What can my baby see at 2 months
Baby Development: Your 2-Month Old
Written by Stephanie Watson
In this Article
- Second Month Baby Milestones: Motor Skills
- Second Month Baby Milestones: Sleep
- Second Month Baby Milestones: Eating
- Second Month Baby Milestones: The Senses
- Second Month Baby Milestones: Communication
- Tips For Your Baby’s Second Month
You've gotten past the newborn phase, and now, in the second month, you’re starting to get a sense of your baby’s personality. You’re also learning what makes your 2-month-old tick -- from likes and dislikes, to crying triggers, which are pretty basic at this point: hunger, sleepiness, and dirty diapers.
This portion of WebMD’s month-by-month guide describes a few of the baby milestones you can expect your child to reach at two months.
Second Month Baby Milestones: Motor Skills
Two-month-old babies are gaining more control over their bodies. That means they can hold their head a little steadier while lying on their tummies or being supported upright.
In the second month of life, babies continue to have a strong sucking reflex. You may notice your baby likes to suck on a fist or a few fingers. This is one of the best ways babies have of comforting themselves.
At 2 months, your baby doesn’t yet have the coordination to play with toys. But she may bat at a colorful object hanging in front of her. Your baby may even briefly hold a toy that you place in one of her hands.
Second Month Baby Milestones: Sleep
Your baby’s sleep patterns are evolving, but at two months, they still aren’t fully established. At this age, babies sleep 15 to 16 hours a day. But those hours are sporadic, and they usually aren’t ready to sleep through the night. This is especially true for breastfed babies, who generally wake up to eat every three hours or so.
Hang in there for just a few more weeks and you’ll be able to get some much-needed rest. You may even be able to get to a full night’s sleep earlier by helping your baby learn how to fall asleep on her own.
Do this by putting your baby into the crib when she’s drowsy rather than fast asleep. She can sleep in your room with you, but it’s not recommended that you have her in your bed.
All babies need to be put to sleep on their backs on firm, flat surface to reduce the risk of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS). You can provide plenty of tummy time when your baby is awake and supervised. Also, remove all soft objects from Baby’s crib, including pillows, blankets, stuffed animals, and soft bumpers.
Second Month Baby Milestones: Eating
At 2 months, your baby should be taking around 4 ounces at each feeding, and both breast and bottle feedings should be at least every 3 to 4 hours during the day with longer stretches at night. If your baby is having problems gaining weight, your pediatrician will probably advise not to go too long without feeding, even if it means waking your baby.
Expect at least 4 to 6 wet diapers a day. The frequency of poopy diapers may range from a few each day to once every few days.
If you’re breastfeeding, your baby’s stools should be soft and slightly runny. If you’re formula-feeding, your baby’s stools will probably be a little firmer, but should not be hard or formed. The color can also vary but should never be red, white, or black.
Breastfed infants should be getting vitamin D supplements starting soon after birth, but other supplements, water, juice, and solid foods usually aren't necessary. Your pediatrician will recommend what’s best for you and your baby.
Second Month Baby Milestones: The Senses
At two months, babies can see objects -- and people -- from up to 18 inches away. That means you still need to get pretty close, but your baby will be able to see your face pretty well while feeding. She should also be able to follow movements when you walk close by.
Baby’s hearing is improving, too. Your 2-month-old will especially enjoy listening to the sound of your voice.
Second Month Baby Milestones: Communication
For a 2-month-old, most communication consists of crying.
But you may hear a few gurgles, grunts, and even some sweet coos. Your baby should recognize your face and voice, and respond to them. You might even see the first adorable hint of a smile.
One of the most important things you can do at this age is talk to your baby. Even though 2-month-old babies can’t talk back, they will respond to the sound of your voice, and it will encourage them to start forming their own first words in the coming months.
Tips For Your Baby’s Second Month
- The first few months of a baby’s life are exciting and nerve-wracking for new parents. Don’t be afraid to ask for advice when you need it. Your pediatrician is the best source for information, but family and friends are good back-ups.
Information on WebMD and many other websites are regularly reviewed by experts to ensure that the information is reliable. However, the internet is also a place where there is a lot of misinformation. Be sure you know the source of medical and other information you read online.
- Parents today are always on the go. As a result, babies spend a lot of time in car seats and carriers. Babies should have the chance to move around in different positions during the day so they can use the muscles they’ll need for rolling, crawling, and eventually walking. Alternate the carrier with periods of tummy time, stroller walks, and plenty of cuddles in your arms. Babies should not routinely sleep in carriers, car seats, or bouncy seats.
- Touch is very important during baby’s first months. Try some skin-to-skin contact. Some experts recommend baby massage, but just holding or rocking her is enough.
- When your infant cries, try different soothing techniques. Some babies respond to soft music or singing. Others are calmed by ''white noise'' (for example, running the vacuum cleaner or placing the radio dial between stations). If you haven’t already done so, try introducing a pacifier. They are soothing and have also been found to help prevent SIDS. Experiment to find what works best for your 2-month-old.
Your Baby's Hearing, Vision, and Other Senses: 2 Months (for Parents)
Every minute that they're awake awake, babies take in the sights, sounds, smells, and feel of the world around them. Although it may take a while to grasp what all this information means, your baby can still find joy and comfort in the familiar faces, voices, and sensations of everyday life.
What Can My Baby See?
Babies are born very nearsighted, meaning that they see best at close distances. But by the end of 3 months, they can follow a moving object, are more interested in shapes and patterns, and can spot familiar faces, even at a distance. Human faces are one of their favorite things to look at, especially their own or a parent's face. Install a baby-safe crib mirror at your baby's eye level and see how your baby watches himself or herself.
Your baby's color vision is also developing, so brightly colored wall hangings or toys will help develop your little one's ability to distinguish color.
Soft pastel colors, though, are hard for a baby to appreciate — something to keep in mind when buying toys and books.
By this month or next month, your baby's eye coordination will have improved enough to follow a moving object. By 3 months, he or she may start to reach for and swipe at objects — the beginning of hand-eye coordination.
Your baby will enjoy looking out from the stroller or baby carrier as you walk the neighborhood or the mall. Point out the sights, letting your baby linger over whatever catches his or her eye. Remember, the whole world is your baby's classroom and there's so much to see.
What Can My Baby Hear?
Your baby has been hearing sounds since way back in the womb. Mother's heartbeat, the gurgles of her digestive system, and even the sounds of her voice and the voices of other family members are part of a baby's world before birth. Once your baby is born, the sounds of the outside world come in loud and clear.
Your baby loves to hear your voice, so talk, babble, sing, and coo away.
Take special advantage of your baby's own "talking" to have a "conversation." If you hear your baby make a sound, repeat it and wait for him or her to make another. You are teaching your baby valuable lessons about tone, pacing, and taking turns when talking to someone else.
Babies this age seem to respond best to a higher-pitched voice, which is why most people naturally raise the pitch of their voices and exaggerate their speech when talking to a baby. This is fine — studies have shown that "baby talk" doesn't delay speech development. In fact, responding to your baby encourages speech. Feel free to mix in some regular adult words and tone with the baby talk. It may seem early, but you're setting the stage for your baby's first words.
Besides voices, your baby will probably enjoy listening to music (play a variety of styles) and may be fascinated by the routine sounds of life as well. Keep your baby nearby as you rattle pans while making dinner, and let him or her sit in a baby seat within earshot of older siblings laughing and playing.
Baby rattles and musical mobiles are other good ways to stimulate your baby's hearing.
Your baby probably had a hearing screening before being released from the hospital (most states require this). If not, or if your baby was born at home or a birthing center, it's important to have a hearing screening as soon as possible. Most children who are born with a hearing loss can be diagnosed through a hearing screening.
What Can My Baby Taste and Smell?
Your baby can taste and smell and will favor sweet tastes over bitter ones. For example, a baby will choose to suck on a bottle of sweetened water, but will turn away or cry if given something bitter or sour to taste. Likewise, babies will turn toward smells they favor and turn away from bad odors.
Though sweetness is preferred, taste preferences will continue to develop during the first year. In fact, studies show that a mother's diet can affect the way her breast milk tastes. These first flavors can help shape flavor preferences later on.
For example, a mother who ate spicy foods while nursing is likely to have a child who grows up to favor spicy foods.
For now, breast milk or formula will fully satisfy your baby.
Why Is Touch Important?
It won't be long before your baby will be reaching out and touching everything. But now, your baby depends on you to provide touch. Babies know they're loved and cared for when they're held, hugged, and kissed.
Make it fun, too. Your baby will respond joyfully to a game of "This Little Piggy" as you touch your baby's toes or fingers. Introduce different textures and temperatures: the softness of a feather, the hardness of a wooden block, the cool feel of a window in winter. When babies feel the world around them, they learn about life.
If You're Worried
If you want a little reassurance that your baby's senses are working well, you can do some unscientific testing for yourself.
For example, if you're worried about your baby's vision, notice if your baby watches your face closely.
Does your baby follow moving objects? Your baby may appear cross-eyed when trying to look at something that is close. This is normal in the first few months. Let your doctor know if your child's eyes turn in or out.
If you're worried about your baby's hearing, ask yourself these questions:
- Does the baby startle at an unexpected sound?
- Does the baby respond to the sound of my voice, even if he or she cannot see me? (Your baby's response might be to turn toward your voice, stop crying, smile, or get excited and move his or her arms and legs.)
- Does the baby respond to music and other sounds in your environment?
If you're still worried about your little one's hearing or eyesight, talk to your doctor. The earlier problems with seeing and hearing are found, the better they can be treated.
The vision of a newborn child
Newborn children see in a completely different way than adults. FROM as the child grows, his visual system also develops, for the final it takes about 8 months to form.
Eyes the child is able to see immediately after birth, but his brain, which processes and forms visual images until it is able to correctly decrypt information. The child grows, his brain develops, and at the same time and visual abilities. How does this happen?
1 month. At that age the child's eyes cannot move in concert. The pupils often converge on bridge of the nose, but parents should not panic that this is strabismus. Already to at the end of 1 month of life, the baby learns to fix his gaze on the interesting object.
2 months. Starts actively develop color vision. Shades are faintly distinguishable, but good perceived contrasting colors. Children of this age love bright toys and keep a good eye on them.
4 months. Appears spatial perception, the child begins to understand that objects have different shapes and can be located at different distances from it. Coordination the movements of the newborn are being improved, now he can easily pick up, subject of interest to him.
5 months. Improving color perception, the child is able to see the difference in shades, even in small sized items.
8 months. Visual the abilities of a toddler of this age are indistinguishable from those of an adult person. By 8 months, as a rule, the final color of the rainbow is also formed. shells of the eyes, however, this process can be delayed up to 3 years.
Parents are advised to be attentive to visual abilities of your child and, in case of developmental disabilities, show him ophthalmologist. What to focus on:
· At 3-4 months, the baby is not able to follow the eyes behind moving objects.
· The eyes are inactive in both directions.
· The look is constantly running, the baby cannot fix it at one point.
· Eyes roll.
· The child is older than 1 month, and he continues strabismus persist.
· Frequent tearing.
· Fear of bright light.
· The pupil is white.
Watch your health the eye of a child from birth.
How a newborn baby changes - articles from the specialists of the clinic "Mother and Child"
Babin Evgeny Alexandrovich
Pediatric surgeon, Orthopedic traumatologist, Pediatric orthopedic surgeon
Mother and Child Clinic South-West, Mother and Child Clinic Kuntsevo,
The baby was born, and we expect him to look like beautiful and pink babies from advertising pictures. And he is some kind of red, then suddenly turned yellow, on the skin or a rash, or peeling. In addition, the weight is still unstable, the chair is incomprehensible - is the child healthy? Healthy, and all these changes are the so-called transient (transitional) states. Where do they come from, what do they look like and what to do with it all?
The child sat in the mother's stomach for nine months, swam in the water and received oxygen through the placenta.
As soon as the baby was born, his world immediately became different: instead of water around him, air, the ambient temperature dropped from 36.6-37 ° C to 22-25 ° C, plus gravity, sounds, smells, bright light. And now you have to breathe (lungs) yourself, eat differently, and then also remove metabolic products. And just like that, it is not easy for a newborn to immediately switch from one lifestyle to another, it takes time. That is why, from the point of view of physiology, in the first month of life, “something happens all the time” with children, and much more often and brighter than in later life. These are the transitory (transitional, boundary) states. All of them surprise and even frighten young parents, especially since transition states appear and disappear very quickly. But for newborns, they are completely natural. What moms and dads see most often are transitional states of skin, stool, weight, plus or minus a couple more conditions.
How the skin changes
The child was born, and we see that he is all sort of bluish-purple, and then his skin color immediately turns red.
On the second day after birth, the baby "blushes" the brightest. Doctors call this redness "erythema simple" and it appears due to the fact that the skin adapts to a new environment. Then the child's skin turns pale and by the end of the first week of life it becomes the pale pink color we are used to.
But that's not all. On the third or fifth day of life, the baby's skin may begin to peel off, especially on the abdomen and chest. What's this? Does the child lack vitamins, something with nutrition, is the air too dry in the house? No, this is also a transitional state - physiological peeling, and it is also associated with the fact that the skin is adapting to a new life. The skin flakes for about a week, and then everything goes away. You don't need to do anything with it. Of course, you can treat the skin with various softening lotions and creams, but there will be no significant effect from them. Very soon, the baby's skin will become smooth and soft on its own.
Most of all, parents are afraid of a rash on the baby's skin, which does not often, but sometimes still appears in the first week of life.
This is the so-called toxic erythema - spots with grayish-yellow seals in the center. The rash is most often located on the extensor surfaces of the arms and legs around the joints, on the chest. Less often, such spots can be on the whole body (except for the palms, feet and mucous membranes). “Maybe it’s chickenpox, rubella, or some other disease?” parents are afraid. No, this is a kind of reaction of the skin of a newly born baby to its environment, especially to hypothermia, overheating, contact with clothes, food. Within one to three days, new spots may appear, but more often two or three days after the onset, they all disappear without a trace. At the same time, the child’s well-being is not disturbed, the body temperature is normal and he does not need any medication. The only thing is that you need to take care of the bubbles on the skin: for example, gently blot them after bathing. And you also need to make sure that the bubbles do not rub and they do not burst (otherwise an infection may join them).
Physiological jaundice
The changes that are visible on the skin do not end there. Very often (in 60-70% of children) on the second or third day of life, the skin turns yellow, the maximum of yellowness occurs on the third or fourth day, and by the end of the first week it disappears. This is how physiological jaundice of a newborn is manifested - a condition in which the amount of bile pigment, bilirubin, increases in a child. In some children, jaundice is similar to a light tan (parents may not notice it), while in others, the skin will turn bright yellow. Very quickly, the level of bilirubin returns to normal and the skin color becomes normal again. If jaundice is mild and passes quickly, then no additional treatment is needed. But if jaundice does not disappear or the skin color is intense yellow, you should consult a doctor.
Weight loss
Do you think the baby will immediately be born well-fed, with folds and cute roundness? No, right after birth, this is still far away.
In the first days of life, an already not too well-fed newborn will lose even more weight. Such weight loss is a natural process, the so-called physiological weight loss. Weight decreases because immediately after birth, the baby loses part of the water through the skin, its umbilical cord dries out, meconium (the first feces) and urine are excreted, and also because the baby still eats a small amount of milk. Maximum weight loss usually occurs by the third or fifth day and is normally no more than 6-8% of birth weight. At this time, mother and baby are usually discharged from the hospital, but there is no need to worry. By the seventh or tenth day of life, a healthy baby will restore its previous parameters.
chair changes
On the first or second day, all newborns pass the original stool (meconium): it is thick, viscous and dark green in color. Time passes, the baby begins to receive colostrum, and on the third or fourth day of life, a transitional stool appears. Now areas of dark green color alternate with greenish and yellow ones, and some lumps, mucus are also visible in the stool.
It all looks like some kind of intestinal disorder, but it's not. It's just that the gastrointestinal tract is moving to a new job, now it's ready to digest food. By the end of the first week of life, the stool in most children is yellow, similar to gruel, and it will continue to be so.
Warm-cold
A typical fear of all grandmothers is that the child is freezing! Yes, indeed, in newborns, the body temperature regulation processes are still imperfect, so babies easily cool down, but they also overheat just as easily. For example, if a newborn is dressed too warmly or placed next to a heating battery, he will quickly overheat, even if this is the usual temperature in the room. At the same time, the child easily loses heat when he is undressed for a long time or he lies in wet clothes. Therefore, in the room where there is a newborn, the air temperature should be adequate - 20-22 ° C. And if she rises higher, and the child is warmly dressed, then this will also not be good.
Sometimes, very rarely (in 1% of newborns), body temperature on the third or fifth day may temporarily rise to 38–39 °C. There are no other symptoms of the disease, the body temperature quickly returns to normal, but the parents have time to get scared. It’s difficult to figure out what it is - temporary hyperthermia or still a disease - it’s difficult, so it’s better to call a doctor.
Hormonal crisis
An uncommon occurrence, but it also occurs occasionally. In some children, on the third or fourth day of life, the mammary glands become engorged (in both girls and boys). They increase as much as possible by the seventh or eighth day, and liquid discharge may even appear from them. Some girls have very little bloody discharge from the vagina for a very short time. This is the so-called hormonal crisis - it occurs due to the action of maternal hormones - estrogens (they penetrate through the placenta during childbirth). At the peak of estrogen action, the signs of a hormonal crisis are maximum, then the hormones are removed from the body and the symptoms gradually disappear.
Therefore, you don’t need to apply a cabbage leaf to your chest, make compresses with camphor or something else: everything will pass by itself.
Usually, all these transitional states are pronounced in the first week of life, less often, but it happens that they drag on for up to three to four weeks. One more thing - it is not necessary that the child will show all transitional states, but almost everyone has physiological weight loss and transitional stools. And many of the transitional states are completely invisible to parents, but they also exist, they can simply be identified only by laboratory methods.
So we are not in a hurry to be frightened, noticing that the child’s skin suddenly began to peel off or he turned slightly yellow. We remember that he must adapt to a new life, that in the first time after birth, the baby has the right to some changes. Especially if, with all this, the baby is cheerful, calm and eats well. Well, if you are still somehow anxious, ask your pediatrician questions.
He will definitely be able to put everything in its place.
Inset
The maximum weight loss in a newborn usually occurs by the third or fifth day and normally amounts to no more than 6-8% of body weight at birth.
From the point of view of physiology, in the first month of life, “something happens all the time” with children, and much more often and brighter than in later life. These are the transitory (transitional, boundary) states.
In infants, the body temperature regulation processes are still imperfect, so they easily become overcooled and overheated. In this regard, in the room where there is a newborn, the air temperature should be about - 20–22 ° C.
Physiological jaundice of the newborn:
- occurs on the 2-3rd day of the baby's life, reaches a maximum on the 4-5th day, and disappears by the 10th day;
- the general condition of the child does not suffer;
- the level of bilirubin in the blood does not exceed 180 µmol/l.
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