10 Things People NEVER Tell You About Babies

5. Babies Can Have Cold Extremities

One thing you might notice in the early days of your child’s life is that their hands and feet feel cold. However, before you pile on more blankets or get the baby heater out, check their torso. If it’s warm and pink, your baby probably isn’t cold.

As their circulation system develops, blood skims past the extremities in order to feed the vital organs and systems. This can take a few months, but once they start to be more active their circulation should improve.

6. Babies Are Hungry Hippos

The first few weeks of your child’s life are going to feel like a blur with lots of nappies and lots and lots of feeding. So are you imagining it, or is your baby really feeding around the clock? Well, it’s definitely not in your head.

Babies demand milk more frequently so your body knows to up production to suit them as they grow. This is particularly true for breastfed babies, and breast milk is absorbed into the body quicker. Remember, your child will double their birth weight in six months, which is a lot of growing.

7. They Always Seem To Have The Trots

Babies don’t eat solids for the first few months of their lives, so it can be a little hard to tell whether their digestion is in distress, or it’s just normal. In fact, in the first few months, it looks like what’s coming out the back end is a constant stream of diarrhoea. Breastfed babies have seedy, mustard-yellow poop, while bottle-fed babies pass a browner soft-serve (yum) type of poop.

However, there’s no need to worry as long as your child is gaining weight and has no abdominal pain or bloating. Pay attention in the early days, then it will be easier to figure out when things aren’t right.

8. Babies Don’t Breathe Like Adults

With the risk of SIDs and new parent anxiousness, it’s not surprising that both mums and dads spend quite a bit of time leaning over their child’s crib checking on their breathing. However, what you should know when you’re doing this is that babies don’t breathe the same way as adults.

It’s normal for babies to take pauses when they breathe (of less than 20 seconds), then breathe rapidly all of a sudden. This is a part of the way the diagram develops, and breathing generally normals out after about six weeks.

9. Babies Have Terrible Skin

When babies are taking the world’s longest bath in your insides, they’re protected from getting all prune-y by a white, waxy substance called vernix. You probably recognise it as the white stuff your child was covered in when they handed them to you. However, once the baby gets out into the air and all the vernix gets rubbed away, the first layer of their skin starts to peel.

The peeling is most obvious on the hands and feet, but the entire body might peel, leaving your fresh newborn with some very flaky looking skin.

10. Learning Baby Cries Isn’t Automatic

You might have heard that, as a mother, you’ll have an inherent understanding of all the different messages your child will attempt to convey through crying. Wrong! It takes time to learn what different cries mean for your child, so don’t stress out if you can’t figure it out right away.

There’s a learning curve, and there are always going to be instances where your baby cries for no reason at all. So until you figure it out, just give your baby lots of love, and have faith in yourself. It will work out.