4439891Growing Up — Growing to Be a BabyKarl de Schweinitz
Growing to Be a Baby

Chapter I
Growing to Be a Baby

When you came into the world you were a baby, but you had not always been a baby. Before you could be born you had first to grow to be a baby.

That meant a great deal of growing, for when you began your life you were much smaller than you were on the day on which you were born. You were so small that you could hardly have been seen. You were smaller than the tiniest dot that you can make with the sharpest pencil you can find. You were smaller than the little specks that dance in a sunbeam where it comes through the window. You were so small that you did not even seem to be a baby, and you really weren't a baby. You were almost as round as a ball and you looked more like a little egg than like anything else; and that is exactly what you were—a tiny, little egg.

It was from this little egg that you grew to be a baby. That is how we all start living. The tallest and biggest man you know began his life as a tiny egg. Your parents and your grandparents and the rest of the people on the earth started growing in this way, and so did you. You came into the world as a baby but before you were born you grew to be a baby from a tiny, little egg.

Drawing by Eleanor M. Paxson.
The little white spot on this page is ten times larger than the egg from which you started growing.