Physical Growth In Infancy

 

The first year of an infant is characterized by rapid physical growth. A normal baby doubles its birth weight in six months and triples it in a year. During that time, there is a great expansion of the head and chest, thus permitting the development of the brain, heart, and lungs, the organs most vital to survival. The bones, which are relatively soft at birth, begin to harden, and the fontanelles, the soft parts of the newborn skull, begin to calcify, the small one at the back of the head at about 3 months, the larger one in front at varying ages up to 18 months. Brain weight also increases rapidly during infancy: by the end of the second year, the brain has already reached 75% of its adult weight.

Growth and size depend on environmental conditions as well as a genetic endowment. For example, severe nutritional deficiency during the mother’s pregnancy and in infancy is likely to result in an irreversible impairment of growth and intellectual development, while overfed, fat infants are predisposed to become obese later in life. Human milk provides the basic nutritional elements necessary for growth; however, in Western cultures, supplemental foods are generally added to the diet during the first year.

The newborn infant sleeps almost constantly, awakening only for feedings, but the number and length of waking periods gradually increase. By the age of three months, most infants have acquired a fairly regular schedule for sleeping, feeding, and bowel movements. By the end of the first year, sleeping and waking hours are divided equally.

1. Maturation: Maturation refers to a universal sequence of biological events in the central nervous system that permits a psychological function to occur; it only sets the limits at the earliest time of its appearance. Biological events in youth consider maturation when they grow between 12 to 15 years. It is an age of maturation and releases hormones from the pituitary gland located in the brain. But environmental factors, such as the quality of nutrition during childhood, can accelerate the emergence of puberty by several years.

2. Smiling: Smiling is the means of communication for infants in their early years. An early smile of the infant is just a facial exercise of the muscles. A child first passes his smile to his mother, and this is at first bestowed indiscriminately between the mother and child. The smile is an important influence on the mother-child relationship. The mother's responsive smile is equally important to the child. It transforms the spontaneous smile of the infant into an exchange. This may be called the first real social interaction. The social smile appears at 7 or 8 weeks of age, and by 3 months, infants will smile at almost any face. This smile is important to the caretakers and the child because it invites the adult to interact with the baby and, therefore, contributes to attachment bonding.

3. Anxiety: As we all know, the mother and child relationship is important in the infancy period. The child first recognized his mother's face, and the infant is aware that his mother is a special person at this time; he is at once in a position to lose her. An infant around 10 months may be seen crawling behind his mother from one room to another. If their mother is disappearing, they may cry and scream, and watch every door. Even his crying and searching at different places is an indication of his attachment to his mother. The increase in attachment behavior is considered to be an indication of separation anxiety.

4. Fear of strangers: A second anxiety that is a direct result of the infant's first attachment is stranger anxiety. The child is especially attached to the mother, and he can be easily upset by the approach of an unfamiliar adult, especially if his mother is not present around him. The infant fixes his eyes on the stranger and stares, unmoving, for a short time. He is likely to cry and show signs of distress. Stranger anxiety disappears toward the end of the first year, as the child comes in contact with a growing number of relatives.