Infancy – This is the period between birth and the first birthday. The infant spends most of the time sleeping which initially is evenly spread throughout the day and night , later becomes diurnal .A newborn’s basic needs are food , sleep and comfort . The only form of communication for the infant is crying . He is comforted when the mother picks him up , cuddle him or rock him to and fro . Newborn can comfort himself by sucking his thumb.
The infant’s perception is what he can see , hear , smell ,taste and touch . His sight is blurry in the initial stages and improves later on . Colour perception has been demonstrated in infants as young as 4 months age. They get the adult like vision by 6 months age. Infants are seen gazing in the eyes and staring at the colourful clothes of their mother. Hearing is well developed prior to birth .
Newborns prefer human voice to other sounds and mother’s voice to other voices , and the native language to other languages. Infants can detect the direction from which the sound is coming and by 18 months the hearing ability is equal to that of an adult. Smell and taste are present at birth, with the infant showing different expressions with pleasant odors and tastes like honey and milk. They acquire this ability in the womb from the smell and taste of amniotic fluid in turn influenced by what the mother eats. Both breast and bottle fed infants at the age of 3 days prefer the smell of human milk to formula milk indicating an innate preference .
They prefer the smell of the mother to others and are able to differentiate the two at an early age. The sense of touch and feel is well developed and are attributed to the advanced development of the somato sensory cortex. Infants feel pain similarly to older children but the pain relief has not received much attention. Researchers say that before giving the vaccination if you give the child glucose water or allow him to be breast fed , the child will feel less pain .
drsaritarun 