Physical Development

What a difference a month makes! Your baby has lost his newborn appearance and can even hold up his head for a minute or two. He's beginning to discover his own body, especially the hands, which fascinate him as he moves them about.

As a general rule, motor development proceeds from head to toe. The first milestone to be reached is control of the head, followed by the body, the arms, the torso, and the legs. At this point, most of your baby's responses are still reflexive; for instance, his hands are held in a tight fist, and he'll reflexively grasp anything put into his palm. This will change in the next month or two, when movements start to become voluntary.

Social Development

Testing, one, two, three! Babies can hear from the moment they are born and distinguish volume a few minutes after birth, startling or shuddering at loud noises in the delivery room and then adjusting to them the second or third time around. Studies have shown that they respond more positively to high-pitched sounds (such as your voice) than to lower-pitched ones, quieting and becoming more alert when spoken or sung to. By the end of the first month, your little one will enjoy nursery rhymes and simple songs, particularly those with a pronounced rhythm. In fact, child development research suggests that babies who are sung to early in their lives rapidly develop a feeling for, and a facility with, language: They tend to speak and read slightly earlier than other children.

Intellectual Development

Your little one still wails for an hour or more a day, but by now, you've probably noticed that not all sobs are created equal. Babies have individual cries for hunger, boredom, anger, loneliness, exhaustion, and discomfort. With a little experience, most parents find that they can tell the difference. If your baby's cry still baffles you, check to make sure his diaper is clean, he's not too hot or cold, there aren't any symptoms of illness (fever, runny nose, labored breathing, and so on), and he doesn't need to eat. Once these have been ruled out, it's safe to assume that he just wants a little attention. Give him as much as you possibly can--it's impossible to spoil a baby at this age, and a study found that babies whose crying is ignored early on tend to cry more frequently and persistently later.

Note: The information above offers general guidelines, but all babies develop differently, and few hit their milestones precisely when the conventional wisdom says they should. If your child was born prematurely, you may want to use your due date as a baseline for following baby's development.