| Here's
what you may not know about the average baby born today
He costs almost a
quarter-million dollars to raise, recognizes his mom's voice at birth, |
|
| was conceived after six months of trying - and the odds are 95% that he arrived early or on time. | was delivered after 10½ hours of labor to parents who knew ahead of time whether they were having a boy or a girl. |
| prefers mashed bananas over any other flavor of baby food. | most likely arrived on a Tuesday. |
| weighed in at 7 pounds, 7 ounces - and will weigh triple that on his first birthday. | is 6% likelier to be a boy than a girl. (106 boys are born for every 100 girls.) |
| is most likely to be named Michael, Jacob, Matthew, Nicholas or Joshua - or Caitlin, Emily, Sara, Hannah or Ashley. | immediately prefers patterns to solid blocks of color. |
| can remember sounds he heard in the womb, and will turn toward the familiar voice of his mother at birth. | will "know" his name at age three months. |
| after three days, can tell his mommy from any other by her smell. | Say "Dada" at around seven months... and "Mama" by nine. |
| will cost his parents about $230,000 to raise to age 18. | will have two bottom teeth by six months. |
| takes 40 breaths a minute - twice as many as you - and has a heartbeat that's twice as fast as yours - 120 to 160 beats a minute. | will drink 1048 bottles of formula before graduating to a cup. |
| will cost his parents and average of one to two hours of sleep a night during his first year. | will cry less than 90 minutes a day during the first four months - unless he's got colic. |
| will smile his first genuine smile at around two months. | will cry differently at 12 weeks when Mommy leaves the room than when other people do. |
| will go through 8 disposable diapers a day, or 8000 before being potty-trained. | won't be potty-trained until age 3 - a full year later than his parents were. |
| will get at least 30% of his clothes as gifts. Typical cost of each gift: $25. | is more likely to have a room decorated with Winnie the Pooh than with Mickey Mouse. |
| will laugh his first true belly laugh at age four months. | will eat Cheerios as his first finger food. |
| has a 90% chance of being right-handed. | will have 8 to 10 colds, complete with runny nose, sneezing, cough and sore throat, by his first birthday. |
| is being raised more on the advice of his grandparents than on any book, video or pediatrician. | will decide he doesn't like bath time at around age seven months. |
| has a 50% chance of being a thumb-sucker. | will start crawling at 1.25 mph at around age eight months. |
| outgrows his shoes every three months. | has almost 4% chance of being a twin - the highest ever - thanks to the increased use of fertility drugs. |
| will take his first tentative step between 10 and 14 months. | will eat about 648 jars of baby food before graduating to grown-up food around his first birthday. That's 100 fewer jars than his mom ate in 1972 - mothers then weren't as quick to offer babies tastes of grown-up foods. |
| begins patting himself in the mirror at age eight months. | can unwrap presents just in time for his first birthday! |
| understands about 50 words by age one - but can say only three. | will live 72.8 years if he's a boy (24.8 more years than his great-grandfather). Will live 79 years if she's a girl (29 longer than her great-grandmother) |
