What are the Wonder Weeks?
Published: 8th February 2017
The first time I heard the phrase, Wonder Week, was on a Facebook group supporting mothers. When I told my mam about it she
thought I was crazy but I was egar to learn more so I read the book, The Wonder Weeks by Hetty van de Rijt and Frans Plooij.
A wonder week is a time in your baby’s life when their brain is rapidly growing and developing. Before your baby finds out
how to do new things she/he will be clingy, cry a lot, want to be in mammy’s arms all day and maybe even have difficulty
sleeping. The good news is that this time will pass, though to you it might feel like it’s lasting forever while you’re in it.
Immediately after the leap, you’ll notice a change; overnight your baby seems to learn new stuff or even looks like different
child to you. There is a long list of the things that your baby is going to learn after each leap (and the older the baby, the
longer that list becomes). It’s not easy for your child to do those things at once; his/her skills will be developing day by
day until the next leap comes. For example, one day he will learn how to catch things and later he will practice to improve that
skill.
During his/her first year of life, your baby has to learn many, many things. As a newborn all the baby does is lie down, cry,
eat and poo. After only 52 weeks he/she will communicate with you on a different level, might walk or crawl, can play with toys
and manipulate those toys. Never again in our lives does our brain grow this quickly.
Every child is different so going through a wonder week or a leap will be different for each in its intensity. Some children are
very sensitive to these periods of change and for others you would hardly know that anything is going on; one thing is for
certain, these periods are highly predictable. The timing of the wonder weeks are based on the baby’s due date; if your child
was born early, his/her wonder weeks will be later by that amount of time and if the baby was later, wonder week will be earlier.
Luckily, the authors of the book have developed a handy app to remind you when your baby is coming to a Wonder Week that can be
ordered through their website www.TheWonderWeeks.com.
The first wonder week is at 5 weeks; your newborn is becoming much more aware of the world around him/her. Between 7 and 9 weeks
your baby starts to notice patterns; for example catching things or lifting head up. At around 11-12 weeks, we have the world of
smooth transitions, when the baby learns to coordinate his/her movements and discovers his/her voice. I personally found the
leap between 14 and 19 weeks one of the toughest; baby starts to react to his/her name, is learning how to create sounds and
even finds out that he/she can make mammy come by making those sounds. What a clever baby!
The wonder week at 22-26 weeks is when separation anxiety begins; baby now realizes that he/she is a separate person to mammy
so he/she ends up with crying when out of mammy’s arms. It can be quite frightening for baby as he/she realises that mammy can
disappear forever. At 33-37 weeks baby finds the world of categories where he/she understands that a dog is a dog, even if it
is different colour, size or shape. The last leap in first year is between 41 and 48 weeks; now your nearly toddler has fun in
creating a tower instead destroying it.
These fussy periods can be challenging as they can last up to 5 weeks. Mostly it’s a few hard days and then we can enjoy our
precious little baby and be in awe of all the new things he/she has learnt.
How to manage a fussy and crying baby? Find out in our next article...
References