This is how your newborn makes contact

understanding without words

Yelling, crying or chuckling: your baby knows different ways of communicating. You will quickly notice what your baby wants to tell you. You will understand each other without words. When your baby cries, it can have various causes: either it is tired, hungry, a wet diaper, discomfort or boredom. If you don’t know what’s wrong with your baby in the early days after the birth, you can test it out: give it your breast, pick it up or change its diapers. A cause will soon be found. As your baby develops, the way they communicate will change over time.

sounds of your baby

After about four weeks, your baby will start trying out the first sounds. It sounds like a soft snore, “chrchr” or “aaaahhh”. If you want to make your baby happy, imitate his sounds. This is fun for him and encourages him to try more. Your baby also loves it when you talk to him in a quiet, slightly raised voice. Soft, melodious chanting, frequent repetition, and slow, exaggerated pronunciation also go down particularly well with him. In the first few weeks, language only arouses your baby’s interest in connection with eye contact and undivided attention.

Communicate with grimaces

Even if your baby doesn’t understand you yet, it enjoys the sound of your voice. Talk to him, sing him something or make funny faces. Your baby will watch you in fascination and try to answer you with similar grimaces.

Your baby’s first smile

After a short time you can see how a slight smile spreads across your baby’s face just before he falls asleep. It looks like it’s feeling really good right now. Even if that’s probably true, the smile still happens all by itself, without you being able to influence it. You have to wait until about the middle of the second month for the first conscious smile. You can still enjoy it now!

This is how your baby will communicate over the next few months

Find out in our other articles how your baby’s communication behavior will develop over the next few months:

• 1st-3rd Month: crying, squeaking and chuckling
• 4th-6th Month: Your baby laughs a lot
• 7th-9th Month: Your baby recognizes moods
• 10-12 Month: Your baby’s first words

In our articles “ Learning to speak ” for the first year of life and “ Language development ” for infancy you will learn more about the development of your child’s communication and language.

This is how your newborn develops in other areas

In the following articles you can get an overview of how your newborn is developing in other areas:

• Movement: Your baby’s reflexes
• Nutrition: The first breastfeeding meals
• Sleep: Your baby wakes up frequently
• Senses: Your baby can do that
• Growth: why babies lose weight after birth