Did You Know………………… Part 2.


1) Being born involves considerable stress for the baby. During each contraction, when the placenta and umbilical chord are compressed as the uterine walls draw together, the supply of oxygen to the fetus is decreased. The baby has considerable capacity to withstand the stress of birth. Large quantities of the hormones adrenaline and noradrenaline are secreted, protecting the fetus in the event of oxygen deficiency. These hormones increase the heart’s pumping, speed up heart rate, channel blood flow to the brain, and raise the blood sugar level. Never again in life will such large amounts of these hormones be secreted.

2) A small number of newborns have a disorder called pelvic field defect, which in boys involves a missing penis. For many years, doctors usually recommended that these genetic boys be raised as girls and undergo castration, which was required because they were born with testicles but not a penis.

3) No matter which set of genital organs have developed in the body – whether the embryo is physically male or female – the brain’s wired-in pattern of sexual behavior is female.
Long after the genes and hormones have dictated a male body, additional sex hormones must act upon the brain and make it a male. If they do not, the embryo will develop a female brain in a male body – and the boy will grow up to act feminine.

4) Bouncing and jiggling a baby can be dangerous. The infant’s heavy but weakly supported head may be flopped back and forth so hard that brain blood vessels bleed, leading to the formation of membranes that interfere with brain growth. Many slow-learning and clumsy children with IQ’s of 90 might have been intelligent and normally mobile children with IQ’s of 120, had they not been habitually shaken and whip lashed during infancy.

5) During the elementary school years, children grow an average of 2 to 3 inches a year. At the age of 8 the average girl and the average boy are 4 feet 2 inches tall. During the middle and late childhood years, children gain about 5 to 7 pounds a year. The average 8-year-old girl and the average 8-year-old boy weigh 56 pounds.

(Quoted from Life – Span Development by John W. Santrock and The Role of the Brain by Ronald H. Bailey)

Rain