Playing with your newborn

As parents interact with their newborn from arrival home through the months of growth, the baby learns how to move, to communicate, to understand their environments, and how to function in social settings. Playing also helps newborns develop. Through playfulness, babies are:

• learning through the senses
• senses and responses
• exploring their environment
• developing differently

Learning through the senses

New stimulations via the senses is what inspires responses in the newborn as they learn. Touching their mother’s face and hands, feeling skin on skin, smelling new scents, hearing different sounds like music and voices, and tasting foods is all part of the process. Having their needs met in a playful way can be fun and bring on smiles, be soothing and help them fall asleep, and trigger movements that help them learn better motor control and reflex.

Touching the newborn’s cheek and mouth causes turning of the head and mouth in the direction of the touch for food. Similarly, they learn to move towards the breast for feeding or the bottle. Hearing a mother’s voice helps babies learn to talk. Initially, newborns sleep a lot and then start becoming more alert for periods of time. Using these periods of alertness for playful learning is important to keep up with their development.

Senses and responses

Sometimes babies start to cry when over-stimulated. Care should be taken not to overdo playing either and to be sensitive to the newborn’s responses and needs.

As the newborn’s senses start to develop, you can identify stages and their rates of response. Although there are now a number of identified senses both internal and external within in the body, the main noticeable ones are touch, sight, hearing, smell and taste.

Touch - After being warmly contained within the womb, the newborn may feel cold easily and the touch of fabric or the cot can add to the feeling of discomfort. Keeping the newborn wrapped and held close using soft fabrics and touches helps the baby experience their new world as a  friendlier place.

Sight and Sound - About four weeks after birth, the newborn’s eyes will start to react to light. Medical checkups after birth will reassure you about your baby’s responses to stimuli, what to expect and normal functioning. Both sight and hearing are screened to identify any abnormalities for treatment. Baby’s eyes do cross, but should not do so for long periods of time or too frequently. Using different colours and moving light that is not too bright, can help your newborn learn how to focus and strengthen eyesight.

Taking preventative measures to avoid your newborn contracting infection or trauma to the face is important because infection or injury can damage their hearing and eye sight. Although the newborn is used to the internal sounds of the mother’s body and also muffled outer sounds, being exposed to sounds not buffered by the womb can be scary and overwhelming. Babies enjoy gentle rhythms and singing. Over time, babies learn to coordinate the functions of their senses, like hearing and seeing at the same time.

Smell and taste – Most babies enjoy sweetness but squirm to souring tastes. For the first six months, newborns are fed breast milk or formula milk and love the taste. Thereafter, it is usually safe to start feeding solid baby foods. Introducing sweeter mashed vegetables and fruits will be easier. As the newborn develops, they start getting used to different flavours and develop their own food likes. When babies start eating solids, it is important not to force the foods they don’t enjoy. Rather choose nutritional alternatives that they do accept.

Exploring their environment

Babies that are alert usually start to wriggle and this is a sign that they’re ready to play. Allowing babies to explore newborn toys and safe items in the room are how they start using their senses to respond more. Babies soon learn to recognise touches, sounds, shapes, and so on.

Toys can be used for stimulation with texture, sound, patterns, colours, shapes and so on. Their senses are still developing and the stimulation helps them improve their sense of touch, movement, sight, smell, hearing, taste, among some. The use of toys contributes to a baby’s ability to focus, to make expressions, to have rhythm and to copy behaviours.

Playing and developing differently

Not all babies develop the same because they are created differently from the parent’s genetics and also the stimulations that they are exposed to. Any concerns over responses to stimulations affecting the senses should be discussed with a healthcare provider for advice. Through playing, parents can identify if there are any impairments in their baby’s senses for certain stages of development.

Caring for your newborn:

• Caring for your newborn
• What are dummies?
• Newborns and movement
• Burping your baby
• Playing with your newborn
• Caring for newborns with and without circumcision
• Baby hair loss
• Baby Massage
• Newborn Clothing: Dressing and body temperature
• Newborn and home safety
• Newborn: When others want to hold or touch
• Babies and pets
• Baby constipation
• Baby clothes
• What should my first aid kit contain?
• Taking a baby’s temperature
• Baby medicine

• Coping with your newborn
• Newborn: When to call a doctor?
• Baby hygiene
• Trimming baby nails
• Caring for babies’ bottoms
• Baby poo
• How to care for your newborn’s body
• Newborns and nappies
• Caring for your Baby’s Clothes
• Baby Milestones
• Baby first aid
• Common baby emergencies
• How to help a choking baby
• Baby vomiting
• Keeping your baby safe
• Baby Monitors
• Baby swimming