t grow
• At six months, your baby will have doubled his birth weight. By the time he is a year old, he will have tripled it
• The measurement of a baby’s foot during his first days of life is equivalent to one-third of what it will measure when he reaches adulthood. By the time your baby is one year old, it measure about half the lenght of his adult foot
• From conception to birth, your baby’s weight doubles some 3 thousand million times
• Although newborns gain more weight in the fall, they grow twice as much in spring
• Babies that are born in the month of May can weigh 7 ounces more than babies born the rest of the year

Cover image courtesy of mschalke