In 2020, Colgate Mattress® is celebrating our 65th anniversary as the most trusted crib mattress name for new moms. To commemorate this achievement and company milestone, we thought we would share some fun facts about how far babies have come since Colgate Mattress was founded in 1955, along with more facts about babies that you probably didn’t know!

Fun Baby Facts from 1955

• The average number of babies per woman of child-bearing age was 5, and now it is 2! 
• The average stay in a hospital to give birth was 4 days, and now it is around 2 days.
• The most popular boy name was Michael and the most popular girl name was Mary.
• In 1955, female babies weighed, on average, 120 grams less at birth than male babies.
• The heaviest baby ever born was a boy, who weighed 22 pounds, eight ounces – ouch! He was born in Italy in 1955. 
• Babies born in 1955 are part of the “baby boomers” generation, a strong post-war economy when Americans felt confident they would be able to support larger families.

Fun Family Facts from 1995

• The average cost of a new house was $10,950, while the average cost of a gallon of gas was 23 cents.
• Disney released box-office classic, The Lady and the Tramp, to theatres. 
• The Disneyland resort and theme park, located in Anaheim, California, opened its doors.
• The TV Remote Control and Microwave Oven were introduced to families.
• McDonald’s advertised 15-cent hamburgers, 19-cent cheeseburgers, and 10-cent french fries and sodas.
• The original Mickey Mouse Club television program made its debut on ABC.

25 Fun Baby Facts You Never Knew

1. Every two seconds, somewhere in the world, a baby is born. 
2. A baby has 300 separate bones at birth but by adulthood, we have only 206. Why? Because some bones, like the skull, fuse together later.
3. A newborn baby’s head accounts for about one-quarter of its entire weight. 
4. Babies are born without kneecaps. However, babies and toddlers, weight for weight, are stronger than an ox, particularly their legs. 
5. At one year old, a baby will have a foot half the size of their adult size. 
6. A child doesn’t grow while they have a common cold. 
7. By the time of birth, a baby’s brain is made up of more than 10 million nerve cells. It’s downhill from here! 
8. A newborn baby will double its weight by six months and triple it by the end of the first year. If it carried on at that rate, it would weigh more than a thousand pounds by the time it was five. 
9. The average toddler takes 176 steps a minute…except at bedtime! 
10. It’s well known that a fetus in the womb can hear, but tests have shown that fetuses respond to sounds just as vigorously as they respond to pressures and internal sensations. 
11. The largest number of children born to one woman is 69, as recorded in Russia during the 1700s. 
12. Your baby shares their birthday with at least 9 million other people in the world. 
13. Babies are born with very poor vision but recognize their mothers almost right away. 
14. By the end of age two, the average baby has been changed 7,300 times.  
15. Excluding medical costs, new parents in the U.S. typically spend $7,000 in a baby’s first year on everything from diapers to formula to daycare. 
16. Children laugh on average 300 times a day, adults only 60. Why that was so hilarious probably only a five-year-old really knows. 
17. Babies don’t suffer from bad breath because they have no teeth, which collects bacteria. 
18. Most babies recognize their mothers’ voices when they are born, but take around 14 days to learn to recognize their father’s voice. 
19. Young babies don’t sweat because their sweat glands are not fully developed. 
20. A newborn baby focuses best at objects that are 10 inches from its nose – that’s roughly the distance from its mother’s breast to her eyes. 
21. A baby’s strongest sense is smell and they can recognize their mothers by scent alone. 
22. Most newborns cry without tears until they are three to six weeks old. 
23. A new baby usually deprives each of its parents around 350-400 hours of sleep in the first year. That is one entire night’s sleep per week, per parent! 
24. The first child ever born in Antarctica was born in 1978. 
25. In 1914, President Woodrow Wilson signed the orders that made Mother’s Day a national holiday!

Fact Sources: 

https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/

https://www.cdc.gov/

https://www.parentingscience.com/

http://www.thepeoplehistory.com/

https://www.wikipedia.org/

https://www.babyboomers.com/

https://www.who.int/