Avoiding Eye contact

My 3 month son smiles all the time and is always looking at you and when you look at him he starts smiling and laughing but his sister hardly ever smiles and avoids eye contact. The only time I can get her to smile is when she is looking at me but that isn't very often, most of the time it is when I am feeding her her bottle or when she is waking up in her crib.

Should I be worried?

 

If you are concerned, I would bring it up with your doctor, but try not to worry too much. Some babies are just naturally more smiley than others & some are more serious.

 

I agree that you should ask your pedi if you are concerned, but I know that it can be normal.
My girls were born at 35 weeks and 3 days and my biggest baby was doing the same thing. We had early intervention people coming every month to make sure they were developing normally and one of the ladies freaked me out telling me she was concerned DD had something wrong because of her lack of eye contact. She suggested she may have CP so obviously I was extremely worried and took her to the Pedi, he was actually pretty upset with that lady for suggesting that and getting me worried. He told me that due to her prematurity it was more likely that she was overstimulated by eye contact and would become more social with age. She is 7 now and perfectly normal and BTW she ended up being a very smiley, happy baby.

 

What Tina said!

 

One of my sons has a very difficult time being social and trying to get his attention and to hold eye contact is hard to do. I complained about it all the time to the medical professionals and they are just taking me serious now. First thing we are doing is ruling out any hearing problems. We already see PT and OT so they are keeping an eye on things as well. We also switched his formla to Alimentum and with this formula the protein is already broken down. The doctor told me that some kids have trouble digesting the protein and it can sppill out into their systems and cause fogginess type affect. I thought this was really strange but gave it a shot. He has been on the formula for a month now and we are see progress. I don't know if it is just a co incidence or not but he is more smiley and will hold eye contact for about 20 seconds now instead of five. I don't want to panic you because every babe is different but I would definatly talk to your pedi about it and see what they say. Best wishes

 

My DD was similar. We used to call her "prickly" because she smiled much later than DS - a couple weeks later, she was 8 weeks. She was generally a really easy baby, but just not really smiley/affectionate, whereas DS was a smiley happy guy much of the time. She was also not, and still isn't, a cuddler. It's just their personalities. She definitely does not have any issue. She's just a more serious little thing. She's still a little "prickly" and set in her ways. DS is my sensitive guy, rarely upset but very upset when gets that way. I'd talk to your pedi, but just give it time. Different babies have different personalities. With twins, you just see them both side by side all the time.

 

Eye contact is almost overwhelmingly stimulating to babies and she might just be more sensitive to it.

 

One of my boys avoided eye contact and looked always at the decoration of the house while the other keeps looking deep into my face and eyes whenever I am near him.

However, that changed and now he has eye contact and smiles as much as his brother if not more.

At your babies' age be sure to give the same cuddling and love to both babies equally even though you get feedback from one baby more than the other.