5 First-Year Baby Milestones
Celebrate the first year of your baby’s life by monitoring key milestones. Every child is wonderfully unique, but there are certain developmental milestones your child should reach before they turn 12 months old. Explore these five signs as you prepare for your 12 month checkup.
1. Start Solid Foods
Breastmilk or formula should be the only food your infant eats until around 6 months. At this stage, you should be introducing some solid foods. Ideally, these foods should have the following features:
- Soft or pureed
- Single ingredient
- Iron and zinc
These foods should supplement a diet of mostly breastmilk or formula until your baby is around 12 months old, when you can start the weaning process and transition to a diet of solid foods and cow’s milk.
2. Use Simple Gestures and Words
The 12 months is a time of immense changes, including language. After a busy year of feeding, changing diapers and sleepless nights, your infant should be able to say at least one or two words, typically “mama” and “dada” or other first words.
3. Explore Items
Babies are naturally curious about the wide world around them. There are new things to explore every day, so babies should have several ways to explore the objects around them. At around 12 months, an important cognitive milestone is playing with items in multiple ways.
One-year-old babies should shake, throw and bang objects. If a toy or other object is hidden, infants at this stage should be able to find them easily.
4. Crawl and Cruise
Can your baby crawl or pull up to a standing position? While some infants don’t walk until they are 18 months old, one-year-old infants should be able to crawl and cruise.
Speak with your doctor if your 12-month-old can’t crawl or stand with support. Some babies are already walking independently at one year old, but you shouldn’t worry if your little one hasn’t hit this milestone yet.
5. Sleep at Night
The first few months of your baby’s life can be very exhausting. Whether you’re a parent or grandparent, your nightly routine with a one-year-old should be more comfortable than it was with a one-month-old.
At 12 months of age, babies typically sleep around 11 hours, including one or two naps. If you’re still having issues with sleep, you may need to speak with your doctor or use a Dream Sack for a more comfortable sleeping experience.
Also in Our Blog
What’s the Difference Between a Swaddle and a Sleepsack
Five Questions about Early Morning Wakeups for Baby
The team at NAPS helps you tackle the issue of early wakeups. *BONUS* NAPS is hosting a webinar on February 24th. Register here and use the extra-special code MAGICMERLIN and you can join the webinar FREE of charge!
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The sound of cheery calls of “MAAAAMAAAAA” from the next room may be lovely at 7am. At 4am, or 5 am, not so much. Your baby may be up and ready to start the day, but you probably aren’t.
Answering the questions below may help you get there.
- Is your nap schedule mucking up your baby’s overnight sleep?
This might seem like an obvious question, but your baby’s sleep needs will change fast in the first few years of their lives. A quick look at the average nap number and duration might give you an idea:
- For babies from 3-6 months old, it’s normal to take 3-4 hour-long naps per day.
- For babies 6-15 months old, expect 2 naps with 3-3.5 hours of total sleep.
- For one and two-year-olds, you should expect a single 2-hour nap.
Part of the reason you might be seeing earlier wakeups is that your baby has graduated from one nap cycle to the next.
- Does your baby have enough time between their last nap and their bedtime?
We call this an “awake window,” and it can make a big difference. It might seem strange that your baby went to bed fine the night before, and you’re seeing a response to nap scheduling in the pre-dawn hours, but if your kiddo’s sleep is disrupted at night, it will impact the morning.
- 3-6 months, at least 1.5-2 hours between final nap wakeup and bedtime.
- 6-12 months, at least 2.5-3.5 hours between final nap wakeup and bed.
- 12-18+ months, 3.5-4.5 hours between final nap wakeup and bed.
- Is the room staying dark after the sun comes up?
Black 0ut curtains can make a big difference here. Remember that our brains signal wakeup when the light changes. So if dawn is at 430am, and even a little bit of light comes into your baby’s room, their little brains will PING with wake up juice.
- Is your baby going to sleep too early or too late?
It might seem counter-intuitive, but a late bedtime can actually backfire on you. Overtired kids don’t sleep as well. If you made their bedtime later and it didn’t fix the problem, try an earlier bedtime and see if that helps. You might be surprised.
- How do you make it better?
Try to make one change at a time; just one. Stick with that change for 3-5 days to see if it impacts things. (One night is usually not enough to see substantial change.) Be as consistent as you can with the change you made. For instance, if you decide to increase the space between bedtime and final nap wakeup, make sure to stick to the wakeup time you planned.
If your baby is waking up and chirping happily to themselves, feel free to leave them there for a little while. Let them get used to being alone in the crib. If you can, try to delay the start of the day by 5-10 minutes each day. This can make a big impact.
Everything else aside, remember that this is a short time in your kid’s life; as they get older, their sleep will become more regular, and so will yours. Don’t let yourself get too discouraged. Things are hard now, and you’re doing a great job.
