5 month old hand flapping

[Sherree21]

My 5 month old daughter has started constant hand flapping. It’s mainly her right hand. She will stair at her hand, twirl her wrist and now constantly flaps it about. It’s making feeding her difficult because it’s always failing about. When she is restless and she is in her next to me crib, she flaps it, slams it and scratches it on the side of the crib. I’ve now noticed even when she is on her change table her right hand gets slammed down.

Is this normal? I wouldn’t say it’s when she is excited or frustrated, I’d say it’s all the time. I of course have looked at Google and it suggests autism.

She does reach and play with toys. She smiles all the time, she laughs.

Thank you

It's normal. She's discovered her hands and is learning how to move them at will. At some stage, she'll become fascinated by her feet. Don't worry about it.

Totally to be expected. My LO was similar at that age and I remember feeling worried. I think he just discovered he could do it so he found it very entertaining. He stopped eventually and moved on to the next thing.
I went down that Google rabbit hole and still do from time to time. Nothing ever good comes of googling, it always says autism. Try to resist as it just makes your worrying worse.

It's normal for a 5 month old

Ahh I'd forgotten this, my son used to do the exact same when that age. He was fascinated with his hands, he did it for ages as well I was really worried it was a sign of something but completely normal apparently 👍

Honestly, Google pretty much any behaviour displayed by an infant and it'll tell you it's autism. You can't really detect autism this young with any reliability anyway. It's normal.