Your baby is finally in his fifth month and he is getting ready for his five-month-old developmental milestones!
This is the time when you should give your baby more space and freedom to try things on his own, under your supervision. Your baby is now capable of reaching out for toys and objects himself and he is catching up with what you say and what he sees.
If you wonder how your baby is growing and learning in his fifth month, here are some information that you can get in hand with!
Five-Month-Old Developmental Milestones
5-Month-Old Sleep
Similarly in his third and forth month, your five-month-old baby is going to sleep around 15 hours per day. During daytime, he would sleep around 5 hours with three naps in between.
To avoid the risk of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), you should continue to ensure that your baby is sleeping on his back. However, you would still find your baby sleeping on his tummy as he finds it very comfortable.
If you find your five-month-old baby sleeping on his stomach, it is fine actually as long he can lift his head and shoulders and he can roll over on his own.
5-Month-Old Feeding
After four months of feeding, you might have started to feed your baby with solid food in his fourth month. Nevertheless, your baby is still in need of breastmilk and formula. So, here’s how much a five-month-old baby should eat.
- If you are feeding your baby with formula, he should have four ounces, six times a day.
- If you are breastfeeding your baby, he should be breastfed every three to four hours.
- If you are trying to feed your baby with solid food, you can start with one to three ounces, three times a day.
As we have covered on signs of your baby being ready for solid food in the four-month-old developmental milestones, here are more handy tips to ensure a smoother process of your feeding:
Key Milestones in Growth
In his fifth month, your baby is growing by leaps and bounds. Here’s the average weight and height that you can expect from your five-month-old baby.
Weight: Around 6.89 kg for a 5-month-old baby girl and 7.53 kg for a 5-month-old baby boy
Length: Around 64 cm for a 5-month-old baby girl and 65.78 cm for a 5-month-old baby boy
As working mums, we would depend on help from a babysitter or a baby care centre to look after our little ones. However, what concerns us the most is when our little one is sick. We always struggle to determine whether to take a leave to stay home for our baby, or take him to the baby care.
If you are still in a dilemma, you should stay home to take care of your baby if he:
For your reference, some contagious illnesses include whopping cough, hepatitis A, E. coli and salmonella.
Other than that, you can still get your babysitter or the baby care centre to take care of your baby when he is just having a simple cold or cough.
Key Milestones in Skill Development and Senses
Key Milestones in Movement
- can reach for toys with both hands
- can pass a toy from one hand to another
- can rake small objects and pick them up
- can roll over from front to back
- can sit with support
- can hold up his head and chest himself
Mind that your baby is the most active in the morning. Thus, this is an ideal choice to spend some quality time with your baby during daytime.
You can get down on the floor to join his level. You can first try out with rolling over and talking with your baby. Besides playing with toys, you can simply blow raspberries on his tummy to make him happy!
On top of this, your five-month-old baby has developed the neck, upper body and back muscles to sit up with little support. To enhance his ability to sit up, here are some good ways:
Key Milestones in Five Senses
- can discern tiny items and lots of colours
- can track moving objects
- is ready to learn about object permanence
- can chew on their hands
- smiles at people and recognises faces
- mimics facial expressions such as smiling and frowning
- responds to affection with a smile
- babbles and tries to mimic through cooing
- enjoys playing
By the fifth month, you will be able to hear lots of Ooos and Ahhhs from your little one. It might even seem like he understands what you say. So, just keep on talking with your five-month-old baby and pause for a few seconds to get him to babble back to you.
Additionally, you can show him more new objects around him to trigger his little mind!
Play Time With Your Five-Month-Old
Besides more tummy time for your five-month-old baby, you can equally try out colourful toys such as a rattle, textured toys or even toys that make sounds to attract your baby.
You can also continue reading to him while getting your baby to hold the board or cloth books himself.
On top of this, you can even play different genres of music while spending time with your baby. Ranging from classical to jazz or pop, you will see your baby happily clap his hands and even babble along the music.
In fact, if you are looking for more ideas to play with your baby, you can start right away without spending a fortune in the toy shop!
Your baby can equally be amused by playing with the household items! Let’s follow some of the tips below to explore the exciting moments with household items:
Be a Creative Parent While Exploring the Five-Month-Old Developmental Milestones
As your baby is now capable of sitting up with minimal support, be ready to discover more and more exciting activities with your baby!
Does this mean you need to allocate more budget in making your baby happy and more developed?
Absolutely not! Instead, be more creative and innovative by making good use of household items in baby play. And don’t forget that you can equally entertain your baby by spending more quality time with him.
Just a Pee-ka-boo with your baby is sufficient to make your baby giggle in no time.
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