How Do I Play With A Newborn?

How Do I Play With A Newborn?

In this youtube video, Mama Natural has put together ten ways to play with a newborn, from recommendations by other Mums. They are all really simple ideas, but I found them to be effective. Baby Coco had then (and still does), the biggest reaction to eye contact and singing and responds with wide eyes and intense concentration.

Maybe you're going to be spending time with your friends or family who have babies this week. Or you're looking to leave some tips for a babysitter while you go on a hot date night with your Partner, or you're thinking about how spend those daytime play hours with your newborn. Here is Mama Natural's list:

Make eye contact | Sing | Dance | Baby Games | Baby Massage | Snuggles | Skin to Skin contact | Kisses | Stick your tongue out & have your baby mimic | Read to them

You could try these out on your little ones to see which ones have them spellbound, haha.

Below is a bit more detail on things that I introduced in the first two months to help me engage with baby C and what her reactions were:

Reading together
Wooden books are great for the first year. In the first couple of weeks, I had some energy, I think it may have been adrenaline or a rush of hormones following the birth?  I took it upon myself to read to Coco while she was awake. Her Uncle got her a book called 'Thats not my baby', which has different textures on each page, incorporated intp the story. Well, I would gently rub Coco's fingers on the textures as I read the story to her.

Visual stimulation
These are also books, but with no story. A lovely friend of mine gave us a set of 'The Social Baby' books. She used it with her baby and says she could see him react to it from very early on. I did not need any more convincing to try them out on Coco. With Coco in her bouncer, I would flash the pages in each book in front of her and watch her reactions.

She followed the pages and seemed really interested in what she was looking at. I feel she particularly enjoys the pages with faces on them. The books also come with a mobile that you can put together, which I set up and hung above her changing table. She is still very fascinated by the black and white mobile.

Bath time
Apparently most babies love water. For some reason, before Cocos birth, I thought it was the other way round, so was the beaming, proud mother when she seemed to enjoy her first bath. Now I know better and her love for water has not changed, yet. She gets a bath daily and kicks away excitedly during them. When she was tiny, I bathed her in the sink in our bathroom, which has a wall mirror, so she ended up staring into the mirror too and I would watch for her reactions. Just watching her during bath times was great therapy during the colic times too, because I think she was distracted and I felt like she was 'happy' in those moments.

Occasionally, I have a bath with Coco, usually with me in a swim suit because, lets just say, the distractions had to put away otherwise bath time becomes exclusively, food time, even if she was fed five minutes before we got into the bath.

Bouncer
When I started putting Coco into the bouncer I mentioned at this post, she initially did not like it. I gave her time in it for a few minutes everyday, until one day she decided she did in fact like it and she continues to enjoy it. Watching her play with the hanging toys has been an interesting one. This is because I can see her fine motor skills improve and then track them on the Tinybeans App too, more on the App here. She went from looking at the toys, to reaching for them with varying degrees of success, to batting, then holding them and now she likes to hold the bar too. I don't think the manufacturers had that one in mind. I talked about introducing other toys to the bouncer here and she seems to enjoy the variety. She showed her interest in these during month one and two by concentrating very hard on looking at the toys or trying to touch them.

Singing
We have a bath time song, a play song, a sleep time song, a morning song... you get the picture. I made up a song for these activities and now when its time for each one I sing the relevant song. They all have a similar tune, so it probably songs like the same song to her, haha, but she still gets very excited ands smiles big smiles each time, so she enjoys all the same it seems. When she was younger she just stared while I sang, but now she smiles and I just feel that she recognises the songs and is telling me that with her big smiles.

Happy Monday
x

How Do I Play With A Newborn?