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What it feels like to be a Baby, by CNN

newborn baby cuddled in sakura bloom silk ring slingHere is a neat article from CNN.com about what it’s like to be a little baby. Click for their page to open in a new window.

Here are some excepts from the newborn section of the article

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As she picks him up, he’s flooded with her scent and a dim memory of his other world — the place where his body floated and he first recognized the scent that’s hers alone. But now, two weeks after birth, he’s in a vast, dry place called home. She brings him close to nurse and he roots with his mouth, guided in part by the smell of colostrum and the smell from the scent glands on her nipples. Her scent links him to everything he craves: food, warmth, touch. He latches on and the sweetness of the liquid is vaguely reminiscent of the smell and taste of amniotic fluid — both are affected by his mother’s diet. Already, sweet is his favorite taste.
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newborn baby sleeping in moby wrap slingHe cries a high-pitched call for help. As he cries, cortisol, known as the stress hormone, and other hormones, like adrenaline, spread through his body, slightly increasing his temperature and heart rate. His mother lifts him from his crib and encircles him in her warm, familiar arms, and his cries immediately lessen.
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newborn baby in organic knit hat and receiving blanket by Happy Green BeeWith vision of roughly 20/300 — about 15 times worse than normal adult vision — he sees her as though looking through the thick, curvy glass of a vintage Coke bottle. Even up close, she’s slightly blurry: His eye muscles aren’t able to provide consistent focus. Intuitively, she holds him about a foot away, where his vision is clearest. Even then, what he sees in the blur are movement and contrast, the way her mouth moves to say “Hello” and the way her teeth flash from between her darker lips.

Perhaps it’s for the best that he has limited vision. Perhaps it keeps him from being overwhelmed by seeing every detail of faces, hands, tables, and lamps for the very first time. His eyesight seems to provide just the right amount of stimulation for his developing visual cortex, which takes the images he sees and tries to make sense of them. In the meantime, he is able to see (fairly well) what’s most important in his world: his parents’ faces, his mother’s nipple.

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2 Comments »

  1. Rose said,

    February 6, 2008 @ 7:53 pm

    Love this article.

  2. Baby Dolls said,

    March 30, 2008 @ 2:33 am

    Baby Dolls…

    I enjoyed reading your blog. What a great thing it is to be able to share information like this on the Internet….

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