The most complicated period of adaptation the baby and the parents went through was the adaptation to the new conditions of life, and it has come to its end. The next thirty days will be the days of other, no less important discoveries; the grand period of acquiring new skills, gaining experience, and forming habits. Meet your 2-month-old baby!
Physical Development
The 2-month-old baby’s body continues its development at an extremely quick pace, having made a good start in the first month, the baby is growing fast. By the end of the following four weeks, she will have to gain 1.8-2.2 pounds of weight, increase in height by 1.2-1.6 inches, increase in chest girth and head circumference by 0.4-0.6 inches.
During this period the development of the internal organs of the baby assumes an active character; organs and systems of organs of the baby are not so much adapting as they are coming to a rhythm corresponding to the outside world.
Main Showings of the Two-Month-Old Baby
Height – 21-21.5 inches
Weight – 9.2-9.6 pounds
Head circumference – 13-14.6 inches
Chest girth – 13.8-14.2 inches
To assure the growth and development of the 2-month-old baby, the parents should provide their child with a stable schedule of sleep and feeding. This is mainly the task for the mother. Of course, the system of feeding a baby by the hour has become outdated and it is possible to breastfeed the baby on request, not in the least interrupting her daily routine at the same time. However, it is important for the mother to understand that the two-month-old baby must sleep 18-20 hours a day and eat an amount of mother’s breast milk that would be as much as 1/5 of the baby’s body weight.
For example, if the baby’s body weight is 9 pounds, then the mother should provide her child with no less than 1.8 pounds of breast milk daily. Such an amount of food will give the baby an opportunity of full value energy exchange – it remains active, cheerful, and gains enough weight.
If the parents have noticed their baby eat or sleep a bit less (more) they shouldn’t be alarmed. Each baby’s organism is unique, and there is no need to follow any standards in the feeding and sleeping schedule – there are no strict standards, to begin with. As a rule, healthy children know their norm even at this age and can make it clear to the mother that they are already full.
If during the second month of life of your baby you haven’t managed to arrange its schedule yourself – it eats or sleeps very little and you hear him crying most of the time – then you’d better consult a pediatrician. As well as healthy sleep, the two months old baby should have another source of energy – liberal feeding.
In the second month after delivery, the mother should have active lactation – the baby will need a lot of breast milk, and very often. If you have noticed that the baby doesn’t eat its fill, change your diet, drink a lot of water – no less than 0.54 gal a day, add cottage cheese to your menu, fish, lean meat, milk. You may even drink a cup of black tea with milk or cream before breastfeeding.
The Motor Skills of the 2-Month-Old Baby
It is already raising its head with confidence and can hold it in place for 10-20 seconds, from the position on its stomach the baby can also raise its chest and can hold this position for some time (but not for long). The “frog” position, typical during the first weeks, begins its transformation into a more “human” one: the arms and legs of the baby are more relaxed, the baby is stretching them to the sides. If someone of the child’s elders supports the baby in a sitting position it can waggle his head, and involuntary flinching and movements of muscles now occur less.
Any bright spot, a rattle emitting melodious sounds seems the most intriguing object to a child at this age.
It grabs the toy tightly and can hold it for some time. And when the baby’s hands are busy with the toy its fists are partially open. Sometimes the baby is thrashing with its hands in the air – and this is quite normal for a child at this age.
When the Baby is Crying
Besides, the crying can be an original signal to the parents of the baby’s loneliness and wish to get into the caring embrace. Being held by the mother or father is an excellent means of calming down for most babies.
If the baby is crying for a long time till its chin and arms start shaking and it is also throwing its head back, belches too often, and doesn’t have much sleep you should immediately take him to the neuropathologists.
The two-month-old baby can still experience intestinal colics. To reduce them to a minimum the mother should pay attention to her diet again: limit the consumption of candy, stop eating grapes and cellulose-rich vegetables, soda water, and other drinks based on it.
To ease the baby’s lot when it starts to have colic, you can turn the baby on its stomach, apply a hot-water bottle, or gently stroke its belly with clockwise movements.
During this period, the parents should give particular attention to the baby’s skin and take care of it properly. Air-bathes, massage, evening bathing are not only very useful and healthy procedures but also quite pleasant for the child.
In the second month of life babies show more and more activity, and already prefer one or another form of communication. Almost every two-month-old baby’s favorite activity is to wiggle and bounce up and down. The child likes to lie down making itself comfortable on its father’s chest.
By the age of two months, the baby must have been examined by a pediatrician, an oculist, an orthopedist, and a neuropathologist.
Psychical Development of the 2-Month-Old Baby
The second month of life is the stage when the baby begins to more confidently use her organs of hearing and vision. The visual organ has developed considerably in comparison with the first month, enabling the baby to fix her sight on a bright still object for the whole half-minute.
The baby has already learned to follow a moving object with her gaze; at the same time, she is not only “clinging” to the object that has its attention with its gaze, but also helps itself by turning its head as best as it can.
Now the 2-month-old baby can catch her parents’ gazes – his visual capabilities improved that much during this short period of time. The baby can concentrate his attention on any of the objects that get into the field of his vision. The parents usually use a simple test when they check the visual reaction of their baby: they slowly draw a bright-colored toy at a distance of 1.5 feet from the baby’s eyes – the baby will track the toy with its gaze at the same speed, with which the object of its interest is moving.
Aural perception of the baby in the second month of life has also considerably improved. Now if the baby hears any sound that has broken the silence in the room the little one is actively trying to find out the source of the noise and detect its location.
The hearing test can be conducted with the help of the same rattle – you should just ring it for no more than 10 seconds outside the field of vision of the baby. After hearing the sound rattle is taken aback, so the baby is lying still for a fraction of a second, analyzing the nature of this event at the back of his mind. Then the baby starts to twist his head, trying to find the noisy object.
Besides the sounds produced by the rattles, squeakers, and other toys, besides different kinds of artificial sounds, the two-month-old baby starts distinguishing the voices. It can perfectly discern the intonations: in response to a quiet gentle voice the baby will turn calm and slow down, but he may get frightened of a sudden yell. That’s why the most important rule of conversation in the nursery: do not to be loud, do not to get sharp, and stay calm.
The Dynamics of the Emotional Development of the Baby
At the age of two months, the baby is able to please his parents with first smiles. But this smile is not social yet – it’s the inner smile, reflecting the fact that the baby is satisfied; it would rather be a baby’s reaction to your gentle care about him. Some children at this age can even laugh, and the sound of this laughter depends on a person: from quiet and faltering to loud and shrieking.
The two-month-old baby is making the first attempts to tell the difference between the animate and inanimate objects: look at your baby attentively and you will notice how much more interested he will be in the presence of another baby than if offered a toy. The baby concentrates more attention on another child or someone of the adults and is quite observant towards the humans. Typical immovability of the body and some of the mimic nuances give the cause for drawing conclusions about a two-month-old “thinker”.
The single guttural sounds, typical for the first months of life, are now turning into babble. The baby is clearly pronouncing “ah”, “uh”, “oh”. A child’s babble often occurs in the second month of life.
At the end of the month, the baby has already begun to connect vowels with consonants, and such words as “the”, “aha”, “ho”, “he” will lay a foundation of the future vocabulary of your baby.
If the 2-month-old baby is babbling it does it in a very emotional way. You can pick up gurgling, groaning, squealing, champing, and cooing. The baby puts a feeling in every sound and maybe it can feel its parents’ mood too, especially the mother’s because he hasn’t lost that bond established between them during the nine months of pregnancy. The baby trusts his mother more than anyone and even feels for her when she is upset with something – catching the mother’s bad mood, the baby also becomes distressed and starts to cry.
Children at this age become interested in people’s faces. They are studying their parents’ features for a long time, watching them closely.
Even the baby’s cry in the second month of life is connected with a line of association: I’m hungry – I’m crying – the signal is noticed – I’m being fed.
In spite of the impressive terms of the development of the baby, the two-month-old little one should be protected from the too-bright light, too loud noise, and it’s better to turn the TV off or to reduce the sound to a minimum during the baby’s sleep and control all the negative emotions in front of the baby.
The scientists believe that the mental faculties of a 2-month-old baby are much higher than we used to think, however, it is too early to practice reading fiction aloud to the baby.
However, verbal and visual contacts, as well as haptic contact, will prove beneficial for your relationship with the baby. Communicate with your baby as often as possible, including the time of breastfeeding: cuddle a baby in your arms, stroke it gently, look into his eyes, and talk to him. Your baby will “remember” it in the future.
2-Month-Old Baby Pictures
Check out what a 2-month-old baby looks like.
Born in Belarus, 1985, a pedagogue and family psychologist, mother. Taking part in procedures of social adaptation of the foster children in new families. Since 2015 is a chief editor of the motherhow.com project, selecting the best and up-to-date material for those, who are planning, expecting, and already having babies.