Baby

Not much is known about the care of infants in the time of the Bible.

In Ezekiel 16:4 a number of things are mentioned that were probably very usual after the birth of a baby: the umbilical cord is cut, a child is washed and rubbed with salt and wrapped in swaddling clothes.
Why babies were rubbed with salt is unknown. Perhaps it was to protect the child against demons, or perhaps it was another way of cleaning the child.

According to Leviticus 12, a woman was unclean after the birth of a boy for a total of 40 days. After the birth of a girl, she was unclean for 80 days. No reason is given for this difference.
On the eighth day after their birth, boys were circumcised. Circumcision of girls is not mentioned in the Bible.

In 2 Maccabees 7:27, a mother tells her son that she carried him in her womb for nine months and nursed him for three years.
This information can be found in other Bible books as well, for example in 1 Samuel 1:24, where we learn that Hannah brought her son Samuel to the Temple in Shiloh once he was weaned, which could have been around his third birthday.

In the period between the sixth century BC and the first century AD, child mortality was around 30 percent (of all children up to 18 years of age). The total life expectancy was between 30 and 45 years.
Graveyards have been found in Nubia, in the south of Egypt, where no less than 45 percent of the graves found there were for persons under 12 years old.