The Wonder Weeks (2019)

My son is growing up fast! I never cease to be amazed at how much he has developed since he was born. As he pushes his boundaries in cognitive development, I notice that he also goes through periods of incessant fussing, irritability, and clinginess. My first bout with these difficult periods was in his sixth week, when he was just inconsolable. I even called the advice nurse multiple times just to get assurances that my son was all right. She told me that his gut was maturing around that time, which is a major adjustment; major crying bouts were expected.

Okay, but still it's difficult to witness. 

Not wanting to go through these maturation stages blind, I followed Biboy, Barbara, and Matty's lead: I bought a copy of Frans X. Plooij and Hetty van Rijt's book entitled "The Wonder Weeks". The authors claim that babies go through ten predictable "leaps" of development; these are predictable because they happen like clockwork for all babies, at around the same time from their due dates. The accuracy of the leaps' schedule based on due dates can be questionable because due dates are estimates. Nevertheless, in my child's case, I expect these leaps to arrive a few weeks later than what's on schedule because he was born a bit early. 

What I find interesting is that the authors provided a list of new skills that parents could expect from their babies after they have made each leap. These lists of new skills aren't really unique; other child development researchers discuss them too. However, Plooij and van Rijt present gaining these new skills as entering new worlds. For example, the "World of Changing Sensations" coincide with the maturation of the baby's gut and an increase in his/her wakefulness because he/she has depleted the mom's melatonin supply and has to start generating his/her own. If I didn't take up Human Development as an elective course for my undergraduate degree, I would have been wowed by the presentation because they do seem like the baby is entering a new world each time he/she makes a cognitive leap. But because I did, I'm less impressed by the presentation and was more interested in what's actually going on during the leap.

Thus, I found myself speed-reading through much of each chapter and slowing down only when I have reached the list of possible new skills or changes observed. As of this writing, I have not finished reading the book (my baby is supposedly going through Leap 4; we still have six more leaps to go and I only read the chapter corresponding to the leap he's in and the next one). But I am fascinated that I can actually tick off boxes in the leap he's currently in but not in the subsequent ones (i.e., for older babies).  The skills obtained in the current leap are pre-requisites for the next leap

I now understand why the leap periods are called Wonder Weeks. As my child comes out of each one (and I no longer worry why he's inconsolable after feeding him, changing his diaper, and though I hold him a lot), I can see that he is no longer the baby from the previous stage... he's literally growing in front of my eyes. I gaze at him with wonderment at how different he is as compared to when I brought him home from the hospital. He may be wondering about the world too, as each leap allows him to see it with a different—more sophisticated—view.