Soon your baby will be 7 weeks old. At the moment, it is busy observing and imitating. He tries to imitate your facial expressions and everything you show him. At this age, your offspring discovers his little hands and begins to perceive his body.
Learn more about the physical and mental development of your baby at 6 weeks.
Table of contents
Your Baby At 6 Weeks: Milestones In Physical Development
It won’t be long before your baby is 2 months old. At 6 weeks, your baby weighs about 5,100 to 5,600 grams and is 50 to 62 centimeters tall. Many babies wear a size 50, but some need a size 56.
Your child’s 5-week push has been accompanied by many physical changes. Your little one has developed rapidly in the motor area.
The Development Of Motor Skills And Reflexes
In the last few weeks, your baby has been diligently exercising his arm, back and neck muscles. Your baby is now able to hold his head almost independently in the prone or sitting position. The movements become more and more fluid and coordinated.
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Spontaneous reflex patterns such as the Moro reflex gradually fade into the background. However, it will take time for your baby to gain complete control over his head. By the time your baby is 6 weeks old, he begins to notice his own body and discovers his hands.
Your baby is fascinated by his hands and looks at them in detail. Your baby may now bring his hands together for the first time – but this is a rather random movement. Your offspring is now becoming more and more active. He is rowing with his arms and kicking with his legs.
Your baby will soon be 7 weeks old and the grasping reflex is slowly fading. The little hands are now gradually opening and your child no longer has his hands clenched in fists all the time. Most of the time, however, your baby’s hands are only open temporarily. When your baby reaches 8 weeks, he or she will slowly be able to hold and move a small grasping object.
Your Baby’s Sensory Perception At 6 Weeks Of Age
Your offspring is already born with amazing sensory abilities. Soon your baby will be 7 weeks old and making further progress in sensory perception. Hearing and touch are already fully developed. And also in the area of vision, quite a bit has happened.
Sight
In the first few weeks after birth, your baby sees the world in a hazy and blurred way. Your baby prefers human faces right from the start. When your baby turns 8 weeks old, he or she is most interested in the eye-nose region, as a study has shown.
Soon your baby will be 8 weeks young and he will use his eye muscles more and more to fixate on certain points. He can also already track moving objects with his eyes.
Since your offspring perceives its environment in black and white, it initially prefers dark and light tones. By the time your baby is able to recognize colors well, it will be about 4 months old. At the moment, it reacts best to the color red.
Hearing
Your baby is born with a well-developed sense of hearing. Only the processing of ambient sounds is still difficult at first. In the first few weeks, your baby prefers your voice and that of other familiar caregivers.
By the time your baby is 7 weeks old, he or she already has fine hearing. Your baby may be a little sensitive to noise at this stage. Create a quiet and comfortable atmosphere for your baby and avoid background noise. Your baby will be grateful for this.
Tasting And Smelling
The senses of smell and taste are now highly developed. Already at birth, the baby perceives the smell of the mother and is imprinted on the taste of breast milk. The sense of smell is the most immediate of all senses and acts directly on the limbic system.
It is therefore closely linked to emotions and memories. When your baby reaches 8 weeks, he or she will especially prefer sweet smells such as banana or vanilla
Sense Of Touch
Already in the 5th week of gestation, your baby’s tactile sense develops and he is able to feel touches on his lips. When your baby is born, the sense of touch is the most developed sense.
In the first years, the mouth is the most sensitive and important organ of touch of your child. Until the age of five, children explore the texture of a material with their mouths. In the beginning, this is more successful than with the fingers.
Baby 6 At Weeks: Milestones In Mental Development
Soon your baby will be 8 weeks young and increasingly aware of the world around him. He is interested in what is going on in his environment and begins to imitate you and other familiar caregivers. Your baby learns through imitation.
At 6 weeks, you can also look forward to your baby’s first conscious smile.
Emotional Development
By the time your baby is 7 weeks old, he or she is much more receptive and alert. However, the many new sensory impressions can also frighten your child. He needs a lot of physical contact and closeness.
This gives your baby a sense of security and strengthens its basic trust. This strong emotional bond helps him to develop into a stable personality. At 6 weeks, your baby is already able to experience and show joy. Your baby prefers happy faces and shows a satisfied face when you turn to him and play with him.
Social Development And Communication
Soon your baby will be 8 weeks old and will participate more actively in family life. Your baby has already discovered the most beautiful means of communication – the social smile. In the first few weeks, your offspring often showed the so-called “reflex smile” during sleep.
Your darling unconsciously pulled up the corners of his mouth in his sleep. In the meantime, however, your little one is consciously using his joyful smile. If your baby notices what this smile does for you, he will try it more often in the future.
Your baby will soon be 7 weeks young and already likes to engage you in conversation. He is now able to draw attention to himself in ways other than crying. Your offspring discovers his voice and makes babbling noises. This is the first important step in language development.
How To Encourage Your Baby Through Play
When your baby is 7 weeks old, toys and playful encouragement are increasingly important. Whether cuddling, tickling, stroking or playing – your little one is grateful for every minute you spend with him.
Baby Mobile
Hang a mobile with simple shapes and colors above the crib. This way you can stimulate your baby’s senses and encourage his visual perception. By watching the toys above the bed, your child is already learning about the basic rules of the object world.
Although he cannot yet reach for the objects, he can see how you handle them.
Tickle Games
Make your baby laugh and tickle him on different parts of his body. There are numerous fun verses that can accompany tickle play. For example, a fun rhyme is “A little snail crawls around the corner”.
Music Box
You can also hang a nice music box above the crib. The soothing music not only helps you fall asleep, but also trains your baby’s hearing and helps develop concentration skills.
How The Sleep Rhythm Changes
Soon your baby will be 7 weeks old and awake more often during the day. Perhaps your offspring can already sleep for longer periods at a time at night. They are slowly learning to distinguish between day and night. However, a lot of time will pass before your child sleeps through the night.
Make the difference between day and night clear to your child right from the start. Feeding and diapering should therefore only take place at night with dimmed lights. A regular daily routine and many rituals will help your child learn the difference more quickly.
Conclusion
Soon your baby will be 2 months old and the 5-week push is not long ago. Because of the developmental push, your child has developed both physically and mentally. Your offspring now weighs about 5,100 to 5,600 grams and is 50 to 62 centimeters tall.
By the time your baby is 8 weeks old, he can hold his head in a sitting position almost independently. He will also be able to lift his head in the prone position. The early childhood reflexes gradually fade into the background and make room for more fluid movements. Your offspring discovers his hands and becomes aware of his body for the first time.
Soon your baby will be 8 weeks old and he sees better every day. He can fixate certain points with his eyes and follow moving things with his eyes. He prefers light and dark tones, the color red and human faces. It is possible that your baby is particularly sensitive to sound at this age, as it has developed a fine sense of hearing.
By the time your baby is 7 weeks old, he or she has already smiled at you consciously for the first time. In the following weeks, you will see the joyful smile much more often. Your baby can now experience and show emotions like joy. Your offspring makes the first babbling noises and tries to engage you in conversation.