The infant shows various behavior cues even if the baby is premature or sick. Those behavior cues help them to grow and develop their developmental milestones.
“Why does my newborn wiggle so much?” is a common observation of first-time moms
In addition to that, they see various facial expressions, movements, breathing patterns, and baby skin color changes.
By doing a close observation of those behavioral cues, parents can identify whether the baby is satisfied or not.
Wiggling is the most obvious behavioral cue of newborn babies. I suggest here that the wiggling can be considered as a positive interaction type of your baby.
Actually, the wiggling of newborns is a totally normal part of their development. The babies are typically more wiggly from birth to 4 to 6 months.
Around six months, the wiggling tends to taper off as a result of brain development.
1.What is the main cause for the wiggling of new borns
Few researchers say that the startle reflex ( more reflex ) is the common cause for the wiggling.
The immature brains of the newborns are not developed enough to regulate their reflexes quite yet.
Dear parents, you can normally see the startle reflex kicks when the baby lying on their back. Babies are punching continuously without apparent reason due to the presence of these reflexes.
2. What are the positive interaction types of your newborn baby?
As parents, you always be with your newborn child all the time. The baby always tries to perform various motor movement patterns on some occasions.
Wiggling is the main behavior type that you can markedly observe. Most of the time baby wiggles their arms and legs flexed or tucked.
After a short session of wiggling, they start to touch their face. Then they put their hand to mouth or in the mouth. Soon baby starts to suck. They try to maintain eye contact with you.
The baby starts smiling with the parent or caregiver showing a very relaxed body posture. This is a very important developmental aspect of your small one’s developmental cycle.
You can listen to the breathing rate of your baby at this moment. It is a very regular one with a regular heartbeat.
Finally, the baby falls into a light sleep with vivid dreams and rapid eye flickering. At this stage, the baby can consolidate memories and start to enhance their cognitive skills.
3. What are the interaction types showing your baby is under stress.
The baby’s stress levels can be seen with various motor movement patterns related to wiggling. But this wiggling pattern shows a set of disorganized activities.
Babies push away arms and legs. Their skin color also changes at this moment.
In addition to wiggling, the baby gets started to hiccup, yawn, or sneeze in this highly stressed situation. They also try to frown and look away. Sometimes they squirm a lot.
4. Let’s overview the movement milestones of birth to a three-month-old baby
First month
Dear parents, you can notice the amazing development of your baby within the first few weeks. They start to develop new skills and movements forming. These movement milestones are called movement milestones.
During the first month, the newborn baby starts doing jerky or jittery movements mainly. They are passing a fast learning period. They start the movements by blinking their eyes.
They can only see one foot in front of them. But newborns start to do eye movement with that limited vision capacity. They start gazing at the people in front of them.
With that improved gazing, they start wiggling. The uncoordinated motor movement pattern starts like that.
In this developmental stage, the newborns start to recognize the sounds around them and they start looking towards the side of the sound.
While wiggling, the newborns move their head side to side and thereafter the rooting reflex prompts them to turn their head toward the nipple. Babies didn’t have much head control at this stage.
They need your support to head control while wiggling with their limbs.
Second month
At this time period, the nervous system of the newborn becomes more mature. Baby can move head up on tummy time. The muscle control of the neck area becomes more strengthened.
As a result, the baby performs the wiggly movements more fluidly than the other times.
As a smart parent, you can use this tummy time with various positional patterns with the intention of strengthening the neck muscles of the baby.
Apart from wiggling, the baby begins to wave its arms around more when exited. The hands will catch the attention. They wave arms more in the visual fields than the previous.
The limited finger movements still are clenched in tight little fists. These babies use sucking as a self-soothing activity around this time.
The baby shows random facial movements, reflexive smiles during this time frame. Mostly the baby might flash their first smile to you in a genuine gesture around this age.
Third month
Now the uncoordinated wiggling movements are totally disappeared. The wiggling movements become smoother.
The startle reflex is gone at this time totally. The baby is totally strong enough to coordinate movements.
The baby’s body became more relaxed at this time. The hands are no longer clenched all the time. The baby starts to entertain himself.
Active forceful kicking from legs is present instead of wiggling. Some babies start to roll. So I recommend not leaving these babies around furniture at this age.
The clenching fists are totally disappeared with time. Firm grips and releasing of the grips can be seen. The baby can hold and shake the baby’s toys. Also, the baby discovers the joy of bouncing.
5. Can swaddle help for preventing a wiggling baby and soothe them?
The wiggling movements are a type of pretty uncoordinated. If you notice that your baby is wiggling with continuous crying, then you can try swaddling the baby.
Here try to tuck into a snug and try to womb-like blanket wrapping for the baby.
Still, excessive uncontrolled wiggling is there, try to consult your pediatrician.
6. Final thoughts
The wiggling of newborn babies is a very normal set of movements. It starts from birth up to 4 to 6 months of age.
Wiggling is present with newborn babies due to the presence of inborn reflexes. As soon as the reflexes disappear, the wiggling is also disappeared with babies.
The development of the newborn’s brain is the main thing that roots out the reflexes. So this unintentional wiggling is not with mature brains.
So it is your duty to check up on the proper brain development of your baby with your pediatrician.