Baby Dolls

WEEK

23

Usually, when you think of babies, you have a certain size in mind. That size corresponds to a pudgy pink cherub about 20-some inches long, weighing about 7 or 8 pounds.

Try to imagine what a baby would look like at one pound and only 11 inches long. It's hard. That's because you've likely never seen anyone that small before. BabyCenter provides lots of vegetable comparisons, but these are not overly helpful, mainly because babies don't really look like yams, etc.

The book Your Pregnancy Week By Week (YPWBW) came up with a perfect comparison. As of today, the baby is the size of a baby doll.

I never played much with baby dolls, but I've seen them around. You see, dolls are like miniature people, and baby dolls are like miniature babies. You can make doll versions of almost anything, and they'll be smaller. Imagine a Hulk Hogan doll. It's still Hulkamania, but it's cute.

While we're on the subject of The Hulk, I wanted to say one more thing about baby size.

The average newborn is about 20 inches long and just over 7 pounds. That means that I was enormous. I was about the length of a 2- or 3-month-old baby. It's a good thing I was skinny, or I would have weighed 10 or 11 pounds. My mom says that I was born 2 weeks after my due date, but she suspects that it might have been longer than that -- that they calculated the date incorrectly.

R was the model newborn. She was born on her due date and she was 7 pounds - 5 ounces and 20 inches long. Look at the cute picture:

Isn't she a doll?

She doesn't look much like The Hulkster, though.