How Babies Develop Eyesight

When my daughter was about six weeks old, I attended a small dinner party across the street at a friend's house. One man, who was at the party with his pregnant girlfriend, peered into my newborn daughter's charcoal-grey eyes and asked, "When did her eyes open?"

Puzzled, I explained that she'd just woken up a few moments before. Fumbling for words, he asked how long it took for her eyes to open after she was born-- indicating that he believed newborns were born shut-eyed, like kittens and puppies. I had a hard time stifling my laughter, but I could see how the misconception could arise. Very pre-term babies are sometimes born with closed eyes, and even babies with open eyes take a while to develop their vision.

Here a few major milestones that babies pass while they develop the gift of eyesight.

Babies first open their eyes in the womb. Until about the 28th week of gestation, babies eyelids are fused shut. After this point, the baby opens her eyes and begins to "look" around the womb. Babies born before this gestational age may have fused eyelids for the first few weeks after birth-- opening them as they reach maturity, much like a newborn kitten. According to professorBarbara Finlay, the tendency toward open-eyed babies says a lot about our species-- our babies are ready to look and learn as soon as they are born.

 Newborns can see your face (and little else). During the first month of life, your baby can only focus within a range of 8 to 15 inches-- the distance between a nursing newborn and his mother's eyes. During this stage, he might begin to learn that people have different faces, and he may pick up on a few of your facial expressions. However, outside the 8- to 15- inch range, your child's vision is extremely blurry and can only notice high-contrast patterns like checkerboards and zebra stripes.

One-month-old babies learn to focus. During the second month of life, a baby will learn to track a moving object with his eyes. Crossed, wandering, or "lazy" eyes will begin to focus and narrow on an object. Watch your baby as he learns to follow a rattle or face as it moves a few inches. Give him plenty of one-on-one time to continue learning your face and the faces of other caregivers.

Babies' color perception enhances in the third month. At around two months of age, a baby starts learning to distinguish between similar tones. To a newborn, red and orange look indistinguishable, as do teal and blue. For this reason, high-contrast images remain a baby's favorites until he hits the two-month mark. Now that your baby can see more detailed colors, he might enjoy colorful images more than black-and-white images.

At four months of age, a baby develops depth perception. Prior to the four-month mark, a baby isn't quite capable of determining an object's position or distance. A three-month-old baby can't tell the difference between a small object right in front of him and a large object on the other side of a room. By the time he reaches four months of age, he is starting to understand how far an object is from his face, and how to use his hands to locate and grasp it.

Babies begin to spot smaller, faster-moving objects at around five months. During the sixth month of life, a baby learns to focus his eyes on a small object, even if it is moving fairly quickly. Although he can't see a fly whizzing in a room, he can probably see a dog running in his back yard. At this stage, a baby is beginning to grasp object permanence-- the understanding that an object exists when it is out of his line of sight.

"Grown up" eyesight develops around eight months of age. Unless there is a problem or abnormality in your child's vision development, his eyesight will be nearly 20/20 by the time he reaches eight to nine months of age. He can see people and objects on the far end of a room, and can recognize faces from a considerable distance. If your baby still seems to struggle considerably to see at this age, talk to his primary health care provider.