Chapter 4 
Physical Development During the First Three Years
Focus: The Birth of Elvis Presley
The Birth Process

•	What happens during each of the 4 stages of childbirth?

Settings, Attendants, and Methods of Delivery

•	Hospitals
•	Home-like birthing centers
•	Home birth
Settings, Attendants, and Methods of Delivery

•	Physician

•	Midwife
Settings, Attendants, and Methods of Delivery

•	Vaginal
•	Cesarean
•	Medicated
•	Unmedicated
What’s Your View?
•	If you and your partner were expecting a baby, and the pregnancy seemed to be going smoothly, would you prefer….
(a) medicated or nonmedicated delivery?
(b) hospital, birth center or home birth?
(c) attendance by a physician or a midwife?
The Newborn Baby

•	neonatal period: the first four weeks of life
The Newborn Baby

•	Size and Appearance

•	Body Systems
The Newborn Baby

States of Arousal

•	Regular sleep

•	Irregular sleep

•	Drowsiness

•	Alert inactivity

•	Waking activity and crying
Survival and Health
•	Medical and Behavioral Assessment
•	Apgar scale

•	Neonatal Screening for Medical Conditions
Survival and Health
•	Complications of Childbirth
•	postmaturity
•	prematurity and low birthweight
Who is More Likely to Have a Low Birthweight Baby?

•	demographic and socioeconomic factors
•	medical factors predating pregnancy
•	prenatal behavior and environmental factors
•	medical conditions associated with pregnancy

Survival and Health
•	Can a Supportive Environment Overcome Effects of Birth Complications?
•	family’s socioeconomic circumstances
•	quality of early environment
Survival and Health
•	Death During Infancy
•	improving infant survival—infant mortality rate
•	SIDS
•	immunization for better health
Early Physical Development
•	Principles of development
•	cephalocaudal principle
•	proximodistal principle
Physical Growth
Early Physical Development
•	Nutrition
•	breast or bottle?
•	obesity and cholesterol
Early Physical Development

Parts of the Brain
Early Physical Development
•	Early Sensory Capacities
•	touch and pain
•	smell and taste
•	hearing 
•	sight

Early Physical Development
•	Milestones of Motor Development
•	Denver Developmental Screening Test
•	head control
•	hand control
•	locomotion

Early Physical Development
•	Milestones of Motor Development
•	Eleanor and James Gibson’s Ecological Theory
•	Cultural Influences on Motor Development

Window on the World
Sleep Customs

Digging Deeper
The Far-Reaching Implications of Crawling