Reassurance needed: 2 month old showing hand preference

[Yup83]

Hello

My two month old has been spending a lot of time concentrating on getting his right hand into his mouth. I thought it was cute that he was so obsessed with it and googled it casually to see what was up with it. Loads of stuff came up about it being a sign of cerebral palsy and a sign of a neurological condition to show a hand preference this early. So I’ve been really worrying about that! I spoke to the HV who said it sounds normal but I’m waiting to speak to the GP about it.

Did any of your LOs do this?

I suppose I’m more worried as during induced labour his heart rate dipped a lot - never enough for them to expedite delivery but I feel as though we’ve been left not knowing if he will suffer any long term consequences of that.

Oh I should say he moves his left hand and arm similarly but just isn’t obsessed with it like his right .

Otherwise he seems bright and developing normally

DD was a little like this. She would learn to do things with one hand and then the other. I was so paranoid that she favored the left hand but she uses them equally, she just seems to learn with one then the other. Sometimes she will learn with the right one first and then the left. I also freaked out but there are a lot of other signs of cerebral palsy and also I think it's more relevant what she does with the other hand - the signs as I understand them are of the other hand being tightly fisted with the thumb always pointing in to the palm and it's to do with muscles in the arm I think not being able to stretch out the hand and fingers (that is how I understood it after hours of google).

The signs of cerebral palsy is if there is a weakness on one side, which means they favour one side.
By the sound of it, your ds is moving the other side fine, so no worries there.

For comparison, I'm pretty ambidextrous. I wrote with whichever hand I picked the pen up until I was 7yo, when I started more often using my right hand. I do quite a number of things lefthanded though. Dm reckoned I would have been lefthanded in a lefthanded world, and will write lefthanded if it's more convenient even now.
But I sucked my right thumb from about 2 weeks old, and very rarely my left. (it tastes nicer )

My daughter v much favoured her left hand as a baby and still does a bit at 18 months - her development is totally fine and she is running around loads x

Oh I've just seen your baby's age too - fisted hands is still completely normal at that age I think so please don't worry if the other hand is fisted. I mean when they are older - DD is ten months old so it would be a concern if she didn't use her other hand or kept it fisted tightly all the time but I think at two months that's what they do all the time with them.

Thank you lovely mums for taking the time to reply! It's definitely helped me not to worry so much over the weekend.

He's still very much only using his right hand to suck but his other hand isn't fisted or anything and seems equally strong so fingers crossed he is alright.

His Dad is ambidextrous so maybe there's a bit of that going on too, who knows?