Latest Baby Milestone - picking something up

Today I watched in complete amazement as our baby picked something up for the first time ever. I couldn't have been more surprised if my dog started talking to me.

picture of baby holding rattle

Babies have that natural grasping instinct, so from birth Amélie would hold whatever you put in her hand. Picking something up is a completely different matter and I've not been able to tempt her with anything.

I'd read somewhere that if you touch the back of their fingers with something they may grab it, I tried this every day and nothing. Sometimes when she is being fed she will put her hands up and support the bottle, you can even let go of the bottle and she will hold it up, but that isn't the same. She has held the bottle since very early on, and I don't think she is consciously doing it.

At about eight and a half weeks old I thought she would be at least trying to pick things up, or batting things with her hands but until today she seemed happy just to watch.

She was in her little swing, Clare was in the kitchen, and I was on my laptop working. I bought her a little rattle a couple of weeks ago hoping she would pick it up, but she hadn't seemed interested. Her swing has a little shelf on it and Clare had put the rattle there, Amélie was getting agitated because it was feeding time and she wanted her bottle.

I was trying to concentrate on an email I was composing when I heard the rattle. I looked up and she had it in her hand and was shaking the rattle. Even though I was expecting her to do this one day I was just so shocked, and it seemed a really unusual thing to happen. She looked at me and I half expected her to say, 'where the hell is my bottle?'. Eventually she lost the rattle when she dropped it by her side, she didn't seem to have the inclination to pick it back up again.

I shook my head in disbelief and continued to work, a little later when Clare was about to feed her I told Clare. 'By the way, Amélie picked up her rattle and started shaking it earlier. She was pretty shocked and annoyed, 'No way! Really? Why the hell didn't you tell me?' this quickly turned to disbelief so we had to try and get her to repeat it.

We set her up in the same way, but she wouldn't pick it up. She was looking at things, and she knocked it off the little shelf twice but didn't pick it up. I'm not sure if this was a one off, so I'm going to try it again tomorrow. She has changed so much in the last few days, much more human, and the connection between us is growing stronger and stronger. I'm expecting her to pick something up again in the next couple of days.