Baby milestones are an important way to help measure the development and progress of your babies. Every baby progresses at different rates and hits their milestones within unique timetables. However, tracking overall milestone progress is a good way to access the healthy development of babies' cognitive, communicative, language, social and emotional skillsets.
Babies who fall behind on their milestones sometimes need additional support and hands on help from child development experts in their area. Programs such as First Steps and Head Start are some examples of reliable community resources to help babies with developmental milestones.
At Hannah's House, we love helping our resident's support their babies in developing fundamental milestones. Here are some of the most prevalent milestones most babies reach during the newborn stage for ages 0-3 months old.
- Recognizes parents’ voices and voices of close caregivers
- Smiles at people
- Studies faces and facial expressions
- Begin making cooing and gurgling sounds
- Cries as a way of communicating needs
- Stretches or moves arms and legs
- Lifts head when lying on tummy
- Tries to move head towards sounds
- Begins trying to roll over
- Discovers feet and hands and holds objects
- Tracks object movement
- Brings hands to mouth
- Cries different to communicate different needs
At Hannah's House, we want to help our mothers work with their babies to develop these skills. Babies will naturally progress at reach these milestones on their own but working with them on things like tummy time, play time, and interactive activities can be a helpful way to encourage their development. Things like tummy time also have numerous other benefits including combatting positional plagiocephaly.
Our staff enjoys demonstrating fun ways mothers' can interact with their babies and teaching our women activities, songs, and safe playtime for every stage of development. The options are limitless when it comes to creative ways to encourage milestone development as well as bonding between mother and child. This is part of the joy of being a part of a organization the builds the skills women need to care of themselves and their babies as they progress in our program.
Thanks for reading,
Hannah's House