It’s all child’s play

The following text is originally lifted from the trivia section of The Jakarta Post dated Wednesday, 26 March 2008.

~Compiled from various sources~

• Monday’s Child is fair of face, Tuesday’s child is full of grace, Wednesday’s child is full of woe, Thursday’s child has far to go, Friday’s child is loving and giving, Saturday’s child has to work for its living, but a child that’s born on the Sabbath Day is fair and wise and good and gay.
• During pregnancy a woman’s blood volume increases up to 50%. In addition to meeting the needs of the foetus, this is a reserve against the needs of the foetus, this is a reserve against fluids that occurs during childbirth.
• A foetus acquires fingerprints at the age of three months.
• Identical twins do not have identical fingerprints.
• On average, a baby’s heart will beat about 60 million times before it is born.
• In England the chance of a woman having twins has doubled since WW2. At this rate, every pregnancy will result in twins by the year 2060.
• A three-week-old embryo is no larger than a sesame seed. A one-month-old foetus’s body is no heavier than an envelope and a sheet of paper. Its hand is no larger than a teardrop.
• A newborn baby’s head accounts for about one-quarter of its entire weight. By the age of 15 years, the head makes up about one-eighth of total height.
• A boy’s voice breaks during puberty because his vocal cords are lengthening. Up until that point, girls’ and boys’ vocal cords are the same length.
• The weight of a foetus increases about 2.4 billion times in nine months.
• The world’s first test-tube twins were born in June 1981.
• Until about age 12, boys cry about as often as girls.
• Up to the age of six or seven months, a child can breathe and swallow at the same time. An adult cannot do this.
• The “spring up, fall put” phenomenon says children grow twice as they do in the spring as they do in the fall, while they gain more weight in the fall.
• Babies that are exposed to cats and dogs in their first years of life have a lower chance of developing allergies when they grow older.
• Babies’ eyes cannot produce tears until the baby is approximately six to eight weeks old.
• Children who are breast fed tend to have IQ seven points higher than those who are not.
• The daughters of a mother who is colourblind and a father who has normal vision will have normal vision. The sons will be colourblind, however.
• Midgets and dwarfs almost always have oversized children, even if both parents are midgets or dwarfs.
• 80% of 10-year-old girls in USA go on a diet.
• Infants spend more time dreaming than adults do.