When Your Baby is 5 Months Old

The last 4 months have been simply too fantastic as an experience and you have learnt so much more about your baby and his progress. As he steps into his 5th month, your expectations are high and you do not want to miss out on any of the milestones. Let us look at some of them.

a) Sitting up on her own
You notice that your baby is making rapid strides in his physical development and she is able to position her body the way she wants. When you place her on her stomach, she is able to do mini push-ups and when you turn her over, she is able to lift her head and shoulders. At times, she can even sit without support, however you need to be close to her and make sure that there is enough cushion in the form of pillows, foam to prevent any injury. You can motivate her to continue these postures by positioning toys and other objects of interest such that she has to adopt these postures and this is a very good method of strengthening her muscles. You can hold her such that she is suspended, by providing support underneath her arms and placing her feet on the thighs such that she is able to bounce, secure in the knowledge that she would not fall down.
In addition to such physical activity, she also develops the tendency to subject objects of her interest to oral exploration.

b) Repeating her favorite sounds
It is very common for babies at this stage to hold on to their new found abilities and you will notice that your baby’s current pastime is blowing bubbles. She is also adding many more sounds to her rapidly expanding vocabulary and you can not but wonder as to what must be going through her mind, when she does all these antics. Typically babies like to master a particular skill before going to the next one, but some babies manage multi-tasking quite effectively. It can sometimes be exasperating to hear a particular sound getting repeated, but you need to exercise patience and see the lighter part of the activity.

c) Strong enough to feed herself
Your baby may have the strength to grip a bottle and hold on to it, but you must not allow her the liberty of feeding herself just as yet. You need to wait for a couple of months and at that time, she will be able to grip objects and support her self better while sitting. At this point in time, you need to continue cuddling her, holding her despite her obvious reluctance. Your baby will also exhibit an interest to take in solids, since she has better control on her tongue and the fact that she is observing others take in different food as compared to hers. Please remember that you must stick to breast milk till six months are over, as that is the best nutrient for her.

d) Learning about cause and effect
Your baby is growing more social by now and has realized that certain actions will bear certain results. She may thus deliberately drop objects to see you pick them up and will keep repeating it to check for herself as to how these objects fall and how each time you are picking them up. This could continue for some time and is sure to tax you, but for your baby, it is just a game and you need to play along with her.

e) Able to see small objects and subtle colors
Your baby has now perfected the art of picking out tiny objects and keeping an eye on anything moving. She is also able to identify objects by just looking at a part of it and this is a good starting point for the typical hide-and-seek games that are in the offing within the next couple of months. She has now graduated from making out contrasting colors to differentiating between subtle shades and is able to sort them out.

f) Honing in on sounds
Since she can now hear properly, your baby will immediately respond and look in the direction from where a particular sound emanates and one of the best ways to test her hearing and response time is to jingle key sets or dangle wind chimes. She will also start observing the movement of your mouth in greater detail and try to come out with consonant sounds like “m” and “b”. At five months, she is able to respond to her name and you will notice her immediate reaction whenever her name is taken by you or by others.

g) Easily distract able now
You can distract and make her look away from something pretty easily by making sounds, showing her new objects or by making funny faces. This will distract her for a short period of time and she will get back to what she was up to once again. You can also hand over something to grasp, so that her hands are occupied.

h) A growing range of emotions
Babies in the first four months will not be able to show certain subtle emotions in the manner that adults do and while you can make out when she is stiff bored or happy, expressions of humor or love are difficult for them. In the fifth month, she tries to convey her affection for you by raising her hands as an indication for you to pick her up and will also convey her displeasure when you leave the room. She also kisses you and hugs you and will at times laugh at some of the funny faces you make. This is her way of conveying her approval and as parents; you will just love this phase of becoming child like and pantomiming your baby to get her approval and expressions of glee.

i) Is my baby developing normally?
As long as your baby appears normal and achieves some of the milestones mentioned above, you should not have cause for worry. It is not necessary that she will do exactly what is mentioned and in the same sequence.
Parents of premature babies must however take the guidance of a doctor to monitor progress as such babies are known to do things slower than the normally born babies.

When Your Baby is 5 Months Old

The last 4 months have been simply too fantastic as an experience and you have...