Parenting

What a Newborn Baby Really Sees When They Look at You (PHOTO)

ParentingPublished Jun 30, 2015
By Judy Dutton
baby eyes

Want to see through the eyes of a newborn? Well, you're in a luck: A new study allows you to do just that, and it turns out that you may look, er, blurrier than you thought!

Newborns have notoriously bad vision, but how bad has been debatable up until now. To pinpoint what a baby really sees, researchers at the University of Oslo, the University of Uppsala, and Eclipse Optics in Sweden combined technology, mathematics, and prior knowledge of the visual acuity of infants.

The results? In a nutshell, a newborn can see their parents' facial expressions at a distance of 30 centimeters -- which is about how far away a mom's face is when she's nursing.

Double that distance to 60 centimeters, and the visuals get too blurred for your baby to suss out your facial expression. Check out the full graphics of what baby sees at which distance below:

how newborn sees you

More from The Stir: 8 Things Babies Know That'll Blow Your Mind

Take-home lesson? If you're making some funny faces that you want your baby to see, be sure to do it waaay up close! Otherwise, the nuances will be lost.

What's more, the study determined that moving images are easier to see than still ones. So be sure to liven things up to capture a baby's attention!

What's the biggest question you've got about your newborn?

Image via Elena Stepanova/shutterstock; professor Laeng UiO/Journal of Vision

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