Before your baby can smell, taste, see or hear, he’s already developed his sense of touch. You might not think about touch as often as the other senses, but it’s key to survival: Animals and people alike instinctively pull away from things that feel uncomfortable, cold or sharp — and huddle closer to objects that feel soft and warm (like mom!). 

The sense of touch is one of your little one’s earliest tools to learn about the world around him. That’s why it’s so important for a baby’s sense of touch to develop fully by the time he’s born. 

What is the sense of touch?

For your baby to feel the fuzziness of the carpet during tummy time or the warmth of your body, he needs what’s known as a somatosensory system. This is essentially a network of touch receptors spread all over the body that connect back to the brain through nerve cells. Each receptor is uniquely tuned to sense one component of touch (temperature, pressure or pain, for instance). 

In adults, just about every area of the body has these receptors — including under the skin of your fingers (to feel the things you touch), throughout your abdomen (so you can sense a stomachache) and in your lips and tongue (to help you know what you’re eating).

What is the first sense a baby develops?

Touch is the first sense your baby develops before the senses of smell, taste, eyesight and hearing. Parts of the somatosensory system start to form only a few weeks after conception. By week 8 of pregnancy, your baby has developed touch receptors in his face — mostly on his lips and nose — that connect to his growing brain. 

Over the next few months, touch receptors start to form all over, including his genitals, palms and the soles of his feet by week 12 and the abdomen by week 17. By week 32, every part of a fetus has gained a sense of touch that’s sensitive enough to feel a single hair brushing across the body.

By sensing stimuli in the womb (e.g., as a baby starts to feel the amniotic fluid around him), the somatosensory receptors help to develop his whole nervous system. That includes his brain, spinal cord and even the digestive system.

When can a fetus feel pain?

Even when a developing fetus can sense a light touch, he doesn’t feel pain the way you do. That requires not only touch receptors, but also the necessary molecules and pathways in the brain to process a pain signal. The neural connections and the brain structures necessary to sense pain don’t develop until at least week 24 of pregnancy.

Simply having the physical structures in place still doesn’t mean a fetus can experience pain. The complex neural circuitry necessary to tell the difference between regular touch and painful touch doesn’t develop until the end of the third trimester. 

Researchers using brain scanning methods on unborn babies think that fetuses probably feel pain around the same time that the somatosensory system finishes its development — about week 29 or week 30 of pregnancy. Before then, a fetus reacts to touch with a change in heart rate or hormone levels, but the pain center of the brain doesn't receive or consciously recognize the message.

Can babies sense other babies in the womb?

Scientists believe that twins or multiples can sense each other in the womb — they even appear to begin interacting early in the second trimester! Well before they’re born, babies seem wired to be social. A very small study that followed five pairs of twins in utero concluded that they start to interact socially with each other by week 14 of pregnancy.

The researchers found that the number of interactions gradually increased from week 14 on, so that by week 18, twin babies actually touched each other more than they touched themselves or the uterine wall. 

What’s more, when babies caressed their wombmate’s back or head, these actions seemed more intentional — they lasted longer and were more accurate — than when the babies touched their own eyes or mouths. The authors concluded that this means that not only are babies aware of other babies in the womb, but they also interact with their siblings and do so in specific and planned ways.

Your baby’s developing sense of touch

The sounds your baby hears and the patterns of light and dark he sees while still in your womb help him get used to the auditory and visual stimuli he’ll experience outside. But this isn’t the case for his sense of touch — a fetus can’t feel anything in the outside world before birth! 

Instead of helping him acclimate to life after birth, fetal touch is mostly important for mediating reflexes. The ability to feel amniotic fluid in his throat, for example, helps a baby learn how to swallow in utero. 

In those first moments after birth, his sense of touch will help him cough (a reaction to feeling and clearing liquid in his throat), cry (in response to the sudden change in his surroundings) and cuddle against you.

From the moment your baby arrives, his sense of touch will become essential to interacting with the world around him. Feeling your skin instinctively helps your newborn to relax and create a strong attachment to you. 

As he grows, your baby will feel objects around him and the pressure of the floor beneath him as he learns to roll and move. Researchers have discovered that the sense of touch even plays a role in language: Pointing at and touching words while looking at books helps your baby to recognize words faster. So don’t hesitate to let those sticky little fingers explore the world around them!