Do you want to know why babies grab your face while going to sleep? or why babies grace your face while sleeping or why babies grab your face while feeding or breastfeeding? You’re at the right place, keep reading to get your answers.
As a nursing mother, you may be wondering why your baby grabs your face often, and it is not a bad thing but a sign that your baby is now growing and trying to sense things and communicate with you.
There are various reasons why babies grab their guardian’s faces and mostly their mother or father’s faces.
Before your baby learns how to speak, they can only communicate with you through touching, their facial expressions, and crying.
When the baby does these things, they try to communicate with you and show their expressions and feelings to you. These can be joyful expressions, sad expressions, angry expressions, or when they are unhealthy.
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Therefore, as a mother, you should be able to figure out the main reason why your baby grabs your face often in other to understand their communication with you.
Babies do this when they are still months old and cannot talk. And as a mother, you should encourage your baby’s sense of touch from their tender age.
They are trying to communicate with you and explore their sense of touch.
If you have been wondering to know the reason why your baby grabs your face, they are listed here in this article to enlighten you more on how to give attention and care to your baby.
Table of Contents
Why does my baby grab my face?
The following are some of the reasons why babies grabs your face
1. Just A Reflex
The first reason your baby grabs your face may be due to reflex action to stimuli.
Babies are still fighting more by themselves to learn how to control the coordination part of their body; therefore, they will have a little accident.
The accident I mean here is when your baby sometimes grabs your face, leading to a scratch on your face.
As a mother, please don’t be angry or angry when your babies do this because they do not know they are hurting you by doing that.
The only way you can help is to understand the situation and try to understand what your baby wants at the moment.
2. For Exploration
When babies begin to explore their sense of touch and start developing their sensory skills, a baby development needs to explore and practice these new skills.
It is when your baby begins paying attention to things around them, giving expressions, looking and staring at people singing and dancing, smiling at things, and getting attracted to colorful and beautiful toys.
Babies also try to explore by touching faces, especially their momma’s face, the first face they recognize vividly.
Therefore, they develop the habit of touching your face to feel the texture to know what a mummy’s face looks like and to play with them and smile at you.
They do this to other people around them, either the father or the siblings, to recognize and feel their faces.
3. Fear
We all get startled, jump, run or scream when we are scared. The same thing happens to babies as well, and they react by fidgeting and grabbing your face when they hear a loud noise or see a scary thing.
Therefore your baby tends to run to their savior, which is you, the mother, to save them from what they are scared of. So make sure you are available for your baby whenever they need you.
4. Your Expression
The kind of expressions you give babies can lead to them grabbing your face to know why you make such an expression and to reply to whatever expression you make.
Your baby tries to know the reaction you make after giving you the kind of reply they understand you will react to.
Grabbing your face, pinching you, scratching your face, or biting you, they do all these to see your reaction, making them understand and know what to do and not to do to you.
5. Crying For Attention
Babies aged eight months and above before they start developing new methods of grabbing your attention instead of crying.
The new method they develop is by trying to use their hands to grab your face. And at times, you may get scratched with their nails, but do not hold it against them as they are unaware of their own strength.
Babies do this to maintain long-time eye contact and ensure they get enough love and attention from you. Also, they do this to grab your attention to something they are doing or want.
6. To Play
As your baby grows up, they develop the habit of playing more and catching the attention of things around them.
As a good mother, you should observe that your babies are giving some expression when watching cartoons and grabbing the air with their hands as an expression of excitement and joy. And they start to cry crying when you stop them from watching.
It shows that your baby needs to play more and needs more fun from you. You can also give the kind of joy they derive from watching cartoons by playing with them.
When babies grab your face sometimes and give you some warm smiles, they are simply trying to say, “Mummy, let’s play.” Funny, but that’s the indisputable fact. So do not be busy playing and have fun with your baby when they need it.
7. To Grow Closer To Their Mother
One of the beautiful reasons is that babies want to get closer to their mother, so they grab your face to make eye contact and smile warmly at you to grab your attention.
Kindly make sure you respond to their expression by giving him a funny facial expression, saying some silly words, and throwing a cute smile back at him, then pulling him closer to make sure they smile back at you. Your baby will love you more.
8. Hunger
Sometimes, your baby grabs your face as a result of hunger. Therefore, when your baby grabs your face and makes some sounds, they are hungry and want to eat. You should attend to this speedily before they start crying.
Especially in younger babies, when they are hungry, they grab your face and say, “Mum, I’m hungry.” So as a caring mother, ensure you understand this and give in to the baby’s request as soon as possible.
9. Frustration Expression
Your baby reacts to frustration by grabbing your face. There are various reasons your baby gets frustrated: when they realize you are not giving the attention they need, or you do something they don’t like.
Sometimes, it could also be because you didn’t let him play with your hair or the kinds of stuff he likes to play with.
Whatever the reason may be, do not react to them harshly; know that your baby does not have control over his urges yet. Just make sure you try your best to put him at ease and pat him to put him to sleep.
Although when your baby grabs your face, it is not a bad thing or something to worry about, all you need is to make sure you are sensitive enough as a mother to understand the reasons for every single expression they make.
You may wish to stop him from grabbing your face, and I will show you some ways to stop your baby from grabbing your face.
How to stop the baby from grabbing your face.
Talk to the baby
If your baby continues grabbing your face often without stopping, you should take time to talk to them. Sounds funny, right? Yes, it does, but it has a lot of virtues.
Your baby may do wrong things. Therefore you shouldn’t hesitate to talk to them by saying, “Baby don’t do that,” Baby doesn’t want to scratch mummy,” “Baby don’t cry,” etc. You may be wondering if they can hear you.
You may not get an oral reply from the baby, but the baby will reply with an expression to make you know they understand you.
Spice things up
You can also stop your baby from grabbing your face by using their active hours to play with them by singing some baby rhythm, clapping your hands, dancing, talking to them, and saying silly words, tickling them.
Make sure the baby’s active time is fun; use this hour to learn more about your baby and play more to make them happy. Doing this will stop your baby from grabbing your face.
Learn why your baby is doing it (Grabbing your face)
You don’t just have to assume that your baby needs attention or trying to get a reaction from you. There may be another reason your baby keeps grabbing your face continually.
Try to be sensitive enough to learn the reason why he does that. Grab his hands, make sure he grabs your hands too, touch his body and see his reaction.
Stay Calm
Ensure you don’t get frustrated or mad at your baby when he grabs your face. Your reactions to your baby’s actions tend to make him learn more about you.
When your baby grabs your face, always without reason; make sure you talk to him calmly with a calm and not a scary voice to make them understand the situation.
React to it
Babies are wise, do not assume they know anything about what they do. That is a big lie, do not deceive yourself. They are wise and are aware of whatever they do.
Therefore, when your baby scratches your face, kindly turn your back on him and stop playing with him. When you do this and return to him to talk to him, tell him how bad what he just did is – “Baby doesn’t do that, “Baby doesn’t hurt mummy.”
When you talk to him, and he does it again, you can take his hand, turn it to the back and give him a forceless stroke with a finger.
When you do that, and he stares at you, that means he already realized that he did a bad thing to get a stroke from his caring mum.
Take Away The Fear
When you realize that your baby grabbed your face due to fear, make sure you eradicate the source of the fear. Either a noise, someone’s expression, whatever it is, make sure to eradicate it.
After eradicating the fear, bring him closer, pat him and assure him that everything will be fine.
Why do babies grab their faces?
Aside from grabbing their mother’s face, babies also grab and scratch their face. A baby can grab his face, scratches his face, and grab his nose. There are reasons why babies do this as well.
4 Reasons why babies grab their face
- The baby got frustrated: Babies grab their face when you get them upset and do what they don’t like. They grab their face whenever you stop them from doing something.
- The baby wants to sleep: Aside from getting frustrated, sometimes, babies grab their face because they are tired and want to sleep. When they do this, watch them closely and try patting the baby’s back or butts to put him to sleep.
- The baby is hungry: When they get famished and begin crying and grabbing their face, that is a sign that they are hungry. In that situation, the baby is trying to communicate with you by saying, “Mummy, give me some milk please,” “I’m hungry, mummy.”
- Reflex action: Sometimes, when a baby grabs his face, it results from a response to stimuli. He tries to move his hands and controls his hands as the hormones control him.
However, be cautious when your baby grabs his face because sometimes, when babies grab their face, it leads to mishaps. Mishaps, who end up leaving a cut on their face, are unaware of their strength.
And also, as a mother, do not wait until your baby cuts you or cuts himself with his fingernails until you get rid of those nails for him.
Check on your baby daily to observe every change in him, from the head to the eyes, ears, mouth, hands, and fingernails. Cut the fingernails when they get longer.
This part is also crucial; some mothers find it hard to know when to cut their baby’s fingernails.
When is the best time to cut my baby’s fingernails?
The best time to cut a baby’s fingernails is when they are deep asleep. To avoid cutting your baby accidentally, don’t cut your baby’s fingernails when he is active.
You are vividly aware of their strength and how energetic he is when active. When you cut his nails during his busy time, you may end up cutting him. And that is not a good experience as a mother; you feel the pain too.
Wait until your baby is deeply asleep, then you pick up a baby’s nail cutter to cut their nails very gently so that you won’t disturb his peaceful sleep.
Endeavor to keep your baby’s nails short all the time!
Why does my bay grab my face when falling asleep?
Since you are the safest spot, your baby has, he sees you as his comforter and savior to keep him safe while sleeping. And touching your face when sleeping means your baby loves you and wishes to talk and play with you more before falling asleep.
Finally, there are many reasons why your baby grabs your face. Babies are continuously learning and using touching as a means of communication since they can’t talk yet.
In most cases, your baby grabs your face because he needs your maximum attention, wants to feel the texture of your skin, and gets fond of you, his mother.
