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Parenting Through the Milestones: When Babies Reach Them

Posted by
July 30, 2011

Michael YalungIt seems as though as soon as a baby is born, the parents start looking for them to achieve milestones. First we want them to hold their head up, then we want them to roll over and then we start thinking about crawling and walking.

The rolling over milestone is really the first big movement that a baby will make on their own. With my second child, I was just as happy about her rolling over as I was with my first. I still called everyone I knew and applauded my baby as though she had just discovered electricity. Why do we get so excited? Well, it’s partly because it’s the first time that a baby is showing us that she’s well on her way to independence. First she’ll roll over and before you know it, she’ll be helping you make dinner. But there’s another reason. New parents are bombarded with what their child should be doing, milestones they should be reaching, when they should be reaching them, and how to help them achieve these great feats.

This can be a little overwhelming for parents that are sleep-deprived and already have too much to do. Worrying that our baby didn’t roll over the day she turned three months old can be one stress that we just don’t need. It’s easy to look at the ages for milestones and tell yourself logically that they are just guidelines. There’s really no need to worry unless your baby is continually missing milestones or seems to always be much slower than where the doctors and books say they should be.

But it’s important to not just tell ourselves these things but to actually believe them. These days are for bonding with your baby and to enjoy having them as the newest part of our family. Remember that they are just guidelines and if something is really wrong, the parent voice inside your head will nine times out of ten, let you know.

[tags]new_parents, milestones, milestone, electricity, doctors, stress, sleep[/tags]

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