My 8 week old baby boy has very briefly smiled at me and my husband a few times in the last week (probably about 5 times). It doesn’t feel like a proper social smile and often he just looks blankly at our face when we are trying to encourage him to smile or sometimes he won’t really look at us at all. He does follow me with his eyes around the room but I struggle to get him to look at me (he will sometimes look at my mouth rather than my eyes). I do get very brief periods when singing to him with him on my lap where he will look at my face but if feels like I’m working really hard and hardly getting anything back. He is cooing when he’s in a good mood and will follow black and white cards with his eyes.
He was born at 40 weeks but was in the bottom 9% percentile at his birth weight and also had pretty severe jaundice with light therapy for 3 days immediately after he was born. I’m really concerned something could be wrong. Perhaps I’m overthinking and the constant Googling probably isn’t helping but I wondered if any mums had any similar experiences? Hoping he may have just had a bit of a tough start in life and I need to give him a bit more time.