The Friday Funny: Baby Storage Device?
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Diabetes Be Damned, Pregnancy Is Amazing
Yesterday’s Diabetes 365 photo was this:
This little, blue, ceramic hippo came with a circus playset I received decades ago. I can’t even remember how long I’ve had it, but since college, this one creature has been living in the drawer in every bathroom of every apartment I’ve ever lived in. It just refuses to be lost or misplaced, though its face is chipped and it’s not the same vibrant blue it once was.
Over the last few days, BSparl has been moving actively and visibly, poking her little legs and arms into my abdomen and dancing around in there. Being the mature adult that I am, I wanted to see if she would respond to things being placed on my belly. If Chris puts his hand on me, she reacts immediately. (She loves her daddy best, I think.) I rested a glass of ice water on my stomach for just a second the other day and she went after it like Siah after a pump cap. And yesterday, a warm mug of tea made her jut her legs out aggressively. (Someone on Twitter said this baby has beverage editorial going on. I’m not shocked – she’s my kid, so she’s bound to have some strong opinions on stuff.) Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Six Until Me.*
Why Not To Drop Your Baby On His Head
Exaggeration, drama, and histrionics are very much the rule of thumb in the ER. Someone comes in and claims they were stabbed with an eight-inch butcher’s knife, and the police later bring in the actual weapon, and it turns out to be a three-inch penknife. Someone claims to have taken a whole bottle of tylenol, but their serum levels turn out to be nowhere near the toxic level (or even zero). A patient reports to you that their last pneumonia was so bad their doctor didn’t think they’d pull through, but you check the records and see they weren’t even in the ICU. (The sole exception to this rule, of course, is the stated alcohol intake, which is usually about half to a third the actual alcohol intake.) Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Movin' Meat*
Do Newborn Babies Cry With Mother’s Accent?
French and German scientists decided to analyze the crying of newborns from the two countries for differences in intonation. Turns out that German babies have a different “accent” to their cry compared with those from France, which implies that language learning perhaps begins even in the womb.
The analysis of crying conducted under the supervision of the psychologist Kathleen Wermke from the ZWES showed that the newborns tended to produce the intonation pattern most typical for their respective mother tongue. The crying patterns of the German infants mostly began loud and high and followed a falling curve while the French infants more often cried with a rising tone. This early sensitivity to features of intonation may later help the infants learn their mother tongue, the researchers say. “When they begin to form their first sounds, they can build on melodic patterns that are already familiar and, in this way, don’t have to start from scratch”, says the neuropsychologist. The evolutionary roots of this behaviour are older than the emergence of spoken language, the researchers believe. “The imitation of melodic patterns developed over millions of years and contributes to the mother-child bond” says Friederici.
Press release: Babies with an accent …
Abstract in Current Biology: Newborns’ Cry Melody Is Shaped by Their Native Language…
*This blog post was originally published at Medgadget*
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