Growth Spurt Vs. Mental Leap
- Kaja Cardinal-Bilou
- Dec 7, 2016
- 3 min read
I get a lot of questions from other people saying 'aren't they the same thing?' Nope, not at all;
completely different in fact. & For Knox they usually happen at very different times because he's considered a 'preemie'. Some select mental leaps & growth spurts happen at the same time though, & it's hell on earth.
I honestly wouldn't know anything about this stuff if I hadn't done some intensive research about like, everything in pregnancy & babies when I was expecting. But I wanted to be mentally prepared as I could; & I'm glad I did that because man, is it ever helping me understand my little now.
I've learned the most about mental leaps & growth spurts, the times they happen & the differences specifically from The Wonder Weeks App. It's based on a worldwide selling novel about babies & their mental & physical development. When they occur, what happens in each leap & how to understand them better.
Growth spurts, happen every month to every baby around the same time, preemie or not. It's a sudden increase of growth or change throughout the body or a specific part of the baby's body & can happen throughout the baby's entire development. However; there are also many small growth spurts. Sometimes; all of a sudden your baby will grow a few inches overnight, & then the growth slows down again for an extended period of time.
Although, the first three growth spurts of the head circumference after birth goes along with the first three 'mental leaps' your baby will endure. Afterwards it's not often that the growth spurts & leaps happen at the same time, simply because growth spurts happen more frequently than leaps.
A mental leap, on the other hand is a sudden change in the mental development of a baby that increases mental progress. Leaps usually happen around the same ages (give or take a month later on in life) but all babies show different levels of intensity when they are going through a mental leap. The beginning of each leap starts off with a brain change that begins a new type of perception & understanding.
A mental leap consists of two phases . The first is the difficult period, where they are more clingy, cranky & easily upset... 'a fussy period' if you will. During this, a baby might even regress. The second phase is a period of time where they learn to master new skills, or start using old skills in a different way that is usually unique to them.
People usually ask me 'why do you consider Knox a preemie?' Well, he technically is as he was born nearly a month early BUT more specifically because he's going through mental leaps a bit later than babies born around or after their due date. Why calculate it by due date do you ask?
The timing of the mental development is linked to the age since conception & not the age since birth. Look at it this way; the brain of a baby that is born three weeks early (37 weeks) is not as far along as the brain of a full term baby (40 weeks). The brain develops in & outside of the womb. This is why mental leaps, NOT growth spurts are calculated by the due date. (Knox was nearly a month early, born at 36+6)
There is a total of 10 leaps within the first 76 weeks of a infant's life (1.4 years) beginning from their calculated due date. Some are worse than others. The first mental leap, the 4 month sleep regression, & so on. There are definitely much more leaps untill a child is fully grown & developed into a young adult, but these are the ones that have been heavily studied & documented among thousands of babies, throughout the period of 40 years.
All this information I have learned mainly from The Wonder Weeks App, which was possibly the best 10$ I have ever spent (thank you Vanessa)! & some gathered from The Babycenter App, (links below). I have made this blog to just educate some parents to be & new parents that are unaware of the differences, & just to clarify the differences that people have been asking about!
https://www.thewonderweeks.com/about-the-wonder-week-app/
http://www.babycenter.com/mobile-apps
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