174 Fun Facts About Baby Shower

A baby is born with dozens more bones than an adult has, because many of them later do what?

Fuse together: a newborn's roughly 270 to 300 bones knit down to an adult's 206, which is how the separate vertebrae at the base of the spine become the single sacrum.

A newborn's kneecap is made of what?

Soft cartilage: softer and more flexible than bone, it only starts turning into a bony kneecap when a child is around three.

What is the everyday name for the fontanelles, the membranous gaps between the bones of a baby's skull?

Soft spots: the gaps let the skull's plates overlap so the head can squeeze through the birth canal, then leave room for a fast-growing brain.

The word "infant" comes from a Latin word meaning what?

Unspeaking: Latin infans meant 'not able to speak', and the same word, by way of the Italian for a youth, later gave armies their infantry.

A child's 20 baby teeth, which are shed in childhood, are known to dentists by what name?

Deciduous teeth: like trees that drop their leaves, they are named from the Latin for 'to fall off', and until they go they hold the spacing for the adult teeth.

What is the waxy white coating on a newborn's skin at birth called?

Vernix: the cheese-like coating is thought to shield a baby's skin from months in amniotic fluid, and its full Latin name, vernix caseosa, means 'cheesy varnish'.

New parents lose sleep partly because newborns arrive with no sense of what?

Day and night: newborns sleep around the clock, and a tiny stomach that cannot hold much milk wakes them to feed every few hours, whatever the time.

By roughly what age has the umbilical cord stump usually dried up and dropped off?

Three weeks: the stump has usually dried up and dropped off by then, and one that hangs on much longer gets checked, since it can point to an infection or an immune problem.

The Apgar newborn score was devised in 1952 by a doctor in which specialty?

Anesthesiology: Virginia Apgar trained as a surgeon at Columbia, but the chairman of surgery steered her into the young field of anesthesia, where she devised the score in 1952.

A perfect 10 on the Apgar newborn test is rare because almost every baby loses a point for what?

Blue hands and feet: each sign scores 0 to 2, and a pink body with bluish hands and feet, normal until a newborn warms up, earns only 1 for colour.

The rooting reflex helps a newborn do what?

Find the nipple: stroking a newborn's cheek makes it turn toward the touch and open its mouth, helping it locate the nipple; the reflex fades by around four months.

What is the reflex called in which a newborn's fingers clamp tightly around anything pressed into its hand?

The palmar grasp: the grip is strong enough that a newborn can almost be lifted by its hands, and it is thought to be a leftover from primate babies clinging to their mothers' fur.

The Moro reflex, in which a baby flings out its arms then pulls them in, responds to what?

A sudden loss of support: Ernst Moro first drew the reflex out by slapping the pillow on both sides of a baby's head, and doctors today let the head drop back for an instant instead.

The first milk a mother produces, rich in antibodies, is called what?

Colostrum: nicknamed 'liquid gold' for its deep yellow colour, it also works as a gentle laxative that helps a newborn pass its first stool.

Deaf babies raised with sign language repeat meaningless hand movements over and over, a manual form of which stage of speech development?

Babbling: hearing babies do it aloud with strings of sounds like 'bababa', and a 1991 study took the signing version as evidence that babbling belongs to language itself, not just to speech.

The crusty, oily scaly patches sometimes seen on a baby's scalp are commonly known as what?

Cradle cap: the greasy yellowish scales look alarming but are harmless, neither itchy nor painful, and usually clear up on their own within a few months.

One theory links the Yoruba people's record-high rate of twin births to eating plenty of which staple food?

Yam: southwest Nigeria has the world's highest twinning rate, and one unproven theory credits a local yam whose natural plant oestrogen may prompt the ovaries to release two eggs.

Twins that grow from two separate eggs, each fertilised by its own sperm, are known as what?

Fraternal twins: they share about half their genes, like any brother and sister, which is why one can be a boy and the other a girl.

Which girls' name overtook Emma in 2019 to become the most popular for newborns in the United States?

Olivia: Shakespeare gave the then-rare name to the countess in Twelfth Night, and four centuries on it ended Emma's five-year run at number one.

Children of the post-war baby boomers were nicknamed 'echo boomers', a generation better known by what name?

Millennials: births rose again from the early 1980s to the mid-1990s as boomers had children of their own, an echo of the post-war surge.

English godparents in Tudor times customarily gave a baby which silver gift at its baptism?

A spoon: the handle often ended in a tiny figure of an apostle, and birth gifts stayed tied to the christening for centuries; the baby shower only took off in America after the Second World War.

The 2008 blog post credited with starting gender reveal parties revealed a baby's sex using what?

A cake: Jenna Karvunidis's 2008 blog post described cutting into a cake with pink icing inside; by 2019 she was publicly regretting the increasingly extravagant trend she had started.

In European folklore, which bird is said to bring babies to new parents?

The stork: German folklore had it finding babies in caves or marshes and carrying them home in a basket, and Hans Christian Andersen's tale 'The Storks' spread the story far and wide.

What was meant to pull the shell-shaped baby carriage that William Kent built in 1733 for a duke's children?

A goat or small pony: Kent's richly decorated carriage for the 3rd Duke of Devonshire worked like a miniature coach, drawn by an animal instead of pushed by a nurse.

In 1946 Marion Donovan stitched the first prototype of her waterproof diaper cover, the 'Boater', out of which household item?

A shower curtain: Donovan cut up a series of them to perfect the design, then made the version sold at Saks Fifth Avenue from 1949 in nylon parachute cloth, with snaps in place of pins.

Pampers began in 1961 after P&G's Victor Mills tired of changing whose cloth diapers?

His grandchild's: Mills, a P&G chemical engineer, disliked changing his newborn grandchild's cloth diapers, set his team on a disposable alternative and used his grandchildren as testers.

Ann Turner Cook, the model for the famous Gerber Baby drawing, grew up to work as what?

A teacher and novelist: Cook taught English in Tampa and later wrote mystery novels; her neighbour's quick charcoal sketch of her won Gerber's 1928 hunt for a baby face.

Sophie the Giraffe went on sale in France on 25 May 1961 and was named for what link to that date?

A saint's feast day: 25 May honours Saint Madeleine Sophie Barat, so the toy took her name, and it has been a classic first gift for French newborns ever since.

The teddy bear got its name after President Theodore Roosevelt refused to do what on a 1902 hunt?

Shoot a captured bear: his guides had tied the animal to a tree for him, he called that unsporting, and a cartoon of the scene inspired a Brooklyn shopkeeper's 'Teddy's bear'.

Cabbage Patch Kids famously came with a birth certificate and which other document?

Adoption papers: each Cabbage Patch Kid came with a birth certificate and adoption papers for the new owner to sign; Coleco's mass-produced version set off the 1983 holiday toy stampede.

Zenith's 1937 Radio Nurse, the first baby monitor, was built in response to which notorious crime?

The Lindbergh kidnapping: Zenith's president Eugene McDonald, worried for his own baby daughter after the 1932 abduction, had the set made so parents could listen in on the nursery.

Which dolls began in 1909 as plump cartoon cherubs drawn by the illustrator Rose O'Neill?

Kewpie dolls: the characters first appeared in a women's magazine, and the doll craze that followed made O'Neill a fortune as America's highest-paid female illustrator.

In November 2020, which children's song became the most-viewed YouTube video of all time?

"Baby Shark": the tune was an old camp singalong with no known author until Pinkfong's video, which passed 'Despacito' at 7.04 billion views.

Which Sesame Street Muppet is famous for singing to his rubber duckie?

Ernie: Jim Henson sang 'Rubber Duckie' in character, and the bath-time ode became a surprise pop hit, reaching number 16 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1970.

Who voices the title character in the 2017 animated film The Boss Baby?

Alec Baldwin: his suit-wearing infant is a secret agent from Baby Corp, sent to find out why puppies are stealing the world's love from babies.

How old is Grogu, better known as Baby Yoda, during the first episode of The Mandalorian?

50: the bounty hunter is told only that his target is 50 years old, then finds a baby, because Grogu's species ages so slowly that half a century leaves him an infant.

In The Simpsons, which Hollywood star voiced Maggie's first word in the episode "Lisa's First Word"?

Elizabeth Taylor: she voiced the single word 'Daddy', which Maggie says only after Homer has turned off the light and left the room, so nobody hears it.

In the 1989 comedy Look Who's Talking, who provides the voice of baby Mikey's thoughts?

Bruce Willis: writer-director Amy Heckerling got the idea after her own daughter was born, when she and her husband began making up lines for what the baby might be thinking.

Which Star Trek actor directed the 1987 hit Three Men and a Baby?

Leonard Nimoy: he directed 1987's biggest US box-office hit, and the 'ghost boy' that fans later spotted in one scene was just a cardboard cutout of Ted Danson.

The baby on the cover of Nirvana's Nevermind is swimming toward what?

A dollar bill on a fishhook: four-month-old Spencer Elden, the son of a friend of photographer Kirk Weddle, was photographed in a swimming pool, and the dollar bill was added to the picture afterwards.

Which two-day-old did Time call "the most famous baby in the world" in January 2012?

Blue Ivy Carter: born 7 January 2012, her cries feature on Jay-Z's 'Glory', released two days later, which made her the youngest person ever credited on a Billboard chart.

Prince George was born in 2013 in the same London hospital wing where which royal was born in 1982?

Prince William: father and son were both born in the private Lindo Wing of St Mary's Hospital, Paddington, and news of George's arrival went up on an easel outside Buckingham Palace.

Bamm-Bamm, the super-strong toddler in The Flintstones, is the adopted son of which couple?

Barney and Betty: the Rubbles found the baby on their doorstep and lost a court fight for him to a wealthy couple, who handed him back on learning they were expecting a child of their own.

Which nickname for a pacifier began as a brand name?

Binky: the name is a trademark for one company's pacifiers, but American parents took it up as the everyday word for any brand.

"Rock-a-bye Baby" is believed to have first appeared in print in which early nursery-rhyme collection?

Mother Goose's Melody: it printed the lullaby with a moral, calling the falling cradle 'a warning to the proud and ambitious, who climb so high that they generally fall at last'.

Which photographer is famous for portraits of babies posed as flowers and vegetables?

Anne Geddes: the Australian photographer teamed up with Celine Dion in 2004 for Miracle, an album of songs released alongside a book of her baby portraits.

The ancient practice of wrapping a baby snugly in cloth so its limbs cannot move much is called what?

Swaddling: doctors and thinkers such as Rousseau turned against it in the 1700s, but it has come back as a way to settle newborns and help them sleep.

Victorian bridal showers reputedly took their name from gifts tumbling out of which item?

A parasol: in the story, presents were tucked inside and tumbled over the bride when it was opened, though the name may simply come from guests showering her with gifts.

A 'layette', gathered before a baby arrives, is a complete set of what?

Newborn clothes and bedding: the word is French for a small box or chest, the kind of drawer such an outfit was once stored in.

According to Miss Manners, who should typically host a baby shower?

A close friend: Judith Martin's Miss Manners column holds that a friend, not a relative, should host, since a family member giving a shower looks like begging for gifts on the family's behalf.

Pre-birth baby showers are usually held before the final few weeks of pregnancy, for what reason?

The baby might arrive early, so showers steer clear of the last few weeks in case of a preterm birth; many societies hold no pre-birth celebration at all.

Which country welcomes a newborn by serving 'beschuit met muisjes', rusks topped with sugar-coated aniseed?

Netherlands: 'muisjes' means 'little mice', and the blue ones now served for a baby boy are a newcomer, only introduced in 1994.

In the ancient Greek Amphidromia, a newborn was welcomed into the family by being carried around what?

The hearth fire: held about a week after the birth, once the baby seemed likely to survive, the rite presented the child to the gods of the house.

At a Korean first-birthday 'dol', the baby is prompted to do what?

Grab an object that predicts its future: thread stands for long life and money for wealth, and modern families add a stethoscope, a gavel or a microphone.

In the Islamic tradition of Aqiqah, what happens after a birth?

An animal is slaughtered and meat shared: usually on the seventh day a sheep or goat is sacrificed, the baby's head is shaved, and by tradition the hair's weight in silver goes to charity.

A smaller shower for a family's second or later baby is nicknamed what?

A sprinkle: a 'baby sprinkle' is a scaled-down shower for a second or later child, on the theory that the parents already own the big items and need only a sprinkling of essentials.

In Britain, a new father who goes to 'wet the baby's head' is celebrating the birth in what way?

Having drinks with friends: the father's toast at the pub is the British tradition, in a country where the baby shower itself is an American import.

A doula is hired by a mother-to-be to do what?

Support her through labour: a doula offers comfort and encouragement but no medical care, and the word comes from the Greek for a female servant.

A 'Moses basket', named after a Bible story, is used for what?

Putting a newborn to sleep: the light wicker bed is named for the infant Moses, hidden in a basket among the bulrushes of the Nile.

A 'push present' is a gift given to whom?

The new mother: usually jewellery from her partner, it marks the labour she has just been through, hence the blunt name.

When is the Chinese 'manyue' celebration for a new baby held?

One month after birth: manyue means 'full month', when friends and relatives visit with gifts such as red eggs; a party before the birth is considered unlucky in China.

A 'babymoon' is which treat for expectant parents?

A last holiday before the birth: modelled on 'honeymoon', the word can also mean the quiet first days new parents spend alone with their baby.

Which pediatrician's 1946 bestseller on baby care told parents, 'You know more than you think you do'?

Benjamin Spock: earlier experts had warned parents against picking up crying babies, and his Baby and Child Care told them to trust themselves and show affection instead.

Which two wildfires were started by gender reveal party effects?

Sawmill Fire and El Dorado Fire: a target-shooting gender reveal ignited Arizona's Sawmill Fire in 2017, and a smoke-generating pyrotechnic started California's El Dorado Fire in 2020, which killed a firefighter.

Louise Brown, the world's first 'test-tube baby', was born in 1978 in which country?

United Kingdom: she was born in Oldham after Patrick Steptoe and Robert Edwards fertilised her mother's egg in a laboratory dish, work that earned Edwards the 2010 Nobel Prize.

What is the 20-week ultrasound that can reveal a baby's sex called?

Anatomy scan: a sonographer checks the baby's heart, brain and spine for problems, and whether the sex can be seen depends on how the baby happens to be lying.

Until 2024, which country barred doctors from revealing a fetus's sex before 32 weeks?

South Korea: a 1987 law meant to curb sex-selective abortion banned disclosing fetal sex; after a 2008 court ruling it was eased to allow disclosure from 32 weeks, and the Constitutional Court struck that down in February 2024.

Which is a Canadian English word for a pacifier?

Soother: Britons say dummy and the Irish dodie; before rubber pacifiers, American babies were quieted with a 'sugar-tit', a twist of cloth holding moist sugar.

A 17th-19th century English 'coral' was a teething toy often mounted in silver as the handle of what?

A rattle: the coral was more than something to gnaw, for it had long been prized as a charm, and the stick set into a silver rattle was thought to protect the teething child.

Which star has a guest verse on Justin Bieber's 2010 hit 'Baby'?

Ludacris: the video was YouTube's most-viewed for over two years, until 'Gangnam Style' passed it in 2012, and for seven years its most disliked as well.

Which chemical, once common in hard plastic baby bottles, has been banned from them in Canada, the EU and the US?

Bisphenol A: the hormone-disrupting chemical can leach from polycarbonate into a baby's milk, and substitutes such as BPS and BPF may pose similar risks.

Sculptor Peter Ganine patented the design for which classic toy in 1949?

The rubber duck: Ganine first modelled the bird as a sculpture, then patented it as a toy and had it reproduced as the floating bath duck.

Scientists tracked Friendly Floatees bath toys, spilled into the Pacific, to study what?

Ocean currents: oceanographer Curtis Ebbesmeyer logged where beachcombers found the 28,800 plastic animals lost in 1992, first on Alaska's coast, and reckoned others drifted on through Arctic ice toward the Atlantic.

Which teeth are usually the first baby teeth to erupt?

Lower central incisors: the two bottom front teeth usually break through first, at 6 to 10 months, though every baby tooth is already sitting in the jaw at birth.

By one naming tradition, twins are called Taiwo and Kehinde according to what?

Birth order: Taiwo, 'first to taste the world', is born first, yet Kehinde, who follows, is counted the elder for having sent Taiwo ahead to check the world was ready.

Identical twins that split about two weeks after fertilisation tend to be born how?

Conjoined: a split in the first days gives each twin its own sac and placenta, but one that comes around day 12 to 14 can stop short, leaving the pair physically joined.

Which composer wrote the 1868 song 'Wiegenlied', known in English simply as his 'Lullaby'?

Johannes Brahms: he wrote it for his friend Bertha Faber on the birth of her second son, hiding in it a tune she used to sing to him.

'Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star' shares its tune with which other nursery favourite?

The Alphabet Song: both, like 'Baa, Baa, Black Sheep', were fitted to a French tune already in print in 1761, decades before an English poem of 1806, 'The Star', supplied the Twinkle words.

'Twinkle, Twinkle' is sung to a French melody that which composer wrote variations on?

Mozart: his twelve variations on 'Ah! vous dirai-je, maman' (K. 265) date from the early 1780s; the French tune itself was first published in 1761.

'Hush, Little Baby' is thought to have been written in which region?

Southern United States: nobody knows who wrote it, but Cecil Sharp noted down versions in Virginia and North Carolina, and Alan Lomax later recorded it from singers across the South.

The opening of Teletubbies shows a giggling baby's face in place of what?

The sun: each Teletubbies episode opens and closes with a giggling baby's face set inside the sun over Teletubbyland; the series debuted on the BBC in March 1997.

Which Jedi arrives to take Grogu away for training at the end of The Mandalorian's second season?

Luke Skywalker: Mark Hamill returned for the surprise cameo, digitally de-aged, with Luke's young voice rebuilt by software from decades-old recordings.

Roughly how much did the Grogu puppet reportedly cost to make?

$5 million: actor Adam Pally, who played a scout trooper who punched the puppet, said Jon Favreau told him it had cost $5 million; the figure has never been officially confirmed.

In Pixar's The Incredibles, what is the name of the Parr family's baby?

Jack-Jack: his powers surface only in the finale, when Syndrome grabs him, though a spin-off short shows his babysitter had already watched him float, catch fire and pass through walls.

Who wrote the 1947 bedtime classic 'Goodnight Moon'?

Margaret Wise Brown: she wrote it in 1947 with pictures by Clement Hurd, but the New York Public Library kept it off its shelves until 1972 because an influential children's librarian there disliked it.

Which Home Alone screenwriter also wrote the 1994 flop 'Baby's Day Out'?

John Hughes: the film bombed in America but was a sensation in India, where a Calcutta cinema owner told critic Roger Ebert it filled his biggest hall for at least seventeen weeks.

Which Family Guy cast member voices the scheming baby Stewie Griffin?

Seth MacFarlane: the show's creator modelled Stewie's clipped English accent on Rex Harrison in My Fair Lady, and he voices Peter and Brian as well.

Which 1998 film introduced Tommy Pickles' baby brother Dil?

The Rugrats Movie: a plan to take newborn Dil back to the hospital sends the Reptar Wagon careering off with all the babies aboard, leaving them lost in the woods.

Rugrats launched Nickelodeon's first Nicktoons block in 1991 alongside Doug and which other cartoon?

The Ren & Stimpy Show: the three premiered back to back on 11 August 1991, Nickelodeon's bet on creator-driven cartoons after a decade of shows built to sell toys.

Which vitamin is routinely offered to newborns as an injection soon after birth to help their blood clot?

Vitamin K: babies are born with very little because it crosses the placenta poorly and breast milk holds only a trace, so one shot guards against a rare but dangerous bleeding disorder.

Which company markets Huggies diapers?

Kimberly-Clark: the maker of Kleenex launched Huggies in the late 1970s to replace its earlier Kimbies brand, taking on Procter & Gamble's Pampers.

Johnson's Baby Powder began in the 1890s when J&J sent out which powder to soothe skin irritated by its plasters?

Talc: scientific director Frederick Kilmer posted scented Italian talc to a doctor whose patient's skin was sore from plasters, and customers soon found it soothed babies' bottoms too.

Which German toymaker developed the teddy bear at the same time as Morris Michtom?

Richard Steiff: Margarete Steiff's nephew designed the jointed 'Bär 55 PB' in 1902 and showed it at the Leipzig toy fair in 1903, where an American buyer ordered 3,000.

In 1934 Ideal, the toy firm Morris Michtom built on teddy bears, launched its best-selling doll, modelled on which child star?

Shirley Temple: by the mid-1930s Ideal's dolls of the curly-haired star made up almost a third of all dolls sold in America, and unlicensed copies drew the company into court.

Meconium, a newborn's first stool, takes its name from the Greek for the juice of which sleep-bringing plant?

Poppy: the Greek mekonion meant poppy juice, or opium; classical physicians named the stool for its likeness to the raw drug, and one account credits Aristotle's idea that it kept the unborn child asleep.

Which color is a newborn's meconium usually?

Very dark olive green: the tarry first stool builds up in the womb from swallowed amniotic fluid, mucus and shed cells, and turns yellow within days once the baby is digesting milk.

Kangaroo care, developed in Bogotá when incubators were scarce, keeps premature babies warm using what?

Skin-to-skin contact: the baby is carried against a parent's bare chest, and a method born of an incubator shortage is now the WHO's recommended care for small and premature babies.

The first twelve weeks after birth are often nicknamed what?

The fourth trimester: pediatrician Harvey Karp popularised the label, and US obstetricians now urge ongoing care through these weeks in place of a single check-up.

Who published the first English nursery rhyme collections, Tommy Thumb's Song Book, in 1744?

Mary Cooper: the London publisher issued Tommy Thumb's Song Book and its sequel Tommy Thumb's Pretty Song Book in 1744; Newbery's stepson Thomas Carnan registered 'Mother Goose's Melody' in 1780.

When newborn jaundice, a yellowing of the skin, needs treating, what is the usual treatment?

Light therapy: most cases clear untreated, but when a newborn's liver is too slow to clear the yellow pigment bilirubin, a special lamp is shone on the baby's skin until the levels fall.

Within how many weeks after birth does the posterior fontanelle usually close?

6-8: the small triangular posterior fontanelle usually closes by about two months, while the larger diamond-shaped anterior one takes until around 18 months.

Which combination of blood vessels does a human umbilical cord normally contain?

Two arteries, one vein: reversing the usual pattern, the single vein carries oxygen-rich blood from the placenta to the baby while the two arteries carry spent blood back, all cushioned in Wharton's jelly.

Which infant product did Canada ban outright in 2004?

Baby walkers: a voluntary ban since 1989 had not stopped babies falling down stairs, so Canada became the first country to outlaw selling, importing or advertising them, even second-hand.

Which US agency sets the mandatory standards that cribs and playpens must meet?

Consumer Product Safety Commission: its 2011 rules required fixed sides on every new crib, ending the drop-side designs whose faulty hardware had been tied to infant deaths.

Which aeronautical engineer designed the lightweight folding stroller in 1965?

Owen Maclaren: the retired Spitfire engineer designed the buggy after seeing his daughter struggle to take a cumbersome pram on flights.

Which sculptor, also famous for a glass-topped coffee table, designed the 1937 Radio Nurse baby monitor?

Isamu Noguchi: he moulded the Bakelite receiver as an abstract nurse's head, a faceless bust fronted by a grille, yet technical trouble dogged the set, whose signal could stray beyond the house wiring.

Which sleep position most effectively reduces the risk of SIDS?

On the back: since the US 'Back to Sleep' campaign began in 1994 (renamed 'Safe to Sleep' in 2012), far fewer babies are laid on their stomachs and SIDS deaths have fallen by more than half.

For how long does the WHO recommend exclusive breastfeeding?

Half a year: breast milk alone supplies all the energy and nutrients a baby needs for those months, plus antibodies against common illnesses, and the WHO advises continuing alongside solid food to age two or beyond.

In medicine, a baby in its first 28 days of life is known by which term?

Neonate: the label marks out the riskiest stretch of childhood; in 2022 nearly half of all deaths before age five came within those first 28 days.

In US obstetrics, a baby born at 39 or 40 weeks is classed as what?

Full term: any birth from 37 to 42 weeks used to count simply as 'term', but babies born at 37 or 38 weeks have more breathing problems, so since 2013 they have been classed as early term.

Which disorder, named in the warning on diet-soda cans, was the first target of routine newborn heel-prick screening?

Phenylketonuria: Robert Guthrie's heel-prick blood test of the early 1960s made screening routine; affected babies look healthy at birth, and starting a low-phenylalanine diet early prevents brain damage.

What mostly accounts for the weight a healthy newborn loses in its first few days?

Excess fluid: babies are born carrying extra water and shed it over the first days while feeding gets going, so a small drop on the scales is normal.

In pregnancy, what does the old term 'quickening' describe?

Feeling the baby move: to 'quicken' once meant to come alive, and the first flutters, felt around the middle of pregnancy, are easily mistaken for gas.

A consumer boycott launched in 1977 targeted which company over its marketing of infant formula in poorer countries?

Nestlé: campaigners argued that formula mixed with unsafe water was costing babies' lives, and in 1981 the World Health Organization adopted a code restricting how breast-milk substitutes are marketed.

Honey is kept from babies under one year because of the risk of what?

Infant botulism: honey can carry Clostridium botulinum spores, which an infant's immature gut cannot suppress; the spores germinate and produce a toxin causing weakness and poor feeding, so honey is withheld until one year.

Born near Callander, Ontario in 1934, the Dionne quintuplets were the first quintuplets known to have done what?

The identical Dionne girls were the first quintuplets known to have survived their infancy; Ontario later made them wards of the Crown and a tourist attraction.

In the 1938 screwball comedy Bringing Up Baby, what kind of animal is Baby?

A leopard: Baby is a tame leopard that Katharine Hepburn's heiress foists on Cary Grant's paleontologist in Howard Hawks's 1938 comedy; a second, wild leopard causes the chaos.

Which real New York apartment building stood in for the Bramford, the couple's new home in Rosemary's Baby (1968)?

The Dakota: its exteriors played the Bramford while the apartments were sets on Paramount sound stages in Hollywood, and novelist Ira Levin had modelled his fictional building on blocks like it.

In Baby Driver (2017), why does getaway driver Baby constantly listen to music?

To drown out his tinnitus: a childhood car crash that killed his parents left Baby with ringing in his ears, so he plays music constantly, and the film's action is cut to his playlists.

Which Seattle rapper took 'Baby Got Back' to number one on the Hot 100 in 1992?

Sir Mix-a-Lot: MTV briefly banned the video, yet the single spent five weeks at number one and won him the Grammy for Best Rap Solo Performance.

Which California mother, dubbed 'Octomom', gave birth to eight babies at once in 2009?

Nadya Suleman: her octuplets drew worldwide headlines, and the fertility doctor who had transferred twelve embryos at once lost his California medical licence in 2011.

Sophie the Giraffe, the 7-inch squeaky teething toy sold since 1961, is moulded from which material?

Sophie is a 7-inch giraffe of hevea rubber, squeaking since 1961 and a staple of French nurseries.

Which actor's Baby Driver performance earned a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actor in a Musical or Comedy?

Ansel Elgort: he won the part with a taped audition, lip-syncing and dancing to the Commodores' 'Easy', and director Edgar Wright liked it so much that the song went into the film.

Which US city is the setting of Baby Driver?

Atlanta: Edgar Wright first set the story in Los Angeles, then moved it when Georgia's tax credits brought the shoot there and wrote the city into the film.

A 1918 American trade journal advised dressing baby boys in which 'more decided and stronger' color?

Pink was the pick for boys in Earnshaw's Infants' Department, which called blue 'more delicate and dainty' and so prettier for girls. Historian Jo Paoletti found today's pairing was not dominant in America until the 1950s.

Which nursery rhyme did Thomas Edison recite in 1877 to make the first recording on his new phonograph?

Mary Had a Little Lamb was Edison's test piece for the machine. He re-enacted the recitation in 1927, and that later recording still survives.

In which country do men dressed as devils leap over rows of babies during the El Colacho festival?

Spain has held El Colacho in the village of Castrillo de Murcia since 1620. Babies born in the past twelve months lie on mattresses in the street while the costumed 'devils' jump over them.

In which fish does the male carry the eggs in a pouch and give birth to the young?

Seahorse fathers take up to 1,500 eggs from the female into a brood pouch on the tail and feed the embryos there. Why the males do the carrying is still unknown.

In 1930s London, wire 'baby cages' were hung outside apartment windows to give infants what?

Fresh air was the goal, because open air was believed to fight tuberculosis in crowded cities. Eleanor Roosevelt fixed a wire box outside a New York window for her baby daughter Anna's naps.

What did Martin Couney exhibit to paying visitors at his Coney Island sideshow, 'The Infantorium'?

Premature babies in incubators were the attraction, at 25 cents a look. Couney is credited with saving more than 6,500 of them at a time when such infants were widely written off as 'weaklings'.

In J. M. Barrie's Peter Pan, what is born whenever a baby laughs for the first time?

A fairy is born from each first laugh in Barrie's story. On stage, Peter begs everyone in the audience who believes in fairies to clap their hands and save Tinker Bell.

In the best-known version of the rhyme 'Monday's Child', the child born on which day is 'full of woe'?

Wednesday is the unlucky day in modern versions, and cartoonist Charles Addams named Wednesday Addams after the line. An 1887 printing gave the woe to Friday's child instead.

Which land animal carries its calf for about 22 months, the longest pregnancy of any mammal?

Elephant pregnancies run to around 22 months, almost two years, and a mother usually waits about four years before giving birth again.

What name is given to a baby kangaroo, which is about the size of a lima bean at birth?

Joey is the word, and the newborn usually stays in its mother's pouch for about nine months. Adult males are known as boomers and females as flyers.

Which animal gives birth to a blind, toothless cub weighing only about 1/800 of the mother's weight?

Giant panda cubs weigh only 90 to 130 grams at birth, proportionally the smallest newborns of any placental mammal.

What is a young swan called, the bird mistaken for an 'ugly duckling' in Hans Christian Andersen's tale?

Cygnet comes through Old French from the Latin cygnus, meaning swan, with a diminutive ending added.

A leveret, born fully furred and with its eyes open, is the young of which animal?

Hare young are born above ground with no burrow to hide in, so they arrive ready to fend for themselves. Rabbits, by contrast, are born blind and hairless.

Which spiny mammal has a baby called a puggle, which sucks milk from pores on its mother's skin?

Echidna mothers lay a single leathery egg into a pouch, and the puggle hatches about ten days later. It stays in the pouch until its spines start to grow.

What is the name for a baby llama, which can stand and walk within an hour of birth?

Cria is also the word for young alpacas, vicuñas and guanacos. Alpaca mothers usually have just one after a pregnancy of 11 to 12 months.

A squab, long eaten as a delicacy from China to Egypt, is the young of which bird?

Pigeon chicks are called squabs, a word that probably comes from a Scandinavian term for loose, fat flesh. They reach adult size in about a month, before they can fly.

What name is given to the fine, soft hair that covers a fetus and is usually shed before birth?

Lanugo is the first hair a fetus grows, appearing at around sixteen weeks. Babies who still have some when they arrive lose it on their own within a few weeks.

Peekaboo delights babies who have not yet grasped which idea, first studied in infants by Jean Piaget?

Object permanence is the understanding that things still exist when out of sight. Piaget tested it by covering a favourite toy with a blanket and watching whether the baby searched for it.

What name is given to bouts of crying in a healthy baby that last over three hours a day?

Colic has no known cause and is equally common in bottle-fed and breastfed babies. It tends to peak at six weeks and fade by three to four months.

Which newborn condition is treated with light therapy, after an English nurse noticed sunlight helped?

Jaundice turns a newborn's skin and eyes yellowish as bilirubin builds up in the blood. Mild cases are generally harmless and clear up on their own.

What was Little Miss Muffet eating as she sat on her tuffet in the nursery rhyme?

Curds and whey are the solids and the liquid left when milk curdles. The tuffet in the verse probably meant a grassy hillock, not the low seat it is often drawn as.

Which nursery rhyme character is usually drawn as an egg, though the verse never actually describes one?

Humpty Dumpty probably began as a riddle whose answer was 'an egg', so the lines never give it away. Lewis Carroll fixed the image in Through the Looking-Glass in 1871.

Which 1990 hit, built on a Queen and David Bowie bassline, was the first hip-hop single to top the Hot 100?

Ice Ice Baby by Vanilla Ice lifted the bassline of 'Under Pressure', whose writers received no credit or royalties until after it had become a hit.

Which Motown group took 'Baby Love' to number one in both America and Britain?

The Supremes made it the second of five consecutive US chart-toppers, and with it became the first Motown act to score more than one American number one.

Which lullaby opens George Gershwin's opera Porgy and Bess, sung by Clara to her baby?

Summertime sets words by DuBose Heyward, who wrote the novel behind the opera. In the last act Bess sings it to the same baby, orphaned after a storm kills both parents.

Which birth attendant's title comes from Middle English words meaning 'with woman'?

Midwife joins mid, meaning 'with', and wif, meaning 'woman': the person who stays with a mother while she gives birth. The 'wife' in the word is the helper, not the mother.

What word for a newborn's set of clothes and accessories comes from a term for a small box?

Layette once meant a small box or coffer. In the 1920s, expectant mothers and their relatives often knitted a matching set of blanket, hat, sweater and booties.

Which 1990s legal series featured the 'Dancing Baby', an early internet sensation, in its fantasy scenes?

Ally McBeal borrowed the 3D-animated infant after it had spread online as one of the first viral videos in 1996. A popular version set it dancing to 'Hooked on a Feeling'.

Which 1990s puppet sitcom starred Baby Sinclair, who loved hitting his father Earl with a frying pan?

Dinosaurs grew from an idea Jim Henson had in 1988 for a sitcom about a prehistoric family. It reached ABC in 1991, the year after his death.

Which Stevie Wonder song opens with the sounds of a newborn and celebrates the birth of his daughter Aisha?

Isn't She Lovely appears on Songs in the Key of Life, and its closing section mixes in a recording of Wonder bathing Aisha as a toddler.

Which candy bar, launched in 1921, did its maker claim was named after President Grover Cleveland's daughter?

Baby Ruth arrived just as Babe Ruth's fame was rising, and 17 years after Ruth Cleveland had died. Many saw the official story as a way to avoid paying the slugger royalties.

Which snack vegetable did farmer Mike Yurosek create in 1986 by cutting down misshapen full-size ones?

Baby carrots sold in bags are really two-inch sections of large carrots, scraped down and rounded at the ends. Yurosek's idea was meant to reduce food waste.

Into what did 18-month-old Jessica McClure fall in 1987, prompting a 58-hour rescue shown live on US television?

A well in her aunt's backyard in Midland, Texas, trapped the toddler about 22 feet down. Rescuers had to drill a parallel shaft through rock to bring 'Baby Jessica' out.

At Japan's Naki Sumo festival, wrestlers hold babies in the ring and compete to make them do what?

Cry first and the baby is usually named the winner. The 400-year-old custom rests on the belief that a loud wail wards off evil spirits, and on a proverb meaning 'crying babies grow fastest'.

Virginia Dare, the first child born in the New World to English parents, arrived in 1587 at which colony?

Roanoke, in what is now North Carolina, did not endure: its settlers vanished, and nothing more is known of Virginia's life. Dare County is named in her honor.

Which country's Esperanza Base was the 1978 birthplace of Emilio Palma, the first person born in Antarctica?

Argentina airlifted his mother to the base when she was seven months pregnant, and his father led the army detachment there. Guinness lists him as the first person born on the continent.

Which reflex, normal in babies but a warning sign in adults, makes the big toe rise when the sole is stroked?

Babinski is the name, after neurologist Joseph Babinski, who described the response in 1896. The upturned toe has been spotted in a Botticelli Virgin and Child painted in the 15th century.

Sailors once prized which rare membrane, found covering a newborn's head, as a charm against drowning?

Caul births happen in fewer than 1 in 80,000 deliveries, and the harmless membrane is simply lifted away. Folklore held that owning one brought good luck.

Newborns cannot shiver effectively, so which heat-producing tissue, about 5% of body mass, keeps them warm?

Brown fat burns energy to make heat with no shivering needed, and in newborns it lies along the upper spine and toward the shoulders. Hibernating mammals are rich in it too.

Which animal behaviour pioneer argued that 'baby schema' features like big eyes make adults want to nurture?

Konrad Lorenz called the pattern Kindchenschema and saw it as an evolutionary adaptation: infant-like looks release caregiving in adults, which helps ensure the young are looked after.

Which boy's name topped America's baby name charts every year but one from 1954 to 1998?

Michael slipped to second only in 1960, when David edged ahead. Jacob finally ended the run in 1999 and stayed on top until 2012.

In which country did parents protest a naming-law fine by giving their son a 43-character name?

Sweden's courts rejected Brfxxccxxmnpcccclllmmnprxvclmnckssqlbb11116, supposedly pronounced 'Albin', and upheld the 5,000-kronor fine. The parents called the name an artistic creation.

Which Nordic country's maternity package, issued since 1938, is known abroad as the 'baby box'?

Finland first gave the package only to low-income parents, then to every expectant mother from 1949. A 2013 BBC story brought the box international attention.

In Roman legend, which animal suckled Romulus and Remus after the infants were abandoned by the Tiber?

A she-wolf nursed the twins in a cave later known as the Lupercal, and the image has been a symbol of Rome since at least the 3rd century BC.

Which Greek hero, while still a baby, strangled two snakes that a goddess sent into his nursery?

Heracles grabbed a snake in each hand and throttled them, while his twin brother Iphicles cried in fear. Hera had sent the serpents.

In Britain, 'wetting the baby's head' traditionally means a new father marking the birth by doing what?

Having a few drinks with a group of friends is the tradition, often at a local pub. A similar gathering for American fathers-to-be is known as a diaper party.

What Italian name is given to the chubby, often winged infants of Renaissance art, revived by Donatello?

Putti are often called cherubs, although in traditional theology a cherub is one of the most senior angels. The figure had vanished in the Middle Ages before Donatello brought it back in the 1420s.

In northern India a baby shower is called 'godh bharai', a name that literally means filling what?

The lap gives the ceremony its name across most of northern and central India. In the Punjab region the event is also known as rīt.

What name is given to a young eel, which was once sold fried as a cheap dish in Britain?

Elver is thought to be a corruption of 'eel fare', the old name for the spring run of young eels up the Thames.

What is the medical name for 'milk spots', the tiny keratin-filled cysts common on newborn babies' faces?

Milia need no treatment: in children they often disappear by themselves within two to four weeks. They can also turn up on the roof of the mouth.