Development calendar: 1st month

• Baby’s reflexes: searching, sucking, clinging
• Carrying trains motor skills

Searching for the breast, holding your fingers, recognizing your voice: it’s hard to believe what your baby can do shortly after birth!

Even if your baby has just been born, she can already look back on life experiences in mom’s womb. There she noticed a lot: your heartbeat, the stomach noises, the pulsation of the artery. She could make out the difference from these tones and external noises as voices, for example.

Your baby already knows you at birth, your voice sounds familiar. Other known voices or soft music that she may have heard it in the womb can have a calming effect on the baby.

Baby’s reflexes: searching, sucking, clinging

Many new stimulations flood it after birth of your baby. All the new smells, voices and temperatures. Since all this is quite exhausting, your baby sometimes sleeps up to 20 hours a day at first, often spread over seven or eight sleeping periods. If your baby is hungry, she may move her head in search of something.

If you rub her cheek, she may turn towards the touch. Once it has found the nipple, she sucks it. Search and sucking reflexes help her to feed from your breast or from the bottle.

Babies can also grab things pretty hard: If you put your finger in her tiny hand, she will clasp it tightly. And the toes curl up when you touch the sole of her foot. Your Baby’s gripping reflex is responsible for this.

Carrying trains motor skills

Eye contact plays a major role in communicating with your baby. By catching her eye you can communicate with her.

Shortly after birth, her surroundings are more blurred. She can see clearly at a distance of 10 to 20 inches.

Another funny reaction is that some babies have, is if you stick your tongue out at them, they may imitate you. This shows that newborns already have the ability to imitate certain facial expressions.

Please be careful with your child’s neck. The muscles are still too weak to hold up their heavy head. You should therefore always support the head to prevent it from jerking backwards.

You will also help her to orientate herself. It’s important if you carry your baby in your arms or in a sling a lot from the start, talk to her and touch her. It calms and encourages her at the same time.

Find the second month here