Do you want to know how your baby’s brain develops from being a fetus to an infant and then at a later age? According to the Best Hospital in Amritsar, brain development does not stop after early childhood, but it is the foundation upon which the brain continues to develop. While the brain continues developing and transforming into adulthood, the first 8 years can set the stage for future learning, health, and success in life.
The quality of a child’s early life experiences, positive or negative, helps shape the development of his or her brain. The doctors at the Best Gynecologist Hospital in Amritsar suggest that a child’s daily experience determines which brain connections develop and which remain for life.
Proper baby care, starting before birth and continuing through infancy, ensures that a child’s brain develops well and reaches its full potential. While the foundations of brain function are laid in the uterus, brain function itself continues to develop after birth, primarily through sensory information.
Before Birth:
Before birth, the brain produces trillions of more neurons and synapses than it needs. From birth to age 3, connections between brain cells, called synapses, grow faster than at any other time in life. Even before birth, your developing baby’s brain and nerves have developed to the point where they can control basic reflexes and vital functions such as breathing, swallowing, and sleeping.
During Different Stages of Pregnancy:
This important brain area develops rapidly during pregnancy, doesn’t come into play until the full-term baby is born, and matures steadily in the first few years of life in the baby’s rich environment. The fetal nervous system, which is your baby’s brain, spinal cord and nerves, and the spinal cord of your baby’s brain, is one of the first systems to develop.
The neural tube is important for the development of the baby’s brain and spinal cord, both of which develop from the neural tube. Your baby’s brain continues to develop throughout pregnancy, so all trimesters are important. Let’s take a closer look at the cognitive development path your baby goes through during pregnancy.
1st Trimester:
In the first trimester, the neural connections that allow the baby to move around in the womb are formed, and in the second trimester, more neural connections and brain tissue are formed.
Your fetus will begin the process of brain development around week 5, but the real fun doesn’t start until around week 6 or 7 when the neural tube closes and the brain splits into three parts. Even if your baby develops certain areas of the brain, it is not until the sixth week that the first electrical activity of the brain begins.
By week 10, the brain is a small, smooth structure that looks more like the brain you’re used to (except for the folds that make up the various areas of the brain that develop later in pregnancy).
2nd Trimester:
By the end of the second trimester, the baby’s brain stem, which controls heart rate, breathing, and blood pressure, is almost fully developed and is located just above the spinal cord and below the cerebral cortex. Neurons begin migrating to different areas of your developing baby’s brain, where they take on specific roles such as interpreting sounds and storing memories, as well as forming connections with other neurons, until the sixth month of pregnancy. This becomes quite evident during the rapid physical and mental development of your baby in the sixth month of pregnancy.
3rd Trimester:
During the third trimester, your baby’s brain will almost triple in weight; and also there is a rapid development of neurons and wiring. At this stage, the cerebral cortex begins to take the place of the brainstem and cerebellum, preparing the child for future learning.
At the Time of Birth:
At birth, a baby’s brain contains 100 billion neurons, about as many nerve cells as there are stars in the Milky Way, and nearly all the neurons a brain will ever have.
After Birth:
Your baby’s brain doubles in size in the first year of life; the cerebellum, the area at the back of the brain that controls coordination and balance, triples in size.
Now we’re talking about the development of the brain during the first two months of life, eight and eight weeks. The first trimester is a time of rapid development and separation of different parts of the brain. Within 4 weeks, a basic structure known as the neural plate forms, which according to the doctors at the Best Hospital in Amritsar is thought to be the precursor to the central nervous system.
How Can You Help in the Baby’s Brain Development?
What you need to know about child brain development will help parents and caregivers understand how a child’s and toddler’s brain develops and what they can do to help their child or young child have healthy brain development. Parents need to know at least a little about the development of a child’s brain so that they can understand how and why their children react the way they do.
If you have questions about how being a parent can help the development and growth of your baby’s healthy brain, your paediatrician can help you and answer your questions about promoting your child’s brain development. So, what to do on your part?
- Vitamin Intake: From taking certain vitamins before you get pregnant to feeding and taking care of your newborn, there are things you can do before, during, and after pregnancy to support your baby’s development.
- Exercise: Whether you hope your child becomes an Olympic swimmer, a CEO or a talented artist, a healthy pregnancy will support your child’s brain development. So, exercise and activity during pregnancy are important for your body’s health, but studies show they can also improve your baby’s brain function. Recent studies also show that exercise during pregnancy can increase the number of neurons in a baby’s hippocampus, the part of the brain responsible for learning and memory, by 40%.
- Responding to Child’s Query: You can help your child’s development by responding to your child’s needs, talking to them, and creating a stimulating environment with a variety of activities that will give your child the opportunity to play.
- Child’s Interaction & Physical Activities: It’s everyday experiences — activities like playing, reading, learning, interacting, and getting answers from people — that help develop your child’s brain.
- Omega-3 Intake: Omega-3s are especially important in the last trimester of pregnancy when your baby’s brain is at its fastest-growing period. During pregnancy, omega-3s are an important part of the development of the baby’s brain, eyes, and nervous system. You can consult a gynecologist for the same at the Best Hospital in Amritsar.
- Positive Parenting: Positive parenting and positive interactions with your child and toddler will ultimately help their growing brains develop well.
- Child’s Mental Activity: The most important thing that any parent can do to support development, and especially the development of the child’s brain, is to know that the child must be able to read his signals, to be able to participate in what we call interaction.
Final Words:
In this first year, exciting and enormous brain growth can occur if children are given opportunities to learn and use their brains. Heredity indeed plays a role, but the choices you make in life and the environment you create for your child can directly affect your child’s intelligence.
Although new parents tended to focus on children’s physical health and development in their questions to paediatricians at the Best Gynecologist Hospital in Amritsar during visits to healthy babies in the first six months, the findings highlight the importance of physicians promoting parental knowledge about cognitive and mental development
