When Your Baby is 2 Months Old

As you step into month two, your expectations of some more wonderful experiences will come true as your baby learns and develops on a daily basis. Let us look at some of these milestones in detail.

a) The first real smiles

All the hard work put in by you over the last month bear fruit in the form of a wonderful toothless smile that you receive from your baby. Indeed, this one is something all parents will never forget and will forever cherish as one of life’s most wonderful and fascinating moment. You feel so gratified that there is recognition from your baby and there is a sense of exhilaration that all those efforts spent in taking care and looking after your baby by changing the nappies, bathing, feeding and smothering him with your affection have borne fruit. That first smile suddenly makes things look so different and even if you have had the most difficult night, you do not mind anything at all.

To quote an example, for somebody like Rob, the emotion was over powering. He had just had a horrible day at work and nothing had gone right for him. His boss had given him a mouthful and he was generally pretty downcast. To make matters worse, he ran into one of the worst traffic jams on the way back to his house and having passed a week of sleepless nights, he was really on the edge. He got to his house and that was when he saw his six week baby give him that first smile. The tipping point was crossed. All the pent up emotions that had been building up steadily could no longer be contained and they exploded in a gush of tears. He forgot everything and in that one moment of sheer ecstasy, nothing mattered to him. The realization that his dear one was acknowledging his presence through that smile put everything in perspective and he felt on top of the world.

b) A growing preference for complex designs

Your child now wishes to go beyond the bi color preferences to something more varied and interesting. He wishes to explore new designs and forms and also wants to see more color. It would be a good idea to expose him to a greater variety of objects, like colored softballs, intricately designed plastic toys to satisfy his need for more variety and complexity in the objects he wishes to handle.

c) Sleeping for longer chunks of time

Babies normally would prefer a feed or two, sometime during the night and if your baby is not bothering you for even one during the night, then you must consider yourself fortunate. At this stage, babies must sleep for longer hours and must also balance it by staying awake for similar number of hours. Most babies during this time would have a couple to four hour sleep duration intervals and when they awake, they remain so for close to ten hours a day.

d) Movements less jerky

You will notice that your baby is able to co-ordinate some of his movements far better and the earlier jerky flourishes have given way to a more measured and smoother movement. He is able to catch tiny objects on purpose, though some more time would need to pass before he can consciously let go. However, as compared to his instinctive grabbing earlier, this deliberate and purposeful progress towards holding objects is a definite improvement and a milestone that you must recognize.

e) Is my baby developing normally?

The only answer to this oft repeated and understandable query is that you must perceive the progress your baby is making as his own unique way of demonstrating to you that he is different from any other baby and should not be compared against the guidelines that are mentioned above, so minutely, that you start getting tense if a couple of those actions do not take place.
When it comes to premature babies, parents need to exercise greater caution and patience as they will typically take a longer time to enact and cover the milestones. Keeping in touch with your doctor should help you during this testing period. The actions of premature babies are often measured against two different age parameters – the adjusted one and the chronological one. The chronological one is calculated as per their actual date of birth and the adjusted one is calculated as per the date they are supposed to cover specific milestones. The family doctor will be a useful guide and mentor to you during this period.

When Your Baby is 2 Months Old

As you step into month two, your expectations of some more wonderful experiences...