A mom and dad were understandably shocked when their 3-day-old baby girl started crawling and pulling her head up before they even left the hospital. The mom, Samantha Mitchell, captured it on video and shared her daughter’s seemingly incredible feat in a TikTok that has now gone viral. Mitchell’s video of her daughter Nyilah Daise has been viewed more than 52 million times and received more than 70,000 comments, with TikTok users just as impressed as the baby's parents.
Mom and grandma can be heard gasping in the background of the video saying, “No way! No freaking way!” Honestly, who can blame them? The average age of crawling and pulling up is usually between 7 and 10 months old, according to Medical News Today, so this newborn seems pretty advanced.
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Mom and grandma recorded baby pulling up at 3 days old because they knew no one would believe them.
Mitchell, 34, said she has been caring for babies for more than 20 years and has never before seen anything like what her daughter did.
“I’ve babysat most of my life and have over 20 years’ experience with children and I’ve never seen anything like this before. I guess I’ve never been around many babies at three days old so there are a lot of nuisances in it but I have never seen a baby like this ever," she said, per the New York Post.
The mother added that she knew no one, including her fiancé, would believe her if it wasn’t captured on video.
“My mother was the only other person in the room when it happened and she told me to record it. No one would have believed me otherwise. My fiancé wasn’t in the room and I know if I didn’t get it on film, he would not have believed me,” Mitchell said, according to the news outlet.
Now, the baby is trying to stand at only 3 months.
Mitchell’s fiancé, Ofer Tzabari, admitted that he thought their daughter’s behavior was normal for a newborn until people told him it was actually far from the case.
“For me, it was the first time I’ve been with a newborn and I thought her actions were normal until people began to tell me they weren’t. I thought this was how babies were but actually her actions aren’t average for a baby of her age,” Tzabari said, per the Post.
Nyilah Daise is now about 3 months old and reportedly trying to stand and talk, according to her parents. “Without a doubt, she will start walking soon. She stands at the moment. She puts so much weight on her legs," Mitchell shared via the Post. "We’re not trying to make her stand. She just refuses to buckle her knees and sit down. Sometimes I laugh and just think I wish she could be a baby.”
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A doctor responded to the viral TikTok and explained how the 3-day-old baby was able to do this.
Dr. Karan Raj who goes by @dr.karanr on the social media app, created a response video explaining how 3-day-old Nyilah Daise was able to pull up and crawl.
It’s apparently a reflex all babies have to reach their food source, but because babies are usually swaddled, not everyone gets to see it. "What this baby is doing is very normal. Tiny humans are pre-programmed with certain software updates for survival," he said. "One of these inbuilt features is the crawling reflex or the breast crawl."
Raj explained further. "Basically, this baby is hungry and is hunting for a free boob. In fact, if you put a baby on a mother's tummy, it will crawl toward the source of milk like a homing beacon and latch onto the breast. That's dedication."
Mitchell also pointed out in her video that her baby was born three weeks late, at 43 weeks. Longer gestation time has been linked to advanced brain development in some babies, according to the National Library of Medicine.
TikTok users were in awe of how advanced the baby is for her age.
Many TikTok users joked about how advanced the baby girl is, saying she had been "here before" and pointing out that babies born post-2020 are just "different."
As one person commented, "She’s like, 'Look I’ve already been here before'. In my former life I was a lawyer and I have court.”
“She’s one smart baby," someone else wrote. "Go girl. She said, ‘I am woman hear me roar.'”
“Pandemic babies just built different,” commented another person.
“Babies born after 2020 are definitely built different,” someone else agreed.
Still others pointed out that perhaps she was simply preparing for another sibling.
“my baby was doing stuff like this in the hospital. The pediatrician said 'he's moving out the way for another one' a month later I was pregnant,” someone else chimed in.
