by Neil Taylor

Growing up is something that, if we're being honest, starts at conception. In almost no time at all a baby goes from a ball of rapidly dividing cells to the beginnings of a human being with rudimentary lungs, a brain and a pumping heart. There are only forty weeks from conception to independent life. Even after birth the changes happen quickly-personalities and decision making seem to happen almost at once. You probably already know a little bit about babies-things like diaper changes and how long it takes babies to begin speaking are pretty common knowledge. Here are some interesting tidbits and trivia about infants that you might have fun learning.

Early childhood development is an amazing subject. Learning about the way a baby goes from his infancy to manhood will astound you. The fact is that there is a lot more to a baby that initially meets the eye. Babies are far more complex than people think. They have their own sets of wants and needs that must be met to ensure that they develop properly. There is a lot more to infancy than meets the eye. 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 know that babies are not good at perceiving the differences in colors very well? A baby's eyes are still developing when she is born and the synapses between and her eyes and her brain are not yet mature. This is one of the reasons why babies respond better to primary colors whey they are used in a room or on toys. Bold and bright colors like reds and greens and blues or even white and black are the easiest colors for babies to see. In the eyes of a baby, a lot of pastel colors look pretty much the same.

A baby is not born with a solid skull. This is why it is so important for adults to be careful when handling a newborn's head. The "soft spot" is soft for a reason and not being careful around it could cause quite a bit of damage to your child's development! You will be glad to know that the soft spot stops being so sensitive and soft within a few months. It can take as long as a year and a half for the frontal plates of your baby's skull to harden, so don't assume that the worst is over when the soft spot calcifies together. Most babies have the ability to recognize different types of music before they are born. Different songs can be recognized by the time an infant is thirty four weeks along. That means that this happens more than a month before the baby is born! Some women say that they will sometimes feel their babies moving to the rhythm of some music. So music appreciation really does happen "even before you were born"! Isn't that amazing?

Most babies are born knowing instinctively how to swim and how to hold their breath. This is also something that your baby will rapidly forget as well. This is one of the reasons many experts are in favor of women having water births. Swimming from the womb into life is supposed to make the transition of being born less traumatic for the infant. These experts say that being born into water helps ease the transition of birth and makes it less traumatic than the process they'd face by being born in a "traditional" hospital birth.

You know about babies growing tails right? It is absolutely true! In addition to immediately beginning to build major organs, your baby will also start to form a tail during the first few weeks after conception.

While we all know that babies cry to signal distress or the need for some form of attention, you might not know that a baby does not cry tears until he or she is a few weeks old. When a person gets stressed he or she secretes a hormone that is only found in tears. This is one of the reasons that stress makes people cry: the body forces the stress induced hormones out of the body to calm itself down. Babies are not able to make this hormone before they are born. It can take some infants a few weeks to begin producing this hormone and real tears. It takes other babies a few months to begin producing the hormone and crying real tears. Babies are really fun to learn about. We have yet to figure out just how quickly babies learn and by what process they retain those things. There is, however, a universal consensus on just how wonderful it is to watch babies grow up: they change every single day!

There are vast quantities of facts about babies that most people are unaware of. Early childhood development is amazing. Learning what is going on with your baby as he grows up will make the process even more rewarding.