Episode #18
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[00:00:00] Welcome back. This is the third episode in a series of episodes all about the neural development happening with your baby during the first year of life. This is an eight-part series, as I said, that is all about trying to give mothers an understanding of what's happening neurologically in your baby's brain and their nervous system in each of the windows of development.
So it's, I've divided it into the first period of time, the zero to three-month period, the three to six-month period, six to nine months, and nine to 12 months. Each of those windows of development is divided into two separate podcasts. The first part is all about what is actually happening neurologically [00:01:00] in your baby during that period of time, and then the second part of that podcast is about what kind of things you should be seeing developmentally in your baby during that window of time, and what kind of things can you be doing at home to facilitate optimal development in the brain and the nervous system of your baby during that period.
So this is the first part of the three to six-month window. We're gonna be talking about what is happening in the brain and the nervous system of your baby from three months to six months of life. My hope for this series is really to give new mothers the full guided tour of their baby's neurology during the first year of life.
But I hope to do it in a way that is interesting and actionable [00:02:00] and practical and talks a lot about what you can be doing yourself at home to support each of these phases. So hopefully by the end of this episode, I'm hoping to give more of an understanding about what's happening in this three to six-month window of time when the higher developmental areas of the brain start taking over from what's primarily y- the brain stem, the lower parts of the brain that are sort of running the show from zero to three months, when you start seeing voluntary movement and intentional engagement Replacing what was sort of more purely reflex, automatic movements in the very beginning from zero to three months.
During the three to six-month window, we're seeing a baby who is starting [00:03:00] to be more able to control their body and more intentional in their movements, and more intentional in their social engagement with the world around them. And there's a lot of really exciting development and wiring that's happening around language as well.
So I'm hoping that, this, the three to six-month window of time, it's an exciting time because you start seeing a baby who is more and more becoming themselves, becoming who they're going to be. The primitive reflexes, these automatic non-voluntary movements, they're sort of starting to make room for more of an ability to control themselves and influence the world around them, and that allows you to see more of the personality of your baby and who they are going to be than you're able to see during those [00:04:00] first months.
So I wanna talk about that. I wanna talk about, you know, there's a lot of things happening with sleep. There's a lot of things happening with, the primitive reflexes and the postural reflexes. So just to give you a little bit of an overview, we're gonna start talking about the postural reflexes, which is all about your baby's ability to control their body in response to gravity.
We talk about the higher areas of the brain,, the cortex starting to be taking more control and the shift, what it looks like when you're going from reflexive movements to more voluntary movement. I wanna talk about, the integration of both as you're, you're starting, both sides of the body are starting to meet each other, and you're seeing a lot of that in how the baby is able to control their hands and how they're able to control their eyes and have more control at the [00:05:00] midline of their body I want to talk also about what you will be seeing when the development, primarily the first year of a baby's life is all about development of the right hemisphere of the brain, which is where we you know, are learning things like facial expressions and language and, and reading expression and tone of voice and , the sort of social, um, cues that we pick up from looking at and learning from the people around us, and that is something that you're really seeing a lot more clearly during this three to six-month period.
I would like to talk about sleep. There's a lot happening neurologically in this period of time, the window from three to six months. The sort of architecture of how the baby is sleeping is maturing, and that obviously can cause a little bit of, the four-month, I think it's called the four-month sleep regression in English.
That's something that's very [00:06:00] much talked about in,, for new mothers and very much felt in your home. We're gonna talk about the sensory systems and how those are getting more sophisticated, and again, a little bit about language and what's happening in the pre-language maturation or development or wiring of the brain.
So if we start with postural reflexes. The, primitive reflexes that you see that we talked a lot about in the first two parts of this series, so episode sixteen and episode seventeen, we talked a lot about primitive reflexes because those are primarily what you're seeing in terms of movement in your baby.
As they move into the three to six-month window, you're starting to see things are looking different. This is where the postural reflexes are starting to develop and to mature. And these are the reflexes that allow your baby to [00:07:00] start holding themselves up against gravity and allowing them to be more mobile and more in control.
As I said in the first two parts of this series I wanna talk about and I wanna introduce some of the science behind what it is that I'm talking about and introduce you to the people who have done a lot of this research or written the books or can be interesting because I'm, I have been used to in my practice that a lot of women are very interested in knowing where they can find more information, where they can read more, what they can look up to teach themselves and to learn more about these areas of development.
And so I wanna, as we're going through these episodes, I wanna introduce you to the people that I have learned from and read and looked at their research and the science. And I also have a list of references in the show notes that you can click on and see the full list of everyone that I'm talking about, so if these are [00:08:00] things that interest you.
I wanna talk about a woman who I've referenced in the first two episodes as well, called Sally Goddard Blythe, and she has written several books on neurodevelopment. And she talks a lot about the, primitive reflexes and the development of the postural reflexes. And again, the primitive reflexes are these automatic, non-voluntary movements that are present, some are present at birth, and they serve very specific developmental purposes.
And what you're starting to see during the three to six-month window of time that we're talking about now, is the maturation and the development of the postural reflexes, which are, you know, emerging during the first year of life, and they're staying with us for the rest of our lives. The primitive reflexes should be integrated and inhibited by the higher areas of the [00:09:00] brain once the body has developed more control and more, specific and sophisticated motor patterns.
So primitive reflexes are something that you should not be seeing throughout life as babies are growing and developing into,, children and adults. But the postural reflexes, these start to emerge over the first year of life, and they stay with us for the rest of our lives. And the postural reflexes are what let your baby hold their head up, right themselves, make sure that, you know, stop themselves from falling when they're tipping over.
They help them to eventually sit and crawl and stand and walk. And this period of time, the three to six-month window, is when many of those postural reflexes are first starting to become visible. Dr. Robert Melillo, who I have also referenced in both the previous two episodes and before then, he gives us a [00:10:00] view of what's actually happening when the postural reflexes develop.
They're being driven by the maturation of the cerebellum, which is the part of the brain that helps to control and coordinate movement, among many other things, and they're also being driven by a development in the vestibular system and these cortical motor areas that are working together. It's showing us that the two halves of your baby's brain are starting to communicate with each other in different ways, and the postural reflexes are some of the most visible evidence of that communication.
There's a woman named Lisa Elliot, and When she is writing about the developmental neuroscience, a lot of her work is reminding us that the cortex, the brain is also going through really rapid myelination during this window. And myelination is [00:11:00] the process where the brain's wiring is getting insulated.
And what this does is it makes the signals in the nervous system be able to travel faster and more reliably. And as that happens, , the evidence of that happening is you'll see that your baby is gaining more and more precision that's needed to coordinate these postural reflexes with, you know, their intentional movement.
So they're seeing something that they want to be moving toward, and they're able to coordinate their body more and more smoothly and more and more quickly to be able to get what it is that they, to get where they want to go or get a hold of what they want to get a hold of. And these,, what this actually looks like is you're seeing that your baby starts being able to lift their head and to look around when they're held up against your shoulder.
You can see that they're starting to right themselves. If you, you know, if you tip your baby a little bit to the side, you can see that the [00:12:00] head tips back toward the midline and adjusts so that the eyes are more level to the ground. They're able to sort of be bringing themselves back instead of just, you know, falling in the direction that you're putting them.
When they are laying on their bellies, you can see they're starting to push up onto their forearms and they're starting to look around the room and they're starting to have more control of themselves in that position. They're getting better and better at holding their head steady when they're sitting supported on your lap.
And there's just more of a sense that your baby is getting stronger and better able to control their body. They're not, they're not so floppy. There's more muscle tone. There's more organization and there's more intention in how they're holding themselves. So postural reflexes are what let your baby hold themselves up against gravity.[00:13:00]
And every time you see them, you know, push up onto their arms, lift their head or right themselves, what you're seeing is you're watching the cerebellum and the cortex learning and practicing communicating with each other. So you want to start to see what you're looking for in this window, this three to six month window, when it comes to the postural reflexes is more steady head control by about four months when they're sitting supported.
They're more comfortable and more able to be able to push themselves up onto their forearms by about four to five months when they're laying on their bellies. And again, when the body tilts, the head moves to stay vertical. You also want to see increasing muscle tone and increasing organization, increasing smoothness of movement between the upper body and the [00:14:00] arms and the shoulders.
And just in general, a baby who looks more, upright and more in control of their body almost for each week that goes during this period of time. Things that you can do at home to facilitate this is, we talked a lot about this during the zero to three month window as well, but make sure that you're giving your baby as much time on the floor on their tummies as you can possibly give them.
These are the conditions that allow postural reflexes to be practiced and to be strengthened and to emerge naturally. Again, like we talked about during the first two episodes, be aware of limiting time that you have your baby in some kind of a container, in a carrier, in a bouncer, in a swing, because this work of developing the postural reflexes, it has to happen [00:15:00] against gravity, not when they are being artificially propped up by some kind of gear.
So they need time to be fighting against gravity in order to develop and strengthen the postural reflexes. It's really important. And you want to sort of allow, that can be really tempting for parents to be pushing for development to go fast. This is an exciting time because you start seeing a baby who can be more and more in control of themselves and it's easy to get carried away and think, well, if they can do a little bit now, it would be so much better if they could just do more.
And your job is sort of just to make space for them to be doing the development, not to be pushing them into something that they're actually not ready for yet. You know, a baby who is artificially put into some kind of a seat that helps them to sit up is not the same as a baby who is developing the [00:16:00] ability to sit on their own by small practice daily.
So this next section is talking about, you know, what, when you're, when you're going from in this window, in the three to six month window, when your baby is shifting from movement that's reflex driven to movement that is more intentional. You will see the cortex, the thinking part of the brain, the deciding part of the brain, is starting to take more and more control.
There's a woman who has done a lot of research on motor development. Her name is Esther Thelen. And, she talks a lot about how motor development is not a fixed, specific schedule of milestones. It's a, it's a process where the baby's brain and their body and their environment [00:17:00] are negotiating with each other.
And in the three to six month window, you'll see, you know, sort of bursts of new movement and new abilities and new things that they're suddenly able to do. And this is the cortex finally getting strong enough to override the reflex patterns and start to produce these intentional exploratory types of movement.
Karen Adolph, who I spoke about also in the previous episodes, has a laboratory at New York University. And she has really documented that infants in this window of time, the three to six month window, they're making thousands of small variable movements every day. And those movements are exactly how the brain is learning.
So every time they're wiggling, every time they're reaching for something, every time they accidentally roll [00:18:00] themselves over and scare themselves and their parents as much, both of them, all of these are data points that the cortex is using to build the map of motor development. And that is going to support all of the skills that they're building for later in life.
So again, giving them the time and the space to be doing this work, they're not just laying on the floor stuck halfway between rolling from their back to their stomach, caught in the blanket. They're learning and developing these motor maps, and it's going to be supporting them for later on in their development.
There's another woman called Lisa Elliott, and she describes the same period of time, the three to six month window, as the time window when the cortical motor areas, particularly the areas that are controlling the arms and the hands, are maturing enough to give your [00:19:00] baby the ability to have those first experiences of reaching for things intentionally.
And it's, this is the reaching for something that they want is not just developing a motor skill, but it's the evidence that they're making a decision to move their bodies in a way that allows them to get something that they think is interesting. And so this is evidence of the maturation of the brain.
So what this actually looks like is when you're seeing your baby sort of starting to be batting at toys and then, you know, more intentionally reaching for things and then seeing something and grabbing it, this development is evidence that you can see that the cortical development in the brain is maturing in the way that it should be.
You'll start seeing things like their hands are opening up more. These... The the newborn, typically from zero to three months, your baby mostly has their hands in a fist, and a lot of that is because the palmar [00:20:00] grasp reflexes is, present from birth. But when you start to see integration of the palmar grasp, you'll see their hands start to open up, and they're-- this is important because it allows them to be reaching for things and developing the s- motor skills of the arms and the hands.
And you'll start to see movement that looks less jerky and less random turn into something that looks more organized and more goal-directed. You'll also start to see your baby showing preferences, so reaching for a specific toy or turning toward a specific voice, and you start to get a sense that your baby is now participating in their own movement.
So the first, you know, these, these sort of first moments where you're seeing proof of voluntary movement, you're in it. This is the time. Between three to six months is when it [00:21:00] starts happening. Y- we can all remember the first time you walk away from your baby and you come back and they're not where you left them.
They've rolled into a different place on the floor, or they've scooted themselves along against a, you know, and they're not where they were, and you realize life has changed. Things are different. You're in trouble now, right? So, you know, looking for these things, looking for them to be sort of batting at objects from three to four months, and then starting to reach with intention by four to five months, the hands opening up and starting to relax, bringing their hands more to the middle of the body and to their mouth, and being able to do that more intentionally and with more precision than they could during the first few months.
Goal-directed movement. Your baby is looking at something and then trying to move themselves towards it, and that they're doing an,, have an increased variety and an increased creativity of movement. They're not [00:22:00] doing the same patterns over and over, but they're changing the ways they're moving their body.
So the important things to think about at home when it comes to helping to support your baby in more voluntary movement, again, giving them uninterrupted time on the floor, because this is where they're developing that intentional movement. And offer them just a small number of simple toys. You know,
more is not always better, and you, it can quickly become overwhelming with too many toys and too many things and lights and noises. And so just a few simple things that they can get ahold of. And let them struggle a little. This period of time is really important to, I've talked about this on several podcasts before, but don't come and save them all the time.
Even though it hurts, painful to stand there and [00:23:00] watch, this little, tiny baby be stuck on the floor, unable to get themselves over into the roll, or unable to get the toy that's just out of their reach, or... It's so tempting, but don't come and rescue them too quickly. Give it just a few seconds.
Give them the opportunity to become frustrated, and understand that that frustration, it leads them into the next part of their development. And I, like I always say, I do not mean you should leave your baby on the floor to cry. Of course, I don't mean that. But I do mean you can definitely stand there for a second and see if they figure it out, because you will also see that there is nothing like the level of satisfaction you can see radiating from your baby when they are actually able to do it for themselves.
So make sure that you're not saving them from those experiences of being able to figure it out and get themselves where [00:24:00] they're looking to go. And again, for one of the, you know, the last, when it comes to these voluntary movements, try to resist propping them up all the time. You know, if you're propping them into a sitting position in some kind of a chair that's holding them up, that's not the same neurology that you're building as you are with a baby who is allowed to work themselves into being able to find that position on their own.
So just be aware of that. The next section I wanna talk about what we're seeing when we're starting to see integration of the two sides of the body. So the baby is, the brain is now more able to bring their hands to the center of their body. They're able to, the, you know, the right side of the body and the left side of the body are starting to realize that the other exists, and their hands are a big indication of that when you start to see them meeting in the middle.
There's a woman I've [00:25:00] talked about on the previous two, the first, you know, the zero to three month window, both of those podcasts, and her name is A. Jean Ayres, and she really was one of the, if not the originator of the field of sensory integration. And she talks a lot about that the ability to use the two sides of the body together, which is called bilateral integration, is one of the foundational outcomes of healthy sensory and motor development.
And it begins to develop and mature in this three to six month window when your baby is first starting to bring their hands together at the midline of their body. Sally Goddard Blythe, who I have talked about before in this episode and also in previous episodes, she also talks about that crossing the midline, the ability to have one of your hands cross the center of your body is [00:26:00] dependent on the integration of the asymmetric tonic neck reflex, which is the ATNR reflex, which begins to become more inhibited during this window.
And in the next, the part two of this, the three to six month window, so the next episode that's coming up, I'm gonna go really in depth into the primitive reflexes, which primitive reflexes should be present, which primitive reflexes should starting to, should be starting to integrate. So we'll get more into that.
But Sally Goddard Blythe talks about the ATNR reflex when it starts to be more inhibited, the brain becomes more free to coordinate the two sides of the body rather than being locked into an asymmetric posture where one side of the body is programmed to do the opposite from the other side of the body.
There's a woman called, Carla Hannaford. In her book, Smart Moves, [00:27:00] she describes how the early experience of bringing the two sides of the body together is the scaffolding for the corpus callosum, which is the bridge between the two hemispheres of the brain. It's the bridge that connects the right side of the brain to the left side of the brain.
And this midline, this window of time where they're integrating and more able to be crossing the midline and meeting the hands in the middle and, having, seeing that their eyes are also more able to be meeting in the middle, this is the wiring of that bridge between those two sides.
So at home, this looks like, you know, seeing that your baby can bring their hands together over their chest while they're laying on their back, starting to see that their hands are really finding each other, their fingers are interlacing with each other, their palms are meeting, they're bringing their hands to their mouth, and their, both hands can reach for the same toy, and they can pass that toy from one hand to the other.
And when your baby's lying on [00:28:00] their back, you'll see that they're starting to prefer their head being more in the midline rather than always being turned slightly to one side or to the other. So you wanna watch for that. You wanna watch for those, watch for these signs of bilateral integration, which means that the brain is learning to coordinate the two sides of the body.
It's the foundation for crawling and for writing and for every single two-handed skill that your child is ever going to need. So every time they're bringing their hands together, they're wiring that bridge between the two halves of their brain. So again, things to look for, hands meeting at the midline by about four months, going into their mouth from about three to four months, toys being passed from one hand to the other by five to six months, the head being comfortably at the midline when they're laying on their back rather than tipped to one side or the other, [00:29:00] and symmetrical movement patterns, both arms doing the same thing, both legs kicking together.
And things that you can do at home to facilitate this is you know, g- again, give them time. Lay your baby on their back on a firm surface and let their hands find each other. Let them, you know, offer them toys at the midline rather than directly into one hand or the other on the sides of their body.
Offer them something that they have to practice putting their hands together at the midline of their body. And notice if the head is always turned to one side. We talked a lot about this in the previous two episodes as well, but if you're seeing a lot of asymmetry past four months, this is worth, um, having a closer look from someone who is trained in pediatric neurodevelopment.
And just trust that what they're doing when they're, when they're putting, when they look like they're innocently laying there playing with their toys and putting [00:30:00] them back and forth to, from one hand to the other or their hands are coordinating movements, they're building their brain.
So this is one of the most important things that your baby can be doing during this time. The next section is about The development of the right hemisphere of the brain. As your child is growing and through the first years of life, depending on the age that they're at, there will be more development happening in the right hemisphere of the brain or the left hemisphere of the brain.
But from the time of birth until the child is about two years old, the right hemisphere of the brain is developing more rapidly, primarily as compared to the left hemisphere of the brain. So this right hemisphere is in its peak growth period at this time, and this is the hemisphere that processes emotion, body sensation, attachment, and the sort of [00:31:00] the sense of another person.
So in this window of time, the moment-to-moment matching between you and your baby, it's shaping the development of the brain. There's a man called Alan Shore, and he talks a lot about right brain development. And his work talks about the right hemisphere of the brain being dominant during the first three years of life.
And it's the growth of the right hemisphere of the brain being most rapid between about two months to 24 months. So two months old to the first two years of age. And the way that the right brain is being developed and maturing is not from books or from stimulation. It's from direct face-to-face emotional exchange between the baby and the primary caregiver.[00:32:00]
A man named Daniel Stern, he was the one who coined the term affect attunement, and he's describing how the way that a parent instinctively matches the rhythm and the intensity of their baby's emotional state. These are the first, you know, the quality of these interactions, the smoothness and the rise and the fall and the flow of this connection between the caregiver and the baby.
The baby is reading and learning from all of this. They're looking at your face. They're listening to your voice. They are feeling your touch, and they're sort of learning to be attuned to the way that the parent is interacting with them. Edward Tronick, who we talked about in the first two episodes, has done research and [00:33:00] has the clearest evidence that infants during this window, this three to six month window, are reading the emotional tone of the caregiver.
And they are, you know, when a parent's face goes blank, the baby's entire nervous system is organizing around trying to repair that connection. They're trying to, they're looking for a connection and looking for feedback and looking for facial expressions and looking for tone of voice and looking for all of that right brain connection during this period of time.
So things that you'll see at home relating to the development of the right hemisphere of the brain, you'll see that your baby is looking into your eyes and, you know, not looking away, but having longer and longer periods of time when they're really looking into your eyes. You'll see your baby's mood shifting when your mood shifts.
You'll start to feel a synchronicity between the two of you [00:34:00] and smiles and laughter and starting to use their voice in response to you, not just in, you know, in random, randomly, but in response to you being there in front of them. You'll see your baby protesting when you turn away in the middle of interacting with them and you'll see that they're looking for the connection again.
And you'll have a sense that, you know, you and your baby are having a conversation even before they're able to form words, but that you're feeling the back and forth starting to develop that happens just like it does in a conversation. So every time that you mirror your baby's expression, you're building the wiring for that emotional regulation.
You're helping them to build the hard wiring that they're going to need for the rest of their lives. And an attunement is the rhythm between you, yourself and your baby. [00:35:00] So when you are in the same emotional state, you're wiring neurons together that are going to support your child's ability to, you know,, you're supporting the development of healthy relationships and healthy attachment that they're going to be able to have for the rest of their lives.
So things that you want to be watching for that are evidence of this development in the right brain. Again, seeing that they're spending longer and longer periods of time looking, holding eye contact and looking at you and reciprocal smiling and laughing and using their voice and starting to coo and starting to respond when you are talking to them.
Having, you know, being visibly distressed when face-to-face contact is broken and seeing that they become more [00:36:00] regulated and their face lights up and they become, you know, you can see that it's affecting them in a positive way when that face-to-face contact returns. And having a growing sense that your baby is in conversation.
They're starting to mimic facial expressions. They're starting to mimic the, , using their voice. They're starting to mimic the laughter and the being able to hold eye contact. Things that you can do at home to make sure that you are facilitating this development of the right brain, have daily face-to-face time.
Put your phone down. Look, be looking in their face. Remember that your face is one of the most important inputs that your baby has. And when you are working to, you know, when, you're practicing co-regulation in these windows of time where you can see that your, when your baby is distressed or when they're upset or when they're crying, you wanna [00:37:00] make sure that you are being responsive to those times and working on this co-regulation is about, you know, showing up to the scene with a regulated nervous system yourself and just working on first thinking about helping your baby to find their way back to a neutral regulated state.
And you do that through, like we've talked about many times before, you do that through the tone of your voice. You do that through the way that it, you know, you, the, your own nervous system, how it feels to be in the room with you, how it feels to be next to you, your level of tension in your body, your facial expressions, your tone of voice, your breathing and heart rate.
And these are things that your baby borrows from you in the beginning, and every time you practice finding your way back from dysregulation or distress or crying back to a regulated state, [00:38:00] you're teaching their brain and their nervous system how to find their way there on their own later. And this is building the foundation and the tools so that you have a child who is more able to regulate their own emotions in the years to come.
So it's important work that you're doing. Trust your instincts during this period of time. You are t- you know, you're tuning to your baby without even really thinking of it,, consciously while it's happening. You're sort of just, without having to make a decision to do it, you're automatically just responding to what your baby needs during the day.
And that is exactly the, you're building, that's building the networks that your baby needs. Your baby needs to see that they're, they are being responded to and being met in their needs by you. That is [00:39:00] building the neurology for a strong foundation of attachment and a strong foundation that's helping them to build their own emotional regulation again.
Let's talk a little bit about sleep and what is happening neurologically in this period of time, because around four months of age, your baby's sleep really changes. It really reorganizes. The newborn sleep pattern, which is, can be, you know, really long stretches of deep sleep that's mixed with more active sleep, a more lighter sleep, really changes into a more adult-like architecture of sleep with distinct stages, lighter cycles.
This is a sign of neurological maturation. It's not a regression in the way that it's called. It's a sign of maturation. James McKenna has done research on [00:40:00] mother-baby sleep at Notre Dame, and he talks about how his research has established the foundational principle that infant sleep is biologically designed to be light and frequent and responsive to the caregiver.
And around four months, the brain begins moving from this two-state newborn pattern, which is active sleep and quiet sleep, into a more mature pattern with multiple sleep stages and shorter cycles. And this shows you that the brain is growing, not that something is wrong. Helen Ball, who is an anthropologist of infant sleep at Durham University, she has documented that infants in this window cycle through sleep stages about every 45 to 60 minutes, and they have partial, um, - you know, they wake up in between these cycles, which is normal.
It's [00:41:00] biologically normal. And The ability to link those cycles together, which means when they come back from being in deep sleep and their sleep, you know, goes into a more lighter stage of sleep and then they have this period where they wake up in between going into the next cycle of sleep, the capacity for the baby to link those two cycles together to fall back asleep once they've woken up, the ability to do that without parental support is a skill that they develop gradually across the first, she says two years of life.
All, parents know sometimes, sometimes two years, sometimes it takes a little bit longer. But this ability to, when they're waking up in between sleep cycles, to fall back asleep on their own without the support of their parents is a skill they have to develop, not something that they're born with.
Again, Lisa Elliot, who we talked about before, [00:42:00] she's describing the neurology underneath this, that the brainstem, the structure that governs this sleep-wake transition and the brain structures that produce more mature sleep stages, they are both undergoing significant growth and significant maturation during this period of time, anywhere between three and a half months to five months, that your baby is producing a new pattern and a new way of sleeping as a result of their brain growing.
So what this is gonna look like is a baby who was sleeping in long stretches of time starts waking a little bit more frequently around four months, and these happen kind of predictably at predictable points during the night that line up with these transitions of the sleep cycles, which is again every 45 to 60 minutes roughly.
Your baby may be harder to [00:43:00] settle. They may be fighting napping more, and they may suddenly need more support to fall asleep. I have talked a lot about supporting babies in learning how to, the, uh, Stephen Porges talks a lot about how we find sleep from the stage in the autonomic nervous system that is, the calm, relaxed, alert, awake state, not the fight or flight state.
None of us can find sleep from a fight or flight state of our nervous system. We have to be finding sleep from a relaxed, safe, neutral state. And so Being able to find that state is not something that babies are born with the ability to do. They have to have help finding that state. [00:44:00] And we as parents, we as caregivers facilitate helping our babies find that state in their nervous system from which they can fall back to sleep.
So a lot of parents will talk about this period of time as the period where their baby forgot how to sleep, but it's actually the brain is growing and developing, and there can be, you know, increased fussiness. It can be, it can affect their feeding, it can affect their digestion. There can just be a lot of things that are really being affected during this period of time.
But you need to remember, this isn't a regression, it's a progression, and the brain and the nervous system is reorganizing itself, and it's affecting the way that your baby is able to sleep. And so this is a period of time that you're gonna be coming out on the other side of but being aware of what's actually happening in the brain and the nervous system and knowing that you as [00:45:00] the parent are imperative in helping your baby learn and develop the ability in their nervous system to come out on the other side of this period of time with better sleeping skills is just really important.
So you wanna think about things that you can be doing, first of all, recognizing what's happening around this period of four months, and what's happening is, there's a shift in how they sleep is maturation and not a problem, and really leaning into having responsive support during this transition.
This capacity to fall back to sleep independently in between these cycles, it develops over months and years, not over, a weekend. And try to protect the conditions during the daytime for sleep. Make sure they're getting enough activity, make sure they're getting enough sensory input, make sure they're getting enough connection because that regulation of the nervous system and [00:46:00] the sensory input and the motor input during the day supports regulation of the nervous system at night, so they're getting better sleep.
So the more mature sleep is on its way, even if the nights can be hard during this period of time. Just know that you're coming out on the other side. So the sensory system that we talked about in the first, in the zero to three month episodes is getting noticeably more refined during this period of three, the three to six month window.
So their vision and their hearing and their touch and the vestibular and the proprioceptive processing, these are all maturing in ways that really change how your baby experiences the world. And to just as a reminder, the vestibular system is the balance system that allows your baby's brain to know where they are in [00:47:00] space.
And the proprioceptive system is the ability to control the parts of the body without having to look at the parts of the body while they're moving. So you have sensors in primarily your muscles and your joints that are telling you where you're moving your body through space so that you can have more voluntary control.
These, what you're seeing during this time where the sensory system is getting more sophisticated, the woman that I've talked about before, A. Jean Ayers has talked about the sensory systems in all of her work and how they develop in a very specific sequence. So the vestibular and the proprioceptive systems are maturing first, and this is starting all in the womb before birth.
The tactile system, the feedback system from being touched matures after that. And then the [00:48:00] auditory and the visual systems become increasingly sophisticated. And during this window of time, the three to six month window, all of these systems are working together in more coordinated ways for the first time.
Lucy Jane Miller's clinical work shows that this is the period when sensory preferences and tolerances start to become visible individually. So you can see some babies are seeking out more sensory input. They want to be moved. They want to be held. They want to be swung. They want to be in motion. Other babies are more reserved.
They want, they prefer things more quiet. They prefer the movement and the touch to be more gentle. And both of those are normal variations, but it becomes more clear what your baby needs and wants during this time. Lisa Elliott's work again [00:49:00] talks also about the visual acuity and depth perception, their ability to see more in a way that an adult sees than the way a newborn sees is sharpening significantly.
It's maturing significantly from this three to six month window. So the colors are richer, the depth is clearer, faces and objects are becoming sharper, and they're more able to focus. So things that you're seeing when it comes to more sophistication and more development of the sensory systems is that your baby is tracking objects across the room.
They're looking farther around. They're looking around at what's happening in their environment with more coordinated eye movement. They have a more of a clear preference for certain textures and sounds and types of movement. They are responding more to their name, turning towards familiar voices, and becoming more [00:50:00] curious, becoming more visually curious about everything that's around them.
The sensory, experiences that maybe used to work in soothing them, it maybe stop working. Maybe they need new sensory experiences to be able to calm them when they are dysregulated. So their, what they prefer and what they want can change, and you may need to be adapting some of the things that you're doing.
So notice, look around, notice what your baby is looking for. Look what they're seeking out and what they're avoiding, and these preferences are giving you a little bit of a clearer picture. See what they in- see what they like, see what , they are drawn to, and do more of that. And just know that, the expression that's on their face when they're looking at you, it's no longer random.
They're really looking at you, and they're really responding to what they're seeing when you're looking back at them. So you wanna, during this period of time, this three to six-month window, you wanna see that [00:51:00] they are more smoothly tracking things with their eyes, both objects and faces, and that they're having an orientation around sounds.
So if there's, if someone, if they recognize a voice that's walking into the room, they're turning to look towards the voice. And you'll see, again, you wanna be seeing that there's more emerging individual sensory preferences. They're starting to have things, favorite type of touch. Maybe you're seeing that they have a favorite toy, or they have a, they wanna have their blanket with them, or they wanna, things that they wanna be, their favorite types of things that they're touching and favorite textures.
And that they have an increased tolerance for a variety of sensory input throughout the day, that they're able to handle more before getting overstimulated. Things that moms can do, things that you can be doing at home, notice what your baby is seeking out and offer them more of it. Notice what kind of input they are avoiding and try to have respect for [00:52:00] that and, be doing more of what you can see they enjoy and not If they hate to be swung around the room, don't swing them around the room.
If they hate to be, bounced, don't bounce them. If they love to be, bounced around, then do more of that. Sort of take the cue from your baby. Vary their sensory environment gently. You know, have them in different rooms, have different types of lighting, have different sounds, different textures throughout the day, and keep the overall sensory load moderate.
The maturing system, of course, still needs some protection from overstimulation, but you should see that they're able to handle a little more than they could when they were zero to three months during this time. The last section that I wanna talk about before we're finished here is the pre-language wiring that's happening in the brain.
Because long before your baby can say their first word, their brain is really doing a lot of extraordinary work to be [00:53:00] prepared for language. And this window of time, the three to six-month window, is when the wiring for speech and for conversation and for connection is being formed, and quickly.
There's a woman, called Patricia Kuhl, K-U-H-L. She's a developmental neuroscientist, and, her hypothesis is called the social gating hypothesis, and this describes infancy as the sort of linguistic genius window of the human lifespan, that during this period of time, your baby's brain is actively analyzing the sounds of every language they're exposed to, and they're beginning to specialize in the patterns of the language or the languages that are spoken around them.
And by about six months, your baby is already starting to lose the ability to distinguish between sounds that are not in their language natively, their native language, not because they're losing the capacity, [00:54:00] but because they're getting better and more specialized at the language that they're actually going to need.
Andrew Meltzoff, his research demonstrates that infants in this window are already imitating facial expressions and vocal sounds, and that the, imitation that you see them doing is one of the engines of this social and language learning. Your brain, your baby's brain is wired to copy you and to be copied by you, and that back and forth is the foundation for what will become conversation.
There's some research on something called proto-conversation from a man named Colwyn Trevarthen, and his research shows that by, uh, even by three months, your baby is Starting to engage [00:55:00] in the first structure of conversation, rhythmic exchanging of facial expressions and vocalization and looking, you know, where their gaze is, and having the back-and-forth structure of a conversation before they're able to produce words.
And so this is important to be doing with your baby every single day because you're building the architecture of language and of connection and, again, of this development of the right brain that we talked about before. So when your baby is verbalizing something, making sounds in response to you, and then waits for you to make sounds back, this is the timing of that conversation back and forth.
And you should start to be seeing them babbling more, using, doing more and more vocalization and maybe starting to put some consonants in, starting to hear things that can almost start to be, sound like words. And your baby is really, during this time, watching your mouth while you're speaking.
You can [00:56:00] see that they're looking at your mouth and seeing you forming words, and you can almost see the wheels turning behind there. And the baby, you'll see them imitating your facial expressions and the sounds that you're making, and there's a feeling that your baby is talking with you even though the words are not being formed yet.
So they're in a really, this is a really powerful language learning window during the life of your baby, and their brain is doing an analysis on these sounds, in a way that is highly specialized just for what it looks like. And so when they're verbalizing and when they're making sounds and they're having a conversation, make sure to have that conversation with them.
It's not just being cute. It's building the structure and the foundation of language, so it's an important thing to have happening. You wanna make sure that you are seeing this cooing and this vocalization by about three to four months and more of [00:57:00] a babbling with sort of a little bit of using consonant sounds like ba, da, ga.
Hearing a little bit more, you know, things that are starting to sound like the first versions of words by about four to six months. You wanna see that your baby is watching your mouth when you're talking, and that they're imitating facial expressions and simple sounds and that your baby really loves to be talked to and to be sung to and to be having those, that back and forth with you.
So talk to your baby constantly. Talk to them in real time, face to face. This is probably the most high-yield language input that you can be doing. And wait for them to respond Leave them, give them some space to be vocalizing back and responding to what they say when they do that. Sing to them, talk to them, narrate what's happening, repeat things back.
The rhythm of your voice [00:58:00] is a very powerful input. And again, we've talked about this before, but keep the screens out. Patricia Kuhl's research is really clear. Babies do not learn language from screens. They learn language from people. And language is more than just the words that we're saying. It's the way we're using our bodies and our mouths and our faces and our expressions and our tone of voice while we're doing that, and those things are learned from people.
So everything that you are seeing in your baby right now, them holding up the head, hands meeting at the chest, smiles that are aimed specifically for you, new noises, harder nights maybe, you know, this all traces back to one thing, and that is that the brain is maturing and developing, and the right brain is maturing and developing, and the reflexes are reorganizing from primarily primitive reflexes into more postural reflexes that are giving them more control over their [00:59:00] bodies and their movements.
And the wiring for language is being laid down, and this is just a window where you can really see your baby starting to become themselves. In the next part, in the next episode, we're gonna take everything that we just talked about in terms of what's happening developmentally and translate it into what you actually see as a mother and what you can do to support it.
So I hope that you will join me for the next episode. If you're interested and you haven't heard the first two episodes on the zero to three-month window, I hope you will go back and listen to those. I'll have everything linked. And if any of the books or the research that I talked about during the episode is interesting, I will leave the link for the reference list in the show notes.
Thank you for being here. Thank you for spending the time with me today.
