When babies begin to hold their heads on their own. What to do in case of a lag. How to develop the cervical muscles of a newborn

It is important for parents to know the norms of the development of children. Focusing on them, you can control how well the newborn is developing correctly. One of the indicators is when the baby begins to hold the head on its own.

Monthly development

The entire period of muscle development and the formation of supporting bones in an infant can be divided into several stages. It is best to use monthly development as a guideline.

In the first month after birth, a child cannot take care of himself, even for such simple things. He is unable to control the movements of his body, including keeping his head suspended. However, already in the second or third week, the baby begins to make the first attempts. These movements are rather unconscious and still so awkward that a newborn child cannot be left without support. In order not to disrupt the position of the cervical vertebrae, it is necessary to properly support the baby.

By 6 - 8 weeks, the baby can independently hold the head for several minutes

In the second month, the number of attempts increases rapidly. Now the baby is learning to look around on his own, lying on his mother's shoulder. By the middle of the second month, the baby should be able to hold his head at a 45-degree angle for about a minute or more. He begins to spin, trying to better see the world around him. Make sure that there are no sudden movements and rolls on the side.

If the training is observed, by the third month the muscles will already be so strong that the newborn begins to hold his head without the support of his parents. However, it should not be left unattended to prevent injury from awkward movement.

By the fourth month, babies keep their heads straight for several minutes and can already look at the world around them while lying on their tummy, leaning on their forearms.

Starting from six months, we can say that the child has completely become independent in this matter. Now it is not difficult for him to turn his head or look out of the crib. Next, you just need to make sure that the baby is not injured and pay more attention to developing games and physical education.

Causes of head incontinence

If we analyze the development of children from the moment of birth, we can say that the baby should keep his head up to 3-4 months. If he manages to get ahead of the development schedule, it can be both good and serve as a signal of some disturbance. It is considered normal if by the 6th - 8th week the child can independently hold his head, albeit for a short time.

If the baby already in the first month manages to be fixed in this position, this is not necessarily a positive achievement. Be sure to go to the pediatrician and conduct an examination, because such an accelerated development can be a symptom of increased intracranial pressure. It may also indicate muscle hypertonicity.

A delay in physical development and the inability to keep the head within the time limits established by the norms may be associated with some disorders in the body or improper care. The main of these reasons can be considered the following:

• premature birth (prematurity);
• pathological childbirth with complications;
• small body weight of a newborn;
• low muscle tone, in particular in the cervical spine;
• nutritional deficiencies;
• improper feeding, especially for artificially fed babies;
• rare laying out on the stomach;
• torticollis;
• other congenital injuries.

How to help a child

To speed up the physical development of an infant, parents need to work with their child more often. You also need to pay attention to nutrition. Other aspects of the baby's health depend on its quality.

The first thing to look out for is the quality of the food. The best option is breastfeeding. At the same time, the mother must follow a diet and make sure that the body is saturated with vitamins and microelements. If for any reason you have to transfer the baby to artificial mixtures, monitor their composition and use vitamin supplements on the recommendation of the pediatrician.

In order for the baby's muscles to get stronger faster, it is necessary to carry it in a column, spread it on the tummy, perform special gymnastics

In order for the baby to train to hold his head, he must be carried in an upright position, that is, in a column. It is especially good to do this after feeding to flush out air from the stomach, which can lead to intestinal colic. You should also train every day and lay the baby on the tummy. Hold his head up until he can turn and lift himself.

To prevent the development of torticollis, it is necessary, before putting the child in the crib, alternately turn him over on his right side and left. Additional exercises can gradually be introduced. Exercises on the abdomen, as well as swimming or physical education using fitball, are especially good for developing the cervical and shoulder muscles.

Knowing at what time, according to the norms, children should hold their heads, it is easier to track the correct development of their child. However, only a pediatrician can draw specific conclusions, so regular visits to the clinic are mandatory.

The onset of the moment when the baby independently raises his head and holds it depends on many factors. There are approximate dates, norms and ways to speed up this event.

When a child begins to hold his head - this is the first serious victory, the first step to gaining the ability to control the muscles, the spine, and move independently. Adults watching its development look forward to this moment. This is a kind of milestone in life, which later it will be possible to talk about to other mothers who are just as eagerly awaiting it.

But on the issue of timing, in the debate between mothers and grandmothers about how many months the child begins to hold his head, there are always some disagreements. After all, there is actually no definite deadline in which a significant event should take place. In pediatrics, there is the concept of a relative norm, but no one can say that a child should clearly raise his head at 2 or 3 months. The relative norm provides for a certain period in which this should happen. Anything less than or more than this period is not the norm. Everything that happened at the right time indicates normal development.

Influence of individual development

Medicine has never come to a definite conclusion about the exact timing of when children begin the process of mastering the body. The reason for this was the individual development of the fetus during the prenatal period, and the baby itself in the first month of life. Not a single professor of medicine can foresee all the components of individual development.

Children develop in different mothers, receive different heredity, composed not only of the parental genes, but also of the genes of previous generations. Mothers during the period of bearing a baby are also in different conditions, eat different foods, experience positive and negative psycho-emotional states.

The body of one pregnant woman is fully prepared for bearing a baby, in another it came earlier or later than the required peak of preparation. They wanted one baby, the other was born unwanted. Difficult passage through the birth canal for one infant was relatively normal, the other suffered a birth trauma, protracted, or rapid labor. Even the weight of newborns on one gurney, in one maternity hospital, can vary from 2 to 7 kg.

In such conditions, it is difficult to say exactly what time the child begins to perform certain actions. The kid starts them when his body has adapted and prepared for a new round in its development.

For example, in orphanages, children do not hold their heads for a long time. After all, as it is not sad, but no one loves them as much as their own mother can do. Nobody deals with them like that.

Relative norm

Therefore, pediatricians, in response to the question when a newborn begins to hold his head, skillfully avoid a direct answer. Someone says that he is already holding it when, lying on his stomach, he lifts it for a while to look around. Someone thinks that 1.5-2 months is the right time for this to happen. Someone writes that this should definitely happen by 3 months.

The most masterpiece formulation is that if he hasn't started by 6 months, then something is wrong with him. But if you started at 1 month, then this is also bad. There should be no panic in this matter. Hereditary pathologies with the modern possibilities of medicine are diagnosed almost immediately. If there is no threatening diagnosis in the medical record, you just need to do your main job - to be a mother:

1. Eat right while breastfeeding so your baby gets everything he needs.
2. Make sure that he does not get sick, that the umbilical cord heals properly, that there are no diaper rash.
3. You should not rush to introduce the necessary complementary foods.
4. Bathe frequently to develop muscles. Use special tools for this, for example, circles.
5. Constantly talk to him, play, sing songs.
6. Often and for a long time in the fresh air, to consider the space around you.
7. And the most important thing is to love him for who he is.

Here is a good and detailed video on how to properly bathe your baby to improve his development:

A normal developmental process, supported by quality care and exercise, will lead to the fact that he will begin to hold his head at the moment when he is fully ready for this.

If in the first month, after the first 5 days, when adaptation occurs after the transition from being in the amniotic fluid to an air atmosphere, he began to suck his fingers and chest, try to crawl when they touch his soles, lean his legs when supported by his armpits, smile , in the prone position to raise the head, which means that the process of developing muscles, preparing their functions, is proceeding normally, and it's time to start to speed it up a little, very carefully helping your baby.

How to speed up the development process

There is no special wisdom in this. Everything that mothers, grandmothers, and great-grandmothers did with babies was dictated by centuries of experience and common sense: laying on the stomach, and carrying it on the hands, holding the neck and head, and a bicycle with legs with the help of mother, and even toys suspended over the crib.

At the end of the first month of life, there comes a time when the baby can hold his head. And do not think that if he is already trying to do this, then, as they write on some sites, he has high intracranial pressure. Just prenatal development, normal nutrition, and exercise helped to strengthen the muscles that are responsible for this. After all, when a baby tries to walk at 10 months, no one puts forward the version that he has organ hyperfunction.

You can help the baby in development during this period, for this it is necessary:

1. Spread the baby on a flat and hard surface starting from 2 weeks for 2 minutes, gradually increasing the duration. Watch him closely while doing this.
2. To carry out in the morning and in the evening a light relaxing massage of the body, legs, back, abdomen, neck. If you don't have experience, it's a good idea to watch a video or consult with a specialist.
   
3. Bathing often, while providing some freedom of movement of the limbs, but fixing the head, special circles on the neck will help with this.
4. Exercise while the child is active (but not immediately after eating). The set of exercises should be aimed at activating different muscles of the baby.
5. Carry on hands in a vertical and horizontal position, holding the head so that the baby can look at the world around him, and at the same time train the neck muscles.
6. Hang the toys over the bed, lowering them during the activity, so that the visual, auditory, grasping reflex develops, but at the same time also play with it with musical toys that emit different sounds. A good effect is guaranteed. Various music modules that can be hung above the crib will help you with this.

Is it easier to put the baby on his back in the crib and go about his business? Well, then by 4-6 months he will master this science on his own. A child is a kind of base: the more you invest in it, the more you get.

Approximate dates

A well-developed child should already be able to hold his head by 2 months. This is due to the degree of muscle development and the manifestation of the instinct of self-preservation, which makes him do this in order not to suffocate.

But a categorical statement cannot be taken as an axiom. All factors in the development of your baby should be taken into account, ranging from heredity, the course of pregnancy and the process of childbirth, to previous illnesses, if any have already occurred (colds, for example). Much depends on the weight gain of the baby, which in turn depends on the weight of the baby at birth.

For each baby, this happens individually, there are no two such alike in nature. Even twins develop at their own individual pace. You need to worry if your baby does not look up by 3.5-4 months. Until that time, he needs to be properly fed, bathed, walked, dealt with, talked to, nursed and just loved.

Hello dear readers! Today we will talk about the first stage of the child's psycho-physical development, about when the newborn starts to hold the head. This indicator allows doctors and parents of the baby to understand whether he is developing correctly and in a timely manner.

Since birth, nature has endowed people with various reflexes of self-preservation, some of them disappear after a few months, some remain forever. For example, when you give your fingers to a newborn baby, he grasps them tenaciously, and tries to rise a little later. This reflex disappears after 3 months.

The muscles of the neck are weak at birth, the child cannot raise and hold his head on his own. Dear adults, be sure to hold the newborn under the head when picking it up, carrying it in your arms or placing it in the crib.

Another congenital reflex in a newborn is raising the head and turning it to the side when lying face down.

If you do not hold the newborn's head while lifting for the first 1–2 months, it will tip over backwards. After two months, the baby already begins to hold his head when lifting his hands in line with the body, although not for long:

2. When the newborn begins to hold the head on its own

The physiological development of the spinal cord is going according to plan in all healthy children. The age at which a child begins to hold his head is due to his state of health and activity. Premature babies start holding their heads later.

The development of the musculoskeletal system of a child up to a year in stages:

1. Begins to raise and hold his head;
2. Turns his head to the sides and raises his shoulders;
3. Rolls over from belly to back and vice versa;
4. Sits down with help and then on his own;
5. Creeps;
6. Stands on legs with support;
7. He walks holding the support with his hands.

Normally, the newborn should try to hold the head when lifting or in the arms of an adult, after two months.

By three months the muscles will get stronger, and the child already raises and holds the head for several minutes, lying on his stomach. The new review pleases the baby, and he tries to repeat his actions. Dear parents, remember that your little one’s first achievements are still fragile, so he needs your insurance.

From 4 months the baby usually already well independently holds the head in an upright position and in a prone position, he is already trying to raise his shoulders, turns his head:

3. Warning signs

If the child holds his head earlier than 2 months, this may indicate:

• Increased intracranial pressure;
• Other neurological diseases.

It so happens that the child begins to hold the head in time, after two months, but then stops doing so. This is also an alarming sign and may indicate:

• Decreased muscle tone, including the neck;
• Slow development;
• Poor weight gain and general weakness
• The effect of recent illnesses.

4. How to help a newborn to hold the head

If a child at 4-5 months is not yet holding his head in an upright position and is not trying to raise it, only a doctor can help you.

Treatment usually includes:

• Massage:
• Warming up;
• Compresses;
• Injections.

In order to improve the tone of the muscles of the whole body of the baby, give him a preventive massage. This can be done not only in the clinic, but also independently, having read the rules.

How to help a newborn to start raising and holding the head in time? You need to spread it on your stomach more often:

Frequent spreading on the stomach helps not only the free flow of gas from the intestines, but also trains the muscles of the neck. At first, the child will raise the head for a few seconds. What time should these procedures start? Start at 3 weeks.

If the baby refuses to lie on his stomach and cries, do not rush to turn him over. At first he will be uncomfortable, but over time he himself will like the new position, the review from a different angle. Calm the baby, distract with bright toys, strokes. Be sure to secure the head so that the child does not hit the nose.

Frequent spreading on the stomach trains the shoulder girdle, the child begins to rise more quickly, and then crawl, sit.

5. Prevention of torticollis

If the baby is constantly lying in one position in the crib, he may get used to looking in only one direction. As a result, the muscles of the neck will be constrained, and torticollis is formed.

To prevent this ailment, try to put the child in the crib with his head first to one end, then to the other. In this case, the child turns his head to the right and left alternately. You also need to change the position of the child, holding it in your arms so that he looks in different directions.

If the neck is nevertheless already bent to one side, the doctor prescribes the wearing of a special roller and an orthopedic pillow for newborns. Several massage sessions at the clinic will help restore twisted muscles.

The child's sluggish state and the inability to hold the head at 4 months should be a cause for concern.

But even this is not a verdict. With proper treatment, full restoration of muscle activity is possible.

Remember that the doctor must find out the reason why your little one is not holding his head on time. The reason is not always neurology, perhaps the child is underweight or weakened. In this case, another therapy is prescribed, and everything returns to normal. Do not get sick and often look at our site. See you later.

Immediately after birth, the baby looks very helpless and practically does not know how to control his body. Due to his innate grasping reflex, he can cling to the support with his arms, for example, the arms of his parents. The baby acquires the rest of the skills in movement and maintaining the position of the body during the next months of life.

And when does the child start to hold his head? This question worries all parents: by this achievement of the baby, one can judge the development of his musculoskeletal system.

The formation of the skill in maintaining the position of the head is associated with the development of the neck muscles, the formation of a cervical bend of the spine (in newborns, the spinal column is absolutely even) and occurs in several stages:

1 Parents may notice in the second or third week of a newborn's life that when laid out on the tummy, he begins to raise his head, but he is not yet able to hold the baby's position.

2 After a couple of months, the baby will be able to keep the head in an elevated position, only at an acute angle and no more than a minute. It is necessary to support the baby so that he does not make sudden movements and “does not nod off”.

3 Approximately to the baby, he knows how to raise not only the head, but also the shoulders. A safety net on the part of adults is still necessary, since with careless movements the baby can be injured.

4 At the age of about 4 months, many children confidently hold their heads, are able to turn it left and right, and in the prone position they raise the upper body.

Such a development scheme is not fair for all babies, it is possible to both accelerate the process and slow it down.

The pediatrician always controls how many months the child begins to hold his head and how long he can maintain the position. If the formation of a skill is delayed or occurs too quickly, he may prescribe special procedures.

Interesting! Educational games with a baby up to 6 months

When a premature baby starts to hold his head

Babies who were born prematurely are noticeably weaker in the first months than those who were born on time. This is understandable, because the processes of preparation for an independent life in a new environment have not yet been completed in their bodies.

Such babies in the second month of life have not yet begun to raise their heads.

What time premature babies begin to hold their heads depends on the degree of prematurity. But on average, after 4 months, this skill already begins to manifest itself, and babies begin to fully maintain their position and turn left and right by about 6 months.

If the child starts to hold his head early

Some newborns begin to raise their head on their own at a very early age. In this case, parents are concerned about the question: is it not harmful to the spine and, in general, to the musculoskeletal system?

The baby's head is too heavy for him to be able to keep it upright at such an early age. This means that a large load acts on the skeleton and muscles, which can lead to developmental disruption.

It turns out that children who begin to actively raise their heads as early as 4-6 weeks may have health problems. Often, doctors associate this phenomenon with an increase in intracranial pressure.

If parents notice that the skill appears too early, they should see a doctor. The baby can be assigned special procedures and massage therapy.

If the baby does not start to hold the head for a long time

The third, fourth month is coming, and the baby has not yet begun to hold its head in an upright position? Then you need to go to a pediatrician, a neurologist. Doctors should examine the baby and determine the cause of the disorder.

The problem may lie in improper diet, weakness of the cervical muscles, the presence of birth injuries.

The doctor may prescribe a special drug therapy, therapeutic massage, so that the child begins to hold his head. Orthopedic pillows can correct this situation. If the problem is a lack of nutrients, you may need to supplement with special infant formula.

Interesting! How to swaddle a newborn: lessons, video

What to do for a child to start holding his head

Until the baby begins to control the position of the head on his own, it is supported when the newborn is taken in his arms.

Such safety measures are needed in order not to damage the cervical spine and not to pull the muscles if the baby accidentally throws its head back. Such injuries can complicate the formation of a skill and the development of the musculoskeletal system.

To help the baby train the neck muscles, doctors recommend putting it on the tummy from about the third week (when the umbilical wound heals). Once in this position, the baby reflexively begins to turn its head to one side (so as not to suffocate - the instinct of self-preservation is triggered). This process should always be monitored and helped by the newborn when it is still difficult for him to turn.

It is better to do such exercises on a more or less hard surface (for example, a hard sofa), covered with a blanket or a baby diaper. It is useful to spread the baby on the tummy before feeding and after bathing. After the baby has eaten, you need to wait at least an hour: in this position, he will be nauseous.

Do not overuse classes, you should start from one minute, gradually increasing the time. If the baby is naughty during the exercise, he needs to be interested in the toy.

You can do simple gymnastic exercises so that the child begins to hold his head: lay the baby face down on a large ball and swing it slightly (preferably the participation of two adults to increase safety).

It is useful to lay the baby face down on your hand and lift it up in the air like an airplane. The main thing is not to make sudden movements that can scare or injure him. Read more about gymnastics for babies in our article on moe1.ru.