Growth and Development of the Infant (Nursing)

00:00 Hello, I'm Dr. Elizabeth Stone.

00:03 Now I know that sounds formal.

00:04 And when I take my students to clinical, I asked them to call me, Elizabeth.

00:07 So I want you to think of this video series as you and I being in clinical together, I'll guide you through the most important growth and development concepts just like I do my own nursing students.

00:17 We're going to do this together.

00:19 So today, I'm Elizabeth, to you.

00:21 And you're in my pediatric clinical group, which is, by the way, one of my favorite parts of being a nursing faculty.

00:27 Now that we're talking about names, I'm going to use a picture of an adorable baby throughout this presentation, and Lecturio asked me to name her.

00:34 Since I get to choose, we're going to call her Jenna, because that's my daughter's name.

00:39 Throughout this series, we'll watch Jenna go through developmental milestones from infancy through her teen years.

00:45 I'll share real life examples from my daughter's life, and sometimes even compare her brother's experience to hers.

00:51 So if you're a parent already, you can also use your child's experience to compare what I will be showing you as the normal experience.

00:58 All kids are different.

01:00 But it's important that you know how the majority of children develop to identify those kids who are struggling a little bit kind of like Jenna.

01:06 Are you ready? Let's get started.

01:09 We're gonna go through some important infant development milestones.

01:12 We're gonna go through weight, reflexes, motor milestones, and cognitive milestones in this growth and development series.

01:19 Let's start with the weight.

01:21 When Jenna was born, she was over nine pounds.

01:24 And that's because she came from a healthy mother, she was born at normal gestation, so at full term, and because she was a healthy child, she had healthy genetics as well.

01:35 So all of these things contribute to the birth weight.

01:38 However, after birth, it's normal for every baby to lose a little bit of body weight, up to 5 to 10% in the first 10 days.

01:46 But, by about two weeks of age, they should have regained that weight and be back at least to their birth weight, They should be getting more alert.

01:55 And their body weight should be rising quickly as long as they're eating well.

01:59 By four to six months of age, they should have doubled their birth weight.

02:02 So that's a good rule of thumb to remember.

02:04 After about the first year, their weight gain slows down, which makes sense because they're getting more active.

02:12 So they're burning more calories.

02:14 They gain about 2.2 kilos, or five pounds, about through age 1 and 2.

02:22 So that wraps up the wait, let's move on to reflexes.

02:26 Think about reflexes, like survival mechanisms.

02:30 And that's the same case whether you're an adult or an infant.

02:33 In adulthood, actually, throughout life, we have a cough reflex and a gag reflex, both of which prevent us from choking and can save our life.

02:42 There are other reflexes that are appearing at birth, and then they fade away eventually throughout that first year, and we're gonna go over the major ones.

02:51 Let's start with the stepping reflex.

02:54 This is a reflex that occurs actually, in a way it helps a child learned to find the mother's breast.

03:01 It occurs if their feet are put against a flat surface, including if they're put on the mother's abdomen and they feel the abdomen.

03:08 They start actually stepping and kind of crawling in a rudimentary way towards the breast, towards their food source.

03:15 This disappears around two months.

03:16 And then the rooting reflex is another one that's really common, especially as we try to teach infants to feed or to find the breast.

03:24 If the cheek is stroke, stroked by a finger or by a nipple, they often will go towards that sensation.

03:32 And a lot of times it helps them latch on to a nipple from a bottle or from a breast.

03:37 This disappears around four months.

03:40 The palmar grasp is something that a lot of people get pretty excited about, especially grandparents as they reach out to try to hold their little newborn grandchild's finger and the child will actually grasp it.

03:51 It's actually reflex but you don't have to tell them that.

03:54 Anything that you put in their palm, when they are a young baby, they will try to grasp.

04:00 This goes away around five to six months as their movements become more intentional.

04:04 And then they're grabbing things that they really want.

04:07 The Moro reflex is the next one.

04:09 And this is kind of a funny one.

04:10 It makes, they look like they're scared.

04:13 So this occurs in response to a sound or a stimulus that is a touch from somebody else or it could be even a movement that they make or that somebody else makes and they don't expect.

04:24 They'll suddenly flail their arms back and put their head back, and sometimes they'll cry.

04:30 And basically it's like a startle.

04:32 So Moro and startle are kind of interchanged.

04:35 Those are both terms that are used for this.

04:38 This reflex disappears around two months.

04:42 And a tonic neck reflex is another one that has a couple different names.

04:46 You may hear it called the fencing position or the fencing reflex.

04:50 And this is a reflex that occurs sometimes if the child's head is turned to one side, their arm will go to that same side and then stretch out, and the opposite arm will flex as if they're shooting a bow and arrow.

05:06 We don't really know what that reflex really does for them, but it's kind of funny and it's something that is checked at newborn assessments and infant assessments as part of their neurological assessment.

05:18 The plantar grasp is the last one we'll review now.

05:21 And that is a lot like the palmar grasp reflex, but it's with their foot.

05:25 So if their foot is stroked on the bottom of it, the plantar surface, it will also try to grasp whatever that object is that stroking it.

05:34 And that disappears towards the age of one year.

05:38 So that is a wrap for reflexes. Let's move on to motor milestones.