Two Month Old Baby Development & Milestones
The first real smiles
This month your baby will reward all your loving care with a beaming, toothless, just-for-you smile. This will probably disarm you, even if you’ve just had your worst night yet.
For Ron Heckman, a new father in Piedmont, California, that first smile from his 6-week-old daughter, Hadley, brought tears to his eyes. “It was a lousy day at work,” he recalls. “I was sleep-deprived and the commute traffic that day was incredibly thick.
When I finally got home and my wife handed me the baby, who looked straight at me and smiled this gorgeous all-gums grin, I remember thinking, ‘She knows me’ — and nothing else mattered.”
A growing preference for complex designs
By 2 months of age, your baby will begin to move beyond his early preferences for two-tone objects toward more detailed and complicated designs, colors, and shapes. Show your baby — and let him touch — a wider variety of objects now.
Good choices include plastic cookie molds and softballs.
Sleeping for longer chunks of time
If your baby is sleeping through the night now, you’re one of the lucky few. Most babies still want a middle-of-the-night feeding at 2 months.
But the good news is, he should be sleeping and staying awake for longer intervals instead of cycling back and forth so much.
Most 2-month-olds have two to four long sleep periods and as many as ten hours a day when they’re awake.
Movements are less jerky
He’s no Fred Astaire yet, but your little guy is now coordinating his movements better.
You’ll notice that the jerky arm and leg movements of his newborn days have given way to smoother, more circular motions.
While in the early days grabbing was mostly involuntary and instinctual, your 2-month-old is also able to purposely grab objects now.
Is my baby developing normally?
Remember, each baby is unique and meets cognitive milestones at his own pace. These are simply guidelines to what your baby has the potential to accomplish — if not right now, then shortly.
If your baby was born prematurely, keep in mind that he’ll almost always need a bit more time before he can do the same things as other children his chronological age.
That’s why most preemies are given two ages by their pediatricians — their chronological age (calculated from their birthday) and their adjusted age (calculated from their due date).
Doctors generally assess a preterm child’s development from the time he should have been born and evaluate his skills accordingly.
