We have 7 senses. They aren’t all fully developed at birth:
👁 Vision. Babies have very poor vision with no depth perception. They can see about 8-10” away, the distance from the breast to your face. They prefer high contrast, like your areola compared to your breast.
👂🏻 Hearing. At birth, fluid in the ear may affect baby’s hearing, but usually clears in a few days. They know your voice and prefer it above all others.
👃🏽 Newborns have a fully developed sense of smell. Your amniotic fluid changes smell based on what you ate and your hormones. Those little bumps that developed around your areola secrete and oil that smells like your amniotic fluid, helping baby locate dinner. Your body odor also become stronger to help baby know it’s you for bonding. You’re supposed to be stinky.
👅 Taste. While breast milk constantly changes flavor based on what you eat, and has a similar flavor to your amniotic fluid, baby’s sense of taste isn’t fully developed at birth. Flavors are much stronger for them and they prefer sweet to bitter or sour.
✋🏿 Touch. Touch is very powerful and can elicit reflexes in the baby to help them survive. Touching baby’s mouth gets them to root for a good latch. Touching the roof of their mouth triggers a sucking reflex which helps them feed. Being held in skin to skin contact regulates their heart rate, respiratory rate, blood sugar and temperature.
🤜🏼🤛🏼Proprioception. The body awareness sense which tells us where our body parts are in relationship to each other. It also gives us information about how much force to use, allowing us to grab the object we want without crushing it. This sense is developed by experience over their first year of life. Reflexive movements in response to movement and sensory input help lay the foundation for posture and motor planning later on.
🎡Vestibular. This sense is all about balance and movement, which tells us where our body is in space. It is the first sense to be fully developed by 6 months gestation. It is the unifying system in our brain that modifies and coordinates information received from other systems. An overactive vestibular system can result in an intolerance to movement.
#thesenses #senseofself