3 week old looks away from me?

[Dani00]

I know this may be really early and I'm probably being silly again but everything I've read suggests that new born babies love to look at faces/can see close up but not far away. My will not look at my face/ looks around at everything else / further away things. Even when he's calm , I'll try and get in his line of vision and his eyes always divert away from my face. Is something wrong/am I doing something wrong? Thank you.

[Smellyjo]

Getting into his line of vision may at times be too intense for him. Babies tend to look away for a break, or to explore and he will probably welcome checking in with you from time to time but also need some space to do this in his own time. You're not being silly though, it's your brand new precious baby and you are just adjusting to mum life. Anxiety is hard to avoid, especially in the first few months! I'd say just try to relax, enjoy watching him without expectation and see what happens.

[DoItAgainBob]

Newborns look away when tired of over stimulated which happens very easily at this age.

[Donhill]

My ds1 was like this and it worried me too. He would actively look away and stare off away if I moved into his line of sight. It wasn’t just when he was tired. I remember it really worried me as it was so different from my friend’s ds who was constantly staring at faces. My ds is 11 now and is completely fine. He still can be a bit funny with eye contact when feeling shy or overwhelmed, so maybe that was how he was feeling when he was a baby....

[Dani00]

Thank you for your advice all! Yeah that's why I'm worried as it's all the time. Donhill do you remember when he started to look at faces?

[HappyHippyHippo]

Hi Dani
Yes too early to worry
I worried about same thing with my first but she's a healthy happy sociable 5 y o now.

It's worth remembering that baby's processing of vision isn't very developed yet - anything further than 25cm is blurry and they look mainly at contrast between light and dark. I'm pretty sure I read (probably when I was stressing re dd1!) that often the look at the edge of faces ie contrast of your hair against the wall first as this is interesting to them as they can clearly see it, rather than looking at your eyes and making eye contact, because the actual face is more fuzzy.
Certainly my dc3, who is now 5 and a half weeks, was doing the a couple of weeks back - she'd look at the edge of my head (which made it feel like she was looking anywhere but at 'me') and all around with a preference for windows and lights.
Apparently - according to the wonder weeks app/book, there's a developmental leap around 4.5 - 5.5 weeks where baby's visual processing gets better. This fits with my experience - in the last week dc3 has started making eye contact more and attempting lopsided little smiles when I smiled.
So id say wait for the six week smile milestone. The fact that Lo is looking all around sounds to me like he is developing nicely. If you want to increase your chance of some eye contact, make sure you hold his face up nice and close to yours so he can definitely seen you.

[Dani00]

Thank you for your comment, good to know that your daughter is fine! I do try and hold him close, so he can see my face but he looks away. I'll see what happens over the next couple of weeks X

[Donhill]

Hi op, I can’t really remember when my ds started looking at faces - i’m not sure he ever really did. My specific memory of noticing the difference between him and my friends ds was when he was 9 weeks old. So I know he was still looking away then. And wasn’t very cuddly either and always pushed away from me. Which is strange as he is very cuddly now!

[Dani00]

Okay thank you! That makes me feel a lot better!

[Purplelooby]

My son was just like this, in fact he even cried more with me than with other people. I watched other babies stare lovingly at their mums and felt so concerned that I spent ages googling it. I was concerned that it was either an early sign of autism or our bond was in some way faulty. Fast forwarding 5 years I'm happy to report that he's fine, but also that he's a very curious little boy who's not overly into physical contact. He never did the staring at me thing and was never cuddly. I would say he's more into things like volcanoes and space than human beings, but his social skills are fine. HtH.

[Dani00]

Thank you! I'm glad your son is well. I think I'm over worrying about Autism, as it's on my partner's side of the family. However my mum did remind me that signs don't normally show until 2 months at the earliest.