Appearance

Your baby is about 14 ¼ inches long and weighs in at 2 ½ pounds. This still seems very small, but remember that during the last several weeks of pregnancy your baby will gain a significant amount of weight. Your baby’s head is more in proportion with the rest of his body. The lanugo gradually starts to disappear, remaining only in a few patches around her neck and shoulders. His skin is damp and shiny, well covered now with white vernix, and is generally looks less wrinkled, becoming plumper every day.

Is TV (and Video) good or bad for babies and infants under age 2?

No study has shown that babies benefit from watching television and video. In fact, it can actually do harm:

• The first 2 years of your kid is a critical time for brain development. Watching TV steals time away from your kid’s exploring, interacting, playing with you and others, and actively learning by manipulating things around him/her. These are activities that help your kid develop the skills they need to grow intellectually, socially and emotionally.
• When your kid plays, he/she is actively learning about how the world works. He/she wires his/her brain by experimenting with cause and effect. When your kid interacts with people, he/she meets his/her emotional milestones. TV keeps your kid away from these activities.
• The first 2 years of your kid is also a critical time for learning language. Language is only learned through interaction with others, not by passive listening to TV. If you not respond to your kid's attempt to communicate, your kid could miss this important milestone. Also, your kid will not learn to talk by listening to TV characters baby talk or talk down to him. Your kid learns to talk by mimicking adult language. He learns from the adults’ simplified but correctly pronounced speech.
• Note that when your baby smiles at the TV, the TV does not smile back. This may affect him/her socially and psychologically.
• Dimitri Christakis, a pediatrician at Children's Hospital and Regional Medical Center in Seattle, found that children who watched television as babies are more likely to have shorter attention spans, problem concentrating and impulsiveness by age 7. He also states that although Attention Deficit Disorder is genetic, TV can also trigger this condition because TV rewires the baby's brain. The still-developing brain adapts to TV's fast pace and overstimulation.
• Also, in his study, Christakis found that children who watched TV as babies are less able to recognize letters and numbers by the time they go to school. A 2005 University of Pennsylvania study found that watching Sesame Street before age 3 delayed a child’s ability to develop language skills. This may be because babies are wired to be active and not passive learners.
• Many other studies have found that long-term exposure to television diminishes children's ability to communicate via reading and writing. It can also lead to attention and learning problems in the long term.