The situation when a child does not hold his head at 4-5 months or holds it very badly is not so common, but it does occur.
In this article, we will understand the reasons for this, and also show you how to act for parents if they are faced with such a problem.
A little about timing and statistics
It is believed that a baby should be able to keep its head upright by about 4 months. To hold means to hold confidently, correctly.
By 5 months, babies, according to the average pediatric standards, turn it from side to side in order to better examine the object or person of interest. By the age of 7 months, a healthy baby can raise his head from a supine position, and this is very, very difficult.
But children are all different, and they develop at an individual pace, and therefore some begin to raise and hold their heads from about 2.5-3 months, while others need more time.
Until the child has strengthened the back and lateral muscles of the neck, the vertebrae of the cervical spine, there is no physical opportunity to master such a physical skill as keeping the head upright. The norms are focused on average statistical data. It means that at 2.5-3 months, at least 80% of babies can raise their head and try to hold it for up to a minute. 90% master the skill by 4 months, the rest - later.
If a particular child falls into these remaining 10%, this does not mean that we are talking about some gross pathologies, it is quite possible, this is just a manifestation of an individual development program. But it is still necessary to examine the child, because the reasons can be not only harmless.
Causes
The reason for the lack of skill at 4-5 months almost always lies in the hypotonia of the cervical muscles, their insufficient development, and weakness. But hypotension itself can be caused by a fairly wide range of problems.
Premature babies develop more slowly - in many of them the skill of keeping the head in an upright position hardly begins to form by 3-4 months. Later, others may begin to hold the head and children who were born with a large or giant weight, as well as babies born with insufficient body weight.
Most healthy babies at 5 months hold their head, even if uncertainly and not too evenly, but for quite a long time - a few minutes. The lack of this skill may be due to a previously undiagnosed injury to the cervical spine.
Birth injuries are usually well diagnosed in the first day of a child's life, even in a maternity hospital. But microtrauma can go unnoticed. The child could get injured at home, for example, when falling or as a result of a sharp spontaneous throwing of the head back, if the baby was not held correctly in his arms.
The reason for the inability to hold the head by 5 months can be infantile cerebral palsy, as well as other serious disorders from the work of the central nervous system, which the child could receive as a result of an unfavorable difficult pregnancy, and as a result of complicated childbirth.
For the most part, by this age, such diagnoses become obvious if parents do not neglect routine examinations at a pediatrician, tests, ultrasound.
If the parents of a five-month-old toddler have never been told anything like this, and there are no other complaints about the state of health or strange behavior in the child, most likely the matter is in elementary pedagogical neglect and individual characteristics.
If the baby is somewhat slow and lazy from birth, and little is done with him, he does not develop him, then the acquisition of a new skill may be delayed.
What to do?
First of all, parents should pull themselves together and make an appointment with the child to see a pediatric neurologist.
It may be necessary to undergo unscheduled neurosonography (ultrasound of the brain through the large “fontanelle”, which by this time has not yet closed), as well as X-ray examination or MRI of the cervical spine. This will enable the doctor to understand if there are pathologies that interfere with normal physical development.
If the child still raises the head while lying on his stomach, but holds it unevenly, it is imperative to visit an orthopedist - torticollis is not excluded, in which the tension of the neck muscles on one side is stronger, and therefore holding the head is not only difficult, but also extremely uncomfortable.
At home, the child should be put on his stomach more often, do gymnastics with him, and do a general strengthening massage. Exercises in the pool or bath train well the neck muscles. The baby can swim in a special orthopedic device - a circle on the neck, which is attached so that the chin is fixed in the correct position, and the baby is kept on the water. Dr. Komarovsky recommends doing this after a doctor's examination.
You can find out the opinion of Dr. Komarovsky about the norms of child development from the following video.
