Unexpected facts about newborns that you will not hear from doctors

Have you recently become a young mother? Or just prepare for this event? And do you know everything about your baby? Here are some facts that young parents often do not know.

Infants do not feel the taste of salt

Babies are born with a well-developed sense of taste, but not for salt. Studies show that they can not feel her taste until they reach four months of age. But they, like adults, can feel other tastes, especially sweet, bitter or sour (that's why there are so many funny videos on the Internet about how children first try lemon). Some studies show that infants have even more taste buds than adults.

They cry without tears

Newborns cry a lot, but they do not shed tears. All because they do not have functional lacrimal ducts, which begin to work at the age of 3 to 12 weeks. Nevertheless, they develop basal tears that moisturize the eyes.

Newborns do not have patella

Indeed! If you look at the x-ray of a newborn's leg, then, most likely, you will not see anything where there should be knee cups, or it will be small fuzzy spots. The reason is that all the bones of babies are originally cartilage, and only after a while they harden and ossify. And to form the knee cap, you need especially a lot of time (three to five years). Since cartilage is not visible on X-rays, it seems that babies do not. The lack of solid patella cups is actually beneficial for the child. Cartilage takes on all the load when the kids begin to crawl and often fall.

They have more bones than adults

The newborn has about 300 bones, while the adult has only 206. The reason is the same as in the absence of solid patella: some bones protect the newborn from falling and striking, and they ossify within a few months or years after Birth. For example, our skull initially consists of several separate bones, which grow into one at about the age of two.

Newborn girls can have menstruation

In the womb of the mother, the baby is exposed to a high level of the female hormone estrogen. At birth, this effect stops, and, accordingly, the level of estrogen drops sharply. In girls, this can lead to a phenomenon that is known as pseudo-menstruation. It is similar to menstruation in young girls and women. A sharp drop in the level of estrogen and hormones associated with it actually causes menstruation in adult women. Most young mothers do not know about this phenomenon and often worry when they see a little blood in the baby's diaper. In fact, this phenomenon is very common. Through it passes about a quarter of all the female infants in the first seven days of their lives.

Newborns produce milk

Reducing the level of hormones that cause pseudomembranous can also cause a galactorrhea. This phenomenon, in which new babies begin to produce a tiny amount of milk. This can happen in both girls and boys. Like pseudo-simulation, this phenomenon is not dangerous. It is quite rare, occurs in only 5% of newborns and can persist for up to two months. In old European folklore, milk from the breast of a newborn was called magical and attributed to him magical power.

They drink their own urine

Babies begin to produce urine, even when they are in the womb, just a few months after conception. But where does it go? They drink it. More precisely, the urine is mixed with the amniotic fluid that surrounds the baby in the uterus. And in the third trimester of pregnancy a child swallows about a liter of amniotic fluid every day. Since the fetus does not need hydration or nutrition in the womb (everything comes through the umbilical cord), experts say that it serves mainly for exercises in swallowing and digestion. This means that each person spent several months of life drinking their own urine. But fetal emptying is a very rare phenomenon. However, this sometimes happens.

Babies can remember that they tried in the womb

As mentioned earlier, newborns can not taste the taste of salt, but other tastes are available to them, and they feel their fragrance, while they are still in the womb, starting from four or five months of pregnancy. It is assumed that the amniotic fluid depends on the food that the expectant mother eats, which, in turn, affects the taste preferences of the child after birth. For example, if a pregnant woman eats a lot of garlic products, a child can taste their taste from an amniotic fluid, and has a good chance of falling in love with garlic after birth.

They are hairy

Sometimes children are born with just a few tufts of hair at the top of the head, or with soft down. But this is not what we are talking about. When a baby develops in the womb, his whole body is covered with a thin layer of hair called lanugo. Experts say that these hair help regulate the temperature in the womb. So if your baby was born with a lot of hair on your body, do not worry, it's quite normal. They will fall out during the first few weeks of a newborn's life. If your baby was not covered with lanugo during childbirth, then the hairs managed to fall by the end of pregnancy, and the child ate them.