8. Month - how your baby develops

Your goldendoodle has learned many new things in the last few months. Among other things, 8-month-old babies can now distinguish between familiar and unfamiliar faces. However, this leads to the first strangeness. Your baby needs a lot of security in such situations. What else awaits you and your child in the 8. You can find out here.

How your baby develops

Motor skills

Babies want to move around at this age. Each child develops his or her own technique for this. Maybe your 8-month-old baby tries to crawl forward with rowing movements when he is lying on his stomach. Probably this does not yet work properly. But your ambitious athlete will stretch and stretch and try everything imaginable to reach a distant toy, for example.

If this is successful, the baby may already be taking hold of the toy in the so-called scissor grip – between thumb and index finger. Your baby will be able to use this grip from the age of 8. Practice extensively during the first month. It explores the objects in its environment in a playful way and trains its fine and gross motor skills in the process. So it’s high time to baby-proof your home.

Sitting also gradually works better. Many babies pull themselves up to a sitting position by the hands of their parents when they are lying on their backs. For a short time, your baby may already be able to sit up on his own. Probably still feels a little shaky.

Your little one may still need your support to sit securely. After the musculature is trained and developed, however, it will no longer need any help. But it may take a little time.

The best training for the development of motor skills is and remains play. So stay active with your child. Be inspired by our baby games and baby activities.

Strangeness

Strangeness is often called eight-month anxiety. If your baby has not yet started to move around, it may well be that he or she is doing so now.

Fear of unfamiliar people often appears quite suddenly. Many children then cling to their familiar parent and avoid eye contact with strangers or less familiar people. They seek protection in the arms of their mother or father.

Some 8-month-old babies react much more violently to strangers. They start to cry and become stiff with fear. It is very important that you support your anxious treasure in this situation. Talk to your child, take him in your arms, try to calm him down. It will help your baby understand that you are there to protect him or her.

Interestingly, the phenomenon of strangeness occurs in a wide variety of cultures. But this is only a phase. From the age of 8. Babies learn to distinguish between familiar and unfamiliar faces. An unfamiliar person can cause sudden anxiety. But as soon as your baby feels your care, he will surely calm down quickly. Strangeness is not a bad thing, but a normal stage of development.

How to move your baby at 8. You can support your baby during the first month

Encourage instead of overstraining

All parents want only one thing: the best for their child. Opinions differ on how this should be achieved. What benefits one child will have a negative effect on another. There is no general recipe for parenting.

But you can use a few basic elements and principles as a guide. A Zambian proverb says: "The grass does not grow faster if you pull on it."In other words, don’t push your child excessively to develop, because that doesn’t speed up the process. In the worst case, your eagerness may actually do more harm than good for your child.

Many parents project an enormous number of expectations and wishes onto their children. Baby milk supplements are intended to promote intelligence, physiotherapy to get the crawling baby to crawl, speech therapists to support early speech, special music CDs and baby toys to further develop the senses. A child cannot live up to these expectations. On the contrary, most babies are simply overwhelmed by it.

For your baby to develop well, he or she doesn’t need much more than attentive parents and a safe and loving home. These are the ideal conditions for your child’s development and growth. Your baby will learn to crawl, stand and walk all by itself, even without special measures. So if your baby is not crawling at 8 months, you do not have to do anything immediately. Your child develops according to his or her own internal schedule.

Maybe your baby is going through a spurt at 8 months and is learning many skills in a short period of time. In the next month, he or she may have few new experiences in return. Instead of measuring it against expectations and performance guidelines, support your baby’s own personal development process by creating a loving framework for it. Your bundle of joy will manage the rest on its own.

Baby care

Many babies and children are perfectly comfortable in an extended family with members of different ages. Sometimes the baby is put on grandma’s arm, sometimes on uncle’s or sister’s arm. Not only the child, but also the parents are often happy about this changing care. But for many families, such a life model is hardly feasible. Grandparents and relatives often live far away.

However, you may be able to arrange for your baby to be cared for after the age of 6 months. month of life is no longer cared for exclusively by you and your partner around the clock. Babies and children need other people around them than just their own parents to have new experiences. In addition to mom and dad, relatives, acquaintances and other children of different ages are important role models for your child. When your baby makes contact with different people, it broadens his horizon of experience.

There are many different ways to make new contacts:

Playgroups or baby classes, if you want to give your child contact with peers.

You could team up with parent friends to take turns caring for the children.

A babysitter can take care of your child by the hour. This also gives you the opportunity to go out as a couple sometimes.

As soon as you want to or have to go back to work, you will of course need more regular childcare such as a crèche, childminder or au pair help. Please note that, depending on the region, free places in groups may be rare and early registration is required.

You can also set up a parent initiative for childcare yourself – you can find support for this at the Bundesarbeitsgemeinschaft Elterninitiativen e.V..

Feeding your baby in 8. Month

Babies enjoy playing. Parents are often happy about this – but not so much when it comes to food. But babies also love to play with meals. They want to explore everything they can get their hands on – including food. Playing and experimenting with food happen out of sheer curiosity. Babies gain new experiences and knowledge in this way. And this is enormously important for the development of your little blobmouth.

If your 8-month-old baby doesn’t want to eat, but prefers to smear the breakfast porridge on the table, there may be other reasons as well. In addition to playing and eating, your child will also deal with new demands during mealtimes.

It observes that you are probably quite anxious for it to finally eat. But maybe your baby doesn’t feel like eating or doesn’t have an appetite at that moment. And if your protege refuses food or plays with it, i.e. does not meet your expectations, he notices what all this can do to you. Your child demonstrates its will in this way.

In such situations, parents can become downright desperate. Of course you feel responsible for feeding your child properly. You have certainly given a lot of thought to food and meal plan. Now, if your baby regularly refuses to eat or has porridge fights with it, this will definitely worry you. Many parents then wonder what they are doing wrong.

The fact is, you can’t force your baby to eat. And your baby cannot refuse to eat for a long time. At some point, your 8-month-old baby will get hungry and need to eat a meal. So no one can win the battle for food. Neither you nor your baby. So if it comes to such a situation, do not get involved in this power play. Take the potential for conflict out of the situation and try to stay calm. This is the quickest way for everyone to relax.

Maybe there are other, very obvious reasons why your little greaser doesn’t want to eat. For example, if your baby is given something to nibble on in between meals, he or she may not be hungry at mealtimes. Or your baby drinks a lot of breast milk in between, even at night – from the age of 6. At 8 months, your baby should actually be able to get by without a nighttime meal.

If you keep all this in mind and your child still doesn’t want to eat, these three tips on how to feed your baby properly may help.

The daily routine of your 8-month-old baby

Baby’s health

Whether on a summer vacation at the beach, in the mountains in winter or even at home in the garden: don’t forget to protect your baby from too much sun.

Babies and toddlers have a much thinner horny layer than adults. This is why your baby’s skin is particularly sensitive to light. UV radiation can penetrate deeper layers of the skin more easily. It still takes a little time for your baby to develop the skin’s own protective mechanisms: These are not mature until the twelfth year of life.

So put sunscreen on your baby in the spring and summer before going outside. But that alone is not enough. Even with sunscreen, your child’s skin is not sufficiently protected from UV radiation. You should therefore avoid the midday sun altogether. It’s best to never take your baby out in direct, bright sunlight for extended periods of time. Babies are better off in the shade or under a parasol at 8 months of age.

But even in the shade, you should put sunscreen on your baby. Although the UV rays are not as intense there, they can still cause damage, especially to infants, and cause sunburn in babies.

And if your little water rat splashes around in the cool water, be aware that even so-called waterproof sunscreen is not really waterproof. Reapply the cream after playing in the water. A sunscreen with SPF 50 is recommended.

Here are also a few useful tips for traveling on vacation with your baby.

How your baby will feel at 8. Month sleeps

One speaks of sleep problems when your baby sleeps badly for a long time, wakes up again and again at night and cannot fall back asleep on its own, or does not even come to rest in the evening. This can quickly become a big burden for the whole family.

Sleep problems

In the first months of life, a baby does not yet sleep through the night. This is quite normal. Babies first have to learn to adjust their sleep-wake rhythm to the day-night cycle. As a rule, your 8-month-old baby should have done this by now. If your restless bunny doesn’t develop a rhythm, is difficult to calm down, can’t fall asleep, or often wakes up at night screaming and crying, he or she is probably suffering from sleep problems.

Many different causes can lie behind such sleep problems in babies and toddlers. Sometimes poor sleep can have a physical origin such as frequent childhood illnesses or a certain immaturity in premature babies. However, it may also be due to emotional stresses. In the same way, environmental factors such as noise, light and smoke can play a role.

Sleep problems often do not occur alone, but together with other difficulties – such as colic or complications with feeding. In the technical jargon one speaks then of so-called regulation disturbances. That is, if babies and infants find it excessively difficult to regulate their behavior in an age-appropriate way. For example, the child may not be able to calm down from an agitated state even with the help of parents. Sleep problems should always be considered and treated together with other difficulties that arise.

In case of permanent sleep problems, you should definitely consult a pediatrician to make sure that there are no acute or chronic illnesses. But also if you notice that you can’t stand the stress anymore, the pediatrician can be your first contact person and refer you to counseling centers and therapy facilities.

With professional support and a few changes in everyday life, you can usually quickly get the sleep problems under control. So don’t be afraid to accept outside help.

How your life changes

People are social beings. Just as your baby needs to socialize with other people, it is equally important for you to have a social life. Connecting with others outside the family and participating in life is an important basic need. Therefore, make sure that you do not unconsciously isolate yourself from the outside world and only stay within the family.

You may want to resume more contact with friends. If they are also parents of babies or toddlers, this is probably a little easier to organize. A regular breakfast meeting might be a good idea, where you can talk to your friends about family topics, but also simply about God and the world.

Just as well you can also try to make new contacts. For example, in toddler groups, baby swimming or PEKiP courses, you will meet many other mothers or fathers with whom you can talk. Or, of course, on the playground. And who knows, maybe one or two acquaintances will develop into a long-lasting friendship. The exchange of experiences with like-minded people will certainly enrich your life.

Your baby’s life is changing rapidly. Every day it learns something new and sees its environment with different eyes. Your life has probably been turned upside down quite a bit, too. Watching your baby develop and exploring with him or her is a great gift!