Your Baby At 17 Weeks: The Most Important Developmental Steps At A Glance

The development of the baby progresses at a rapid pace. The grasping reflex recedes into the background and your child consciously tries to reach for objects. Your darling’s ability to see and hear is improving day by day. He is already able to express feelings such as joy, anger or sadness.

Learn more about baby’s growth spurt at 17 weeks.

Baby 17 Weeks: Baby’s Growth Spurt And Physical Development

In the first 14 months of his life, the development of the baby is amazing: It develops from a newborn to a toddler with many, different abilities. In total, your child goes through eight developmental spurts during this time. These help him develop physically and mentally.

Between the third and fourth month, babies also experience a growth spurt. Your offspring grows intensively in this phase and reaches a height between 62 and 64 centimeters.

At 17 weeks, your baby weighs about 6000 to 7000 grams. Learn more about growth spurt, motor skills and reflexes as well as sensory perception of your baby.

Baby Development: Motor Skills And Reflexes

After weeks of training the back, chest and neck muscles, your baby is now able to hold its head in the prone position. Your baby is now able to turn from back to stomach and vice versa.

You can encourage your baby to turn by moving his favorite toys back and forth or by placing them sideways in front of him. Another important step in baby’s development is coming up: Your offspring will now want to try to stand more and more often.

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Of course, this can only be done with your support. The best thing to do is to lift your little one up. As soon as he feels solid ground under his feet, he will try to push his legs through.

This training will help him later when walking and standing. However, by the time your baby is 17 weeks old, his knees will buckle when he stands, because he can’t hold his weight yet.

When your baby turns 17 weeks, the innate reflexes slowly regress. These early childhood reflexes, which include the grasping reflex, are instinctively executed when the appropriate stimulus is given. As the baby learns to control his muscles, they move further and further into the background.

Your baby is 17 weeks young and the grasping reflex plays only a subordinate role. Your child now consciously tries to reach for objects. After all, they quickly end up in the mouth to be explored. This promotes the hand-mouth coordination of your offspring.

Even though your baby has now acquired a new ability, this does not mean that it already works perfectly. Your offspring will have to practice a lot before they can reach for objects in a targeted way. Letting go of an object can still cause problems in the 4th month of life.

The Development Of Your Baby At 17 Weeks: Sensory Perception

Seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, feeling – the interaction of the senses works better and better when your baby reaches 17 weeks. He also sees and hears better from day to day.

When your baby reaches 17 weeks, he or she learns to distinguish between colors. Until now, your little treasure has preferred strong contrasts such as checkerboard patterns. This is because your child was not able to perceive colors at first.

In the meantime, your offspring is able to recognize colors such as red, green, yellow, blue, violet and orange. At 17 weeks, your baby’s vision is no longer as blurry as it was right after birth. He is getting better at focusing on objects and seeing them sharply.

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Your baby is also learning about cause and effect. In the first weeks of life, states existed only sporadically. The ball was in the air or it was on the ground. Through close observation of the environment, your baby now recognizes the connections: If A happens, B must also happen.

Babies are born with a well-developed sense of hearing. However, it is still difficult for them at first to determine the direction from which the sounds are coming. By the time your baby reaches 17 weeks, he or she is already turning in the direction from which the sounds are coming.

And another important step is about to happen: your baby learns to distinguish sounds from each other. He realizes that certain sounds have a certain meaning. This is an important step in the baby’s linguistic development.

Even though he can’t pronounce words yet, he already understands the meaning of some words. By the time your baby is 17 weeks old, he will know when you praise him or tell him not to do something.

The sense of touch plays an important role in the baby’s development. It helps them explore the environment and different objects. The mouth is the most important and sensitive organ of touch when your baby is 17 weeks young.

Their own hands and favorite toys immediately disappear into their mouths for inspection. Make sure that your offspring does not get hold of small objects and swallow them.

Baby At 17 Weeks: Baby’s Growth Spurt And Mental Development

The growth spurt of the baby in the 4th month ensures that your little one also matures emotionally. Learn more about the emotional, social and communicative development of the baby in the 17th week.

How Your Baby’s Emotions Develop

Your baby is 17 weeks young and learning to express his or her feelings. Feelings such as sadness, anger, joy or surprise can now be expressed. This makes everyday life easier because you can recognize your baby’s wishes more easily.

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However, children can also be very stressful during this phase – they whine, cry, and become restless if they don’t get their way. Babies have an intense emotional world at this stage that adults often can’t comprehend.

During the growth spurt in the 4th month of life, understanding and comfort are therefore especially important for your little one. At this age, your baby may even start to “feel strange”. If you leave the room or an unknown person approaches, he may start to cry. However, this is only the precursor to the stranger phase in the 8th month.

Baby Development: Social And Communication

By the time your baby reaches 17 weeks, he or she has mastered several skills: He babbles and babbles cheerfully to himself, he uses his hands to grasp and explore his environment particularly closely. This development of the baby allows more active participation in family life.

At 3 to 4 months, your baby enjoys making sounds and watching you react to them. He also begins to laugh loudly and entertains the whole family. Now he will laugh more and more every month. Maybe your little one is already smiling at friendly “strangers”.

Baby At 17 Weeks: How To Encourage Your Child Playfully

The baby’s growth spurt promotes physical and mental development. For a baby at 17 weeks, the time has come for new, fun games. Your little one is now happy about all kinds of movement games.

Swing your baby back and forth in the air, let him fly in circles on your forearms or let him bounce on your lap while you hold him under your armpits. This not only trains your sense of balance but also your motor skills and coordination.

Also, throw a little bubble party. Your baby will watch the shimmering bubbles with his eyes and try to catch them.

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The Most Important Developmental Steps Of Your Baby At A Glance

  • The growth spurt of the baby promotes physical and mental development.
  • Due to the baby’s growth spurt, your offspring is now growing intensively.
  • When your baby turns 17 weeks, the grasping reflex starts to regress.
  • Your offspring begins to consciously reach for objects.
  • Letting go of objects still causes him trouble.
  • Your baby is able to hold his head independently.
  • Your child is attempting to stand for the first time with your help.
  • He learns to distinguish between colors.
  • He learns the principle of cause and effect.
  • Your baby understands the meaning of certain words.
  • Your child is fascinated by sounds and babbles incessantly.
  • Feelings such as anger, sadness and joy can now be expressed more easily.
  • Your baby is taking an increasingly active part in family life.
  • Your offspring now likes to engage you in dialogues.

Conclusion

The growth spurt in babies in the third to fourth month of life causes the development from newborn to “toddler”. Your little one now weighs 6000 to 7000 grams and is 62 to 64 centimeters tall.

Your baby consciously reaches for objects and explores them with its mouth. He has learned to hold his head and is making his first attempts to stand up together with you.

Your baby is 17 weeks young and his senses are now better and better developed. Your offspring can distinguish colors from each other, it recognizes from which direction sounds originate and it can filter out sounds from spoken language.

When your baby reaches 17 weeks, he shows emotions such as sadness, anger, surprise or joy. He smiles at friendly faces and laughs more every day. It watches its family closely and engages its caregivers in babbling dialogues.

Your baby also begins to understand the meaning of different words. This is an important step in the baby’s linguistic development.

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Radiant heater

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Extra bed

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