When Your Baby is 3 Months Old

After watching your baby for two months, you are now very enthusiastic about her next moves and wish to do your best in helping him go through them without any hassles. You also want to start recording these moments for posterity and you can rest assured, there will be many of them. Let us look at them.

a) Holding her head steady

In the third month, your baby experiences no problem in raising her head and maintaining that pose for some minutes. When seated, she does even better by keeping her head very motionless and straight. When you put her on her stomach, she still manages to raise her head and you can spur her on by hanging a toy in front of her, such that she has to reach for it.

b) Better arm, leg, and hand co-ordination

Your baby is gaining strength rapidly and her joints at the hip and knee become so flexible that she is able to deliver stronger kicks. You can gauge the strength when you try to hold her upright and she responds by exerting pressure downwards. She is now also able to flex her fingers and also box dangling items. You can further improve upon these milestones by showing an object or toy within her striking distance and check out whether she reaches out for it.

c) Sleeping patterns getting more manageable

After two months of sleep deprivation, parents can now look forward to some relief as your baby’s sleep schedules start getting more consistent and predictable. Babies will now manage to go through a night’s sleep without interruption, though there will be occasions when they do wake up for a feed. Some others may not settle down for four to seven months, but this should not bother you as it is normal behavior.

d) Clear recognition of mum and dad

Your baby is now absolutely comfortable with you and your partner. At times, she would even smile at absolute strangers, particularly when they try to talk or see her in the face. She can now differentiate between familiar and unfamiliar people and starts developing her own preferences for people. The reason for this is the fact that the parietal lobe, responsible for hand-eye movement and coordination is witnessing proper development. Your baby is also able to respond faster to sounds and makes efforts to talk back, thanks to the rapid development of the temporal lobe that makes the sense of hearing and smell possible besides bestowing language abilities.

e) Start reading to her now

You will always do well to read out to your baby and the earlier you do so, the better for her. It enables your baby to develop a feel for different words, the voice pitch, accents and helps you bond better with her. You should not feel discouraged if she happens to lose interest midway; you can always give her a breather and catch her at a different time, when she is more amenable to such reading sessions.

It is advisable to choose books that have colorful pictures and big text so that your baby is able to see them clearly and appreciate the difference between pictures and text. In fact, it is not even necessary that you should always have text; just pictures that are bright and colorful will also hold her interest. There are again no specific standard or age restrictions in the sort of books that you should bother about. Anything that enables you to show your baby pictures and gives you the opportunity to read – whether it is prose or poetry, it does not matter. Your baby will learn to decipher the difference in the way you intonate and that itself is a great learning step for her at this tender age. You too will revel in this new avatar and will probably catch up on a dormant talent and rediscover something that you had lost or forgotten.

f) Early language development

Your attempt should be to engage your baby with verbal communication whenever possible so that she gets maximum exposure to many words and sounds. Studies have shown that a child who is exposed to a lot of words in its first year invariably possesses higher intelligence and this stimulation of your baby’s mind should continue by way of outings to the mall or department store, wherein you get the opportunity to seek her attention by pointing to different objects and associating them with their names. While she may not comprehend all the words and sounds you expose her to at this stage, you can be rest assured that they are all getting stored in the appropriate repository of her brain for use at the appropriate time in the future. You must remember that her brain is making great strides in development and every stimulus is being absorbed by it like a sponge.

This superb and amazing capacity of the brain is best demonstrated by the fact that children raised in a house where two languages are spoken, are easily able to grasp the nuances of both languages and are also able to speak them well enough.

g) Touch becoming more sensitive

Of equal importance is the necessity to let your baby discover the joys of touching different things and material like tissue, foam, fur or cloth. Your own constant touch and presence serves as a great comforting factor and is a very important element in making your baby feel safe and cozy. Lifting her in the air, massaging her while bathing her are other ways of getting physical with your baby in a manner that is very relaxing and rejuvenating for her.

h) Beginning to interact with others

Your baby is now ready to receive a lot of inputs; by way of verbal and visual communication from not only you but also from other strangers who visit your house. You must keep her in proximity to everybody so that she is part of the general atmosphere of a lot of bonhomie and joyfulness. This exposure to human interaction is very useful for her development so early on in her life.
She also starts recognizing herself in the mirror and will often try to express something. You can keep this process of receiving communication going by constantly chatting with her and engaging her attention by describing your daily household activities to her.

i) Is my baby developing normally?

Your concern, though legitimate may be misplaced in terms of the expectation that you have from your baby after reading material like the one in this article about the specific milestones. Please remember that your baby is unique and will do things at her pace. There is no cause for any concern if certain milestones get delayed or get achieved much earlier than expected.
Parents of prematurely born babies however need to be in close consultation with their family doctor for a more closer and regular review of their child’s milestones, as such babies typically do things slower than the normally born ones. Your family doctor is the best person at hand to guide you.

When Your Baby is 3 Months Old

After watching your baby for two months, you are now very enthusiastic about her...