What to do if a child does not hold his head at 4-5 months?
A situation where a child does not hold his head in 4-5 months or holds it very badly does not occur so often, but it does occur.
In this article we will understand the reasons for this, as well as show you how parents act, if they are faced with such a problem.
A little about the timing and statistics
It is believed that the child should be able to hold the head vertically for about 4 months. To hold is to hold confidently, correctly.
By 5 months, babies, according to the average pediatric norms, turn it from side to side in order to better consider the subject or person of interest. By 7 months a healthy baby can lift his head from a prone position on his back, and this is very, very difficult.
But children are all different, and develop at an individual pace, and therefore some begin to lift and hold their heads from about 2.5-3 months, while others need more time.
Until the child's back and lateral muscles of the neck, the vertebrae of the cervical spine become stronger, it is not possible to master such a physical skill as keeping the head upright. Standards are focused on average statistics. It means that in 2.5-3 months to raise the head and up to a minute to try to hold it can at least 80% of the kids. 90% master the skill by 4 months, the rest - later.
If a particular child is in these remaining 10%, this does not mean that we are talking about some gross pathologies, it is quite possible that this is just a manifestation of an individual development program. But you still need to examine the child, because the reasons may not be just harmless.
The reasons
The reason for the lack of skill in 4-5 months almost always lies in the hypothesis of cervical muscles, their lack of development, weakness. But hypotension itself can be caused by a fairly large range of problems.
Premature babies develop more slowly - many of them have the skill of holding the head in an upright position barely beginning to form by 3-4 months. Later others can begin to hold the head and children who were born with a large or gigantic weight, as well as toddlers who were born with insufficient body weight.
Most healthy babies in 5 months hold the head, even if uncertainly and not too smoothly, but for quite a long time - a few minutes. The lack of this skill may be due to a cervical spine injury not previously diagnosed.
Birth injuries are usually well diagnosed in the first days of a child's life even in a maternity hospital. But microtrauma may go unnoticed. The child could get an injury at home, for example, when falling or as a result of a sharp spontaneous tilting of the head back, if the little one was incorrectly held in her arms.
Cerebral palsy, as well as other serious violations of the central nervous system, which the child could receive as a result of a difficult pregnancy and as a result of complicated births, can be the reason for the inability to keep the head for 5 months.
For the most part, such diagnoses become apparent at this age if parents do not neglect routine examinations at the pediatrician, delivery of tests, and ultrasound.
If the parents of the five-month-old karapuz have never been told anything of the kind, and there are no other complaints about the state of health or strangeness in the child's behavior, it is most likely a matter of elementary pedagogical neglect and individual peculiarities.
If a baby from birth is somewhat slow and lazy, and they do little with him, do 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.
You may have to undergo an unscheduled neurosonography (ultrasound of the brain through a large spring, which by this time has not yet closed), as well as a radiographic examination or MRI of the cervical spine. This will enable the doctor to understand whether there are pathologies that interfere with normal physical development.
If the child nevertheless raises the head lying on his stomach, but holds it unevenly, it is necessary to visit an orthopedist - it is not impossible for torticollis, in which the tension of the neck muscles on one side is stronger, and therefore it is not only difficult to hold the head, but also extremely uncomfortable.
At home, the child should be more often placed on the stomach, doing gymnastics with him, doing a general strengthening massage. Well train your neck muscles in the pool or bath. The baby can swim in a special orthopedic device - a circle on the neck, which is fastened so that the chin is fixed in the correct position, and the baby is held on the water. Dr. Komarovsky recommends doing this after an examination by a doctor.
Opinion Dr. Komarovsky on child development standards, you can learn from the following video.
