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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

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Original poster

to think my 2 week old can smile

50 replies

moogy1a · 29/12/2012 06:16

No really.. I swear he's smiled since day 2, and last night he made eye contact with me 3 times and gave a proper big smile each time.
He's not a PFB and DH is just assuming I'm sleep deprived ( which I am) and imagining it ( which I'm not!).
Is this possible or am I having a weird exhaustion hallucination?

OP posts:

Pilgit · 29/12/2012 15:55

my 3 week old dd smiles in her sleep whenever her big sister sings. can't just be wind - has happened to often to be coincidence! almost makes up for the sleepless nights and the whingefest dd1 started over christmas....... and she giggles in her sleep - with some very comic timing.

Jinsei · 29/12/2012 16:50

No, not impossible. DD (born late) was social smiling at a week old, in response to very definite stimuli. Everyone thought it was wind till they saw it, but when they observed it themselves, they realised it was definitely a smile! She started laughing - real chuckles at around 6 weeks. She still laughs a lot at 7!

everlong · 29/12/2012 18:41

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

Spuddybean · 29/12/2012 18:45

I noticed 'proper' smiles from DS at 3 weeks - witnessed and pointed out by lots of people and HV. He is a very smiley baby, the moment anyone looks at him and talks to him he breaks into a massive grin. Don't know where he got that from tho, as me and his dad are miserable as sin!

MickeyTheShortOne · 29/12/2012 18:46

Nope, mine smiled that early too. The midwife swore to me she was smiling on her 10 day check, but I reckon it was more in the 2nd-3rd week. She was 10 days overdue tough.. That seems to be a bit of a trend here...

Spuddybean · 29/12/2012 18:46

Jinsei - DS was 14 days late so i think that also had something to do with the early developing of smiles.

TraineeBabyCatcher · 29/12/2012 18:55

Babies frequently copy motions like sticking their tongue out from a few weeks old so I have no reason to believe that they don't smile also. Just different muscles

EdgarAllanPond · 29/12/2012 18:58

some babies smile from birth.

TandB · 29/12/2012 19:09

DS1 didn't smile till 6 or 7 weeks. He was a week early.

DS2 was smiling properly at a few days old. We have lots of photos of it - he was 2 weeks late.

flow4 · 29/12/2012 19:31

Both my babies smiled at a day or two old.

dons hard hat and prepares to say something potentially controversial <

I have often wondered whether breast-fed babies smile earlier than bottle-fed ones, and whether the '6 week average' is outdated info based on days when more babies were bottle fed at 4 hour intervals and left to cry - and therefore much less stimulated and happy...

WhispersOfWickedness · 29/12/2012 19:42

Both of mine smiled by two weeks too.
DS turned out to be the smiliest baby known to man and beamed at everybody he met and DD became a grumpy serious baby who rationed her smiles very carefully.

Both were over a week late.

LynetteScavo · 29/12/2012 19:47

Both my DSs were 2 weeks late and smiled at 3 weeks.

DS1 was properly laughing at 5 weeks. He said "hello" (mimiced me) at 6 weeks and said "tellytubbies" at 6 months.

Now he is 13 he is cooking all his own meals and doing all his own laundry. NOT!

AmazingBouncingFerret · 29/12/2012 20:07

flow4 you could be right about the 4 hourly feeding being less stimulated = less smiles but it wouldnt be just bf babies, both mine were bottle fed and also demand fed, they never went more than hour/2 hours without a bottle in their gob! Especially in the early days.

nocake · 29/12/2012 21:08

Babies can smile even before they're born but it has no emotional content until they're about a month old. Basically it's just the movements of the right muscles without the baby feeling happy or smiling at someone familiar. Please don't kid yourself that it's anything else. It is developmentally impossible.

Stixswhichtwizzle · 29/12/2012 21:14

My DD smiled at me at 4wks but was giggling in her sleep for ages before first 'daytime' giggle. She still does it now and it never fails to make me smile.

pointedlynoresolutions · 29/12/2012 21:17

My 2 both smiled like anything at about 3 weeks so 2 weeks is definitely possible. I have photos of DD2 at 3 weeks doing her first proper smile (lucky me catching it!) - little smile first, then HUGE grin in response to me being delighted at her actions. That photo still makes me weepy, and DD2 is nearly 10.

DeGlitterBug · 29/12/2012 21:19

YANBU

Dc1 smiled at 12 days
Dc2 was about 6-7 days
Dc3 was 2 days
Poor old dc4 was over 4 weeks. I was v disappointed!!

Completely normal

apostrophethesnowman · 29/12/2012 21:24

My oldest smiled at around a week. I dismissed it as my imagination because it wasn't in the books I'd read . Then the health visitor came to see her at ten days old and when she was speaking to her my daughter made a small "goo" sound and smiled back. The health visitor was amazed tbh and said if she hadn't witnessed it herself she wouldn't have believed it. She was just very vocal, speaking in sentences at 14 months.

My other three did these things more or less at "average" ages. I guess all children really are different.

exexpat · 29/12/2012 21:26

DD was smiling and cooing at the health visitor at 2-3 weeks, but she was 9 days overdue, which may make a difference. My mother said I smiled very early too. It is of course a sure sign of advanced intelligence

flow4 · 29/12/2012 23:28

Ferret, point taken! :)

nocake, there is a solid body of evidence that seems to contradict the myth that babies' behaviour "has no emotional content until they're about a month old". Babies as young as 2 days old recognise their own mothers' voices and faces, are socially responsive, become distressed when people are socially unresponsive to them, and even appear to show empathy. It does seem to be developmentally possible for newborns to smile.

Here are a few articles (some of them refer on to further research):
www.parentingscience.com/newborns-and-the-social-world.html
www.medicalnewstoday.com/releases/7365.php
www.pri.kyoto-u.ac.jp/ai/data/Origins_of_smile_and_laughter__A_preliminary_study.pdf

BuntyPenfold · 29/12/2012 23:36

DS smiled and cooed, responding to conversation with small cooing at 3 weeks. The midwife commented in surprise.
I am often saddened by people ridiculing the notion that a baby is smiling.

Molehillmountain · 29/12/2012 23:40

Dd2 (dc3) smiled properly at three weeks. I remember posting a similar post to your op at the time and being convinced by the mumsnet jury! Shes virtually never stopped. Ds smiled at four weeks and the decided that he'd got it ticked in his baby book so he'd not bother again. Just for balance, dd1 was five weeks.

benbobaggins · 29/12/2012 23:53

I have the picture that the Bounty lady took, DS was just under 24 hours and he is definiatly smiling :)

CecilyP · 30/12/2012 10:36

No, I agree with nocake. I thought DS was smiling from about a day old, but realised, when he smiled for real at 4 weeks, that they were just smiley expressions, rather than proper smiles. If the smiley expressions had been caught on camera, there would be no way to tell the difference.

In answer to OP, DS was born a week early, so have no reason to doubt that a 41-weeker can smile at 2 weeks.

sneezecakesmum · 30/12/2012 21:46

DD smiled at around 7 - 9 days old. She would look straight at me and smile (I was of course smiling at her too!). I asked the midwife who was visiting for the 10 days just to make sure I was not going mad and even she agreed with me DD was really smiling and it was definitely not wind

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