Now What? How to Support the Development of Infants After Birth.
Interested in learning how to support the development of your infant but are too tired for something complex? Here are some research-based strategies to build into your routine from a pediatric speech pathologist and mom of two tiny humans.
As a mother and a pediatric speech pathologist, I have spent much of my adult life playing with babies. It is as much fun and just as messy as it sounds. And smelly. Very smelly….
As a speech pathologist, I am often called to assess and support the development of newborns. I’m sure some of you are thinking “Why would a speech pathologist assess an infant!? They are too young to speak!” That’s a common misconception — speech pathologists, aka speech therapists, assess a myriad of things including cognition, social skills, voice, feeding, swallowing, speech, language, fluency, development…(maybe a topic for another day but you get the picture).
Some of the big questions that I get asked by new parents at these assessments include “How do I help my baby with development?” or “How do I play with my baby? They didn’t cover this part at the birthing class!”
Typically I respond with —
Snuggle your baby, love them, feed, them and figure out how to be a family.
My comment is usually balked at initially but it’s true — my, maybe obvious recommendations support bonding and infant development.
When parents are looking for more specific information, I recommend these research-based, speech pathologist-approved and mom-tested recommendations to help with infant development in the first three months.
Get To Know Your Baby 👋
The first few days after birth are a big transition for everyone. Babies are getting used to a new environment and caregivers are getting acclimated to providing 24 hour care for a new baby (sometimes while healing themselves). It’s exhausting, amazing, scary, and energizing all at the same time.
Allow yourself time to get to know your baby and what they like and don’t like. Learn how they communicate signs of being hungry, fussy, and content. Listen to their cries and learn the difference between their ‘tired cry’ versus their ‘wet diaper cry’. Caregivers become the experts in their babies and it starts by recognizing their signs and picking up on their communication.
Skin To Skin Snuggles 👶
Skin-to-skin contact, also known as kangaroo care, has been proven across multiple studies in multiple countries to help babies to calm, regulate their body temperature, stabilize their heart rate and mood, improve sleep, feeding, and success of breastfeeding.
The positive impact extends beyond the baby as well! Birth mothers who had skin to skin contact with their child had decreased anxiety, lower rates of postpartum depression and parents have reported that it helped with bonding.
Skin-to-skin contact has been shown help all babies — breast and bottle-fed babies, premature babies, babies born vaginally, babies born from a Cesarean section (C-Section) and babies who were adopted. All babies benefit from skin-to skin contact.
Research has shown it helps with bonding for all parents, even if you weren’t the one who gave birth to the baby. And don’t worry, you can’t hold a baby too much — if the baby is crying and needs a snuggle, snuggle that baby!
Read To Your Baby 📚
Any book that you want to read is great BUT books with a high visual contrast will hold an infant’s attention better. Try to position books within 8-12 inches of their face so that they can visually focus.
You don’t have to read all of the words — feel free to summarize or describe the pictures. Reading helps to build a baby’s visual and auditory sensory skills, attention, and exposes them to language.
When my kids were this age, I loved building books into bedtime and nap routines and always had at least one in the diaper bag.
Learn more about reading recommendations in this blog post.
Talk To Your Baby 💬
Verbally narrate what you are doing while you are doing it with them — it will feel like talking to yourself at first.
Current research has found that stimulation such as talking to infants and narrating during interactions plays an important role in vocabulary, language, and cognitive development.
‘Baby talk’ is cute and fun, but using more narrative language will help expose infants to the prosody of speech and conversation, and sets the stage for first words. This recommendation is especially important when children will be learning more than one language. Frequent and quality exposure is key to long-term fluency. All caregivers should talk to their baby as much as they can. For example, during a bath time “Time to wash your hair. The water is warm! Let’s clean your toes!” This type of interaction will help boost their exposure to language, and introduce new vocabulary, which is important for learning to communicate.
Imitate Your Baby 😜
Imitate the movements, facial expressions, and sounds that your baby makes. Get close to their body and smile when they smile, make silly faces when they make a silly face, make cooing sounds when they coo. Imitating what babies are doing helps to promote turn taking, social interaction skills and listening skills. It shows babies that when they talk, you listen and that they can get and hold your attention. Plus, social play like this is great for visual development and will elicit those cute baby giggles.
Mix Things Up 🥣
Try to expose children to different positions during daily tasks to encourage them to look and listen to familiar surroundings. For example —
- Move their bassinet or change the direction of their body in it (put their head where their feet usually are).
- Switch the side that you hold the baby on while feeding them, if bottle feeding, or try a different position if breastfeeding.
- Change the location or position when reading to them — try propping the book up during tummy time or holding the book above you while you both lay on your back.
- Put the baby on their tummy (tummy time is its own recommendation below, but worth mentioning here too). This will encourage them to move their head in all directions and help to prevent Plagiocephaly (“flat head” syndrome).
Tummy Time 🚼
Tummy time is a baby’s first exercise. It may seem scary but supporting and supervising babies playing on their tummy is important and developmentally appropriate. It helps to build head, neck, and trunk (core) control for developmental milestones. It builds muscle strength and control of the neck, back, shoulders and core that are needed later for sitting up, crawling, and self-feeding.
Start small with a few minutes a day and work your way up to an hour a day by about three months. Try to avoid just before a feeding or nap as baby will be tired and avoid immediately after a feeding as the trunk work may make the baby spit up. As a mom, I tried to incorporate tummy time following a diaper change to make sure I remembered to get it in. If your baby is prone to spitting up (🙋🏻♀️ both of mine were) put down a burp cloth for a cleaner playtime.
Well-Child Screenings 🩺
Well-child visits are the visits to the pediatrician when the child is healthy and their development and weight is monitored. The baby’s pediatrician will check your infant’s vision at each well-child visit and infant hearing is screened at birth in many countries. At some of these visits, your child should receive vaccines.
In the United States, well-child visits typically occur during the first week of life, at 1 month, 2 months, 4 months, 6 months, 9 months, 12 months and continue annually throughout childhood and adolescence. Make sure to schedule all recommended well-child visits with your pediatrician. If, between a visit, you are concerned that your child isn’t developing, then call your child’s pediatrician for support.
I know the list above seems exhaustive. Parents and caregivers will not be able to do all of the recommendations above all of the time — and that’s okay and expected. Knowing what you can do when you are able is half of the battle.
The most important things you can do is to love your baby and to make sure your baby is fed and safe. Having a supportive network including friends, family or framily (friends that are basically family) and a trusted pediatrician helps.
TLC Speech Therapy is a speech pathology private practice, headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts, that specializes in feeding, swallowing, and communication skills in infants, children, teens, and adults.
For more information check out our website at tlcspeechtherapy.com or contact us at hello@tlcspeechtherapy.com
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