0-2 Months Social & Emotional Development

From birth, babies are learning who they are by how they are treated. Loving relationships give babies a sense of comfort, safety, confidence, and encouragement. The first couple of months are a time for bonding and taking care of your baby’s most basic needs. Some parents might feel an instant connection with their baby while for others it can take weeks or months to feel that special bond. Given the first crying usually peaks at 6 weeks of age the number one question many parents have is “How do I soothe a crying baby?”. The right products can help with both bonding and soothing—some not strictly speaking toys.

0-2 months Social & Emotional development

How You Can Help Your Baby Thrive

Bonding:

• Respond promptly when your baby cries. A baby camera or baby monitor can help you make sure you never miss a beat.
• Have eye-contact, smile and hold your baby with plenty of skin-on-skin time. Get comfortable with a nursing pillow during feedings, and wear your baby in a baby carrier when you're on the move.
• Make funny faces, sounds, talk to them, read books, sing songs and play music to them - try a music player.
• During the first few weeks of your baby's life, knowing that their weight gain is on track can help put your mind to rest, so you can focus on bonding with your little one. A baby scale can be a great tool for monitoring that your baby's weight is developing as expected.

Soothing & Sleep:

• Try the 5 S's (Swaddle, Side Position, Shush, Swing, Suck), supervised.
• Swaddling can help your little one calm down and sleep more soundly.
• Baby bouncers and baby swings imitate the rocking motion your baby is familiar from in the womb or when you hold them in your arms. This can be calming and comforting for your baby.
• Babies may be able to fall asleep faster with white noise machines. It blocks out household noises, and some machines have a heartbeat setting mimicking the mother, which can be comforting for newborns. Make sure to place white noise machines at least 7 feet away (200 cm) from your baby's crib to avoid damaging their hearing.
• Gently bouncing your baby on a yoga ball or stability ball can be a game changer.
• Try a rainmaker for a handy help when you need to soothe your baby quickly.
• On the go? Get a portable white noise machine that attaches to your pram and a pram rocker to soothe your baby.
• Around 8-12 weeks your baby will start producing sleep hormones, and become more aware of the world around them. When that happens, they'll start to need a dark room in order to sleep well also during naps.
• Put your baby to bed at the same time each night in a quiet, dark room, and establish a sleep routine and healthy sleep habits such as a bath, song, bedtime story and a mantra e.g. “Good night, darling”. Get a comfortable bath tub, read storybooks your baby can enjoy, and try baby massage—add baby massage oils for extra pampering!
• Smart bassinets and cribs, as well as smart mattresses and mats can be effective in helping your baby stay asleep.
• Get a night light to help with night feedings and diaper changes to avoid rousing your baby too much during the night.

0-2 Months Language & Communication Development

It turns out, newborns aren’t just letting language wash over them. In a recent study using brain imaging technology, researchers found that 3-day-old babies could pick out individual words from a stream of continuous speech (Flo et al 2019). They pay special attention when we speak to them in the slow repetitive, melodic register known as “infant-directed speech” (or "baby talk"). Babies actively prefer to be addressed in this distinctive way, and for good reason. It’s harder to make sense of speech when it’s fast and monotone. When we speak more musically — varying our pitch — it grabs a newborn’s attention, and helps the baby understand our emotions. When we slow down and repeat key words, it helps babies crack the code. Researchers have documented this preference in babies who were just 2 days old (Cooper and Aslin 1990). Cue in lots of baby talk and bedtime stories!

0-2 Months Cognitive Development

During the first few weeks after birth, it might seem that your baby does little more than sleep, cry, and feed. But research tells us that there is much more going on. The newborn brain is busy processing information, searching for patterns, and learning. Even when they sleep!

0-2 Months Motor Development

Newborns can move their head to the side. You may see this with their first feeding when the “rooting” reflex prompts them to turn toward the nipple. But infants don’t have much neck control the first few weeks. Your baby needs your help to support her head, and strengthen her neck muscles through tummy time.

0-2 Months Sensory Development

The first twelve months of a baby’s life are full of sensory advancements. Sight, smell, hearing, touch, and taste all develop faster during the first 12 months of life than during any time thereafter. As a baby’s senses become more refined, their unique preferences and responses begin to reveal themselves, and their personalities begin to shine. What more, senses don’t shut down even when newborns sleep! Research shows, they can can learn from the sounds and physical sensations they experience while they are dozing.

• Touch: Touch is your baby’s first sense to develop, starting around 7 weeks of pregnancy. Once your baby is born, touch plays a central role in their bonding process with you as you feed, cuddle, and bathe them. Touch also helps your baby communicate their needs and wants, interact with other people, and explore their environment. Newborns have highly sensitive skin in particular their mouth, cheeks, face, hands, abdomen, and the soles of their feet. Newborns are capable of inferring the appearance of an object from touch alone (Streri 2003; Streri and Gentaz 2004; Sann and Streri 2007; San and Streri 2008). In other words, newborns use touch to help make sense of visual information. When they touch your face, they may be learning how to recognize it visually. 
• Taste: Babies prefer sweet tastes over sour or bitter tastes. Babies are attracted to breastmilk and can even recognize their mother’s breastmilk from another. In the first two months of life your baby will only feed breastmilk and/or formula.
• Sight: From birth babies’ vision is abuzz with all kinds of visual stimulation. Just after birth, a baby sees only in black and white, with shades of grey. They may look intently at a highly contrasted target (cue in black and white cards). They prefer to look at faces over other shapes and objects and at round shapes with light and dark borders (such as your adoring eyes). Your baby may fixate on your face and eyes, especially during a feeding, when your face is about a foot away. Newborns cannot see very far — only objects that are 8-15 inches away, typically the distance to the parent’s face. For the first two months of life an infant’s eyes are not well coordinated, and may cross or wander. Research has shown that black and white, being the ultimate in high contrast, registers the strongest on a baby’s retina. This in turn stimulates the brain. Strong visual signals to the brain mean more brain growth and therefore faster visual development.  
• Hearing: Most babies have good hearing from birth. They could even hear mum’s voice, and other noises, when they were still inside mummy’s belly. Newborns have been shown to prefer their mum’s voice to a stranger’s. It may take up to six months before they can hear and understand a full range of sounds, because it may take some time for the fluid in your baby’s ears are to completely clear up after birth, and because parts of your baby’s brain that deal with hearing are still developing.
• Smell: Newborns have a highly developed sense of smell and is similar to an adult’s sense of smell. Though your baby can’t yet recognize you by sight, they’ll know you by your natural scent, and that’s what they’ll most want to smell. They’ll also be drawn to the scent of your breast milk. These smells are connected to their basic needs for comfort and food.