MONTH 12
(48–52 weeks)

Baby’s weight: 17½ to 25½ pounds (average for girls);
19½ to 27½ pounds (average for boys)
Baby’s height: 27½ to 31½ inches (average for girls);
28 to 32 inches (average for boys)

YOUR BABY

It’s baby’s first birthday! This has been an amazing year. During this past 11 months, your baby has guzzled many gallons of milk; rolled over; learned to raise her head; started making wordlike sounds; figured out how to get around from one place to another; learned how to chew and swallow food; spent hundreds of hours playing with you, her hands, her feet, and a bushel of toys; and has garnered hundreds of kisses and hugs from Mom and Dad in the process.

Twelve-month-old baby

She’s also transformed from an unpredictable, seemingly helpless little bundle of flesh and joy into a very distinct individual with her own personality, preferences, and communication style. This may be a month for acting coy around strangers, but for most babies, that’s just a passing phase.

Your baby likes scrambling up into your lap or backing down the stairs. She loves to stand and hates having to be pinned down for very long. She may be crawling, cruising along furniture and walls, walking while holding your hand, talking steps by herself—or using a combination of all of these strategies to get from one place to another. She may be able to roll a ball back to you or actually throw a toy or small object instead of just dropping it overboard. She may demand to be given the spoon during feeding, but her attempts at doing the job are awkward at best. She may also be trying to learn how to get up from a squatting position to a standing one. She loves climbing under or inside things or up stairs. Grace and ability take time and lots of practice. In the meantime, falls are bound to happen, and your baby’s cheeks and forehead may have bruises to show for her efforts.

Your baby is fascinated by the way objects move and will push, roll, and turn knobs to see what happens. You may be able to teach her how to roll a toy car across the floor, or to turn a toy dog or pony upright after you’ve laid it on its side. Like a chimp, she may learn to use one object as a tool to get another, and she may purposely look away while trying to grab at something, as though her eyes interfered with her internal hand-guidance system. If you wrap a toy up in tissue, she will try to find it, or try to stack one block on top of another, but usually without success.

She likes putting her spoon in a cup, fitting one item inside another, and learning how to grasp and let go of a ball. Your young scientist will try to figure out how to hold a block or small toy in one hand, a second in the other hand, and then transport a third somehow. The mouth comes in handy.

When it comes to sound-making, your baby babbles incessantly, almost from the second she wakes up in the morning until she falls asleep at night, and it doesn’t matter if you’re around to hear it or not. She may try to imitate one or two words that you repeat often to her. If you ask her, “Where’s Daddy?” or “Where’s the dog?” she may look around for the person, or quickly point to what’s being sought.

This month is marked by impatience: Your baby wants what she wants now, and patience is a virtue that’s slow in coming. She still hasn’t mastered all there is to know about how the world works, either. For instance, a glass dish will smash if it’s knocked over, dogs and cats don’t like having their tails pulled, and delicious -looking green substances in bottles are caustic and will burn.

By her first birthday, your baby will be able to perceive the connection between words and meanings. In the middle of melodic gibberish you’ll catch a familiar word, like “ball,” “cup,” hi,” or “doggie.” She may try to combine simple words to make sense: “go bye-bye,” “ride car-car.” She may point to objects you name in picture books, and even if she doesn’t speak in words yet, she may still be able to touch your “mouth,” “ears,” “eyes,” and “nose.”

Do one-year-olds have a sense of humor? You bet! In earlier months your baby would giggle at being tickled, but now she may laugh just because she finds something silly, like your pretending you’re sucking on her bottle, smelling her “stinky toes,” or when you hide a toy under a blanket and then find it with great fanfare.

  Tip

If your little explorer is intent upon getting into mischief, try stacking some brightly colored blocks in front of her and encouraging her to knock them down.

SCENARIO: Your daughter is curious, energetic, and she appears to have NO impulse control. She wants to explore everything in sight, even your grandmother’s antique vase. Even though she seems to understand simple words, she looks around as though she is planning to defy you. She may not be able to override her impulses long enough to figure out that your “nos” from yesterday are expected to apply to the same vase all over again today. Before you shout, “How many times do I have to TELL you?” and rush over to grab her hand away, you stop, take a deep breath, and then decide to move the tempting vase to a high shelf out of reach so she can’t get to it. You’re learning to think things through from the baby’s point of view and not to overreact.

   FLASH FACT: Walking Skills

Every baby has her own sequence for how skills unfold. An eight-month-old can be walking, while a fourteen-month-old may NOT be, yet both babies are well within the normal range of baby development. Some babies invest all of their energy in polishing their verbal skills at the cost of their large-muscle abilities; others invest all their energy in motor skills with verbal skills lagging behind. And a few tiny whiz-kids appear to master both abilities simultaneously. Everything evens out among babies next year.

YOU

This month officially marks your child’s passage from “baby” to “toddler.” There’s quite a difference now between you and your childless friends, and the difference is huge and good. It feels as though your life is richer and more complex than if you hadn’t spent this intense year accompanied by your baby. Your baby is teaching you a lot about what’s really important in life, and it feels as though the lessons you are learning are much deeper than just how to be a mom or dad, but also what it means to be human.

With all of the obstacles you’ve overcome in caring for your baby, you have the right to be proud.

Have you started to think about having another baby? It’s normal to think about having another baby in the house, now that your baby has crawled down out of your lap and is physically beginning to separate from you. You may even feel a tinge of poignancy about losing the babe-in-arms you once had, and to entertain the thought of having another sweet-smelling baby for holding and cuddling.

For most moms, it’s still too early to get pregnant again, unless you feel the pressure of time running out on your biological clock. Another pregnancy right now would be a challenge for both you and your baby. You haven’t had sufficient time to completely regain your balance after your last pregnancy, and the energy drain from your baby’s need for attention is still very real.

Promise yourself to think about it again in six months.

 

“One of my biggest lessons this year was learning to accept my baby where she is, instead of where I thought she ‘ought’ to be.”

How walking happens

When your baby stands, she will probably turn her feet outward and spread her legs far apart to give herself the widest possible base for balance. She may hold her feet and ankles in a rigid position to try to keep from falling, or she may bend her knees slightly to help maintain balance. It’s normal for a new walker to look knock-kneed or bowlegged, but this is because her hips are rotated outward to begin with. Later they will rotate inward. Her legs will appear straight by age two only to become knock-kneed again when she’s three or four. (Note that husky babies and those who are loose-jointed are more apt to hold on and stand longer than average first-time walkers. It’s harder for these babies to keep their balance, and often they take a few tentative steps only to decide it’s easier to stay on all fours for a while longer.)

Your baby’s foot has more than a dozen major joints besides her toes so that it can adjust to all kinds of surfaces and angles. When your baby first starts to stand, you’ll see her toes digging into the carpet or pressing into the floor with her body wavering above. She’ll try to hold her feet and legs in a stiff position to compensate for their immature and weak muscles. Toeing in or toeing out with the feet during walking is normal at this stage.

Your baby’s legs are not strong enough to support her weight on one leg or the other for very long, so when she takes steps, she will rapidly shift her weight from one foot to the other, almost losing balance when one leg’s off the ground, and there may be a pause as she rebalances herself. She will hold her arms high, almost at shoulder level, to help her balance.

Expect frequent falls. One foot may not hit the right place, your baby may lean too far forward, or list too far to one side. But your baby’s enthusiasm for being up and mobile will overcome all trepidation about the risks. In case you’re worried, your baby’s clumsy twists, waddles, sways, and tumbles now have no bearing on how graceful an athlete she will turn out to be later.

Some babies prefer to walk on their toes instead of their soles. Rather than rolling their feet as they walk, they use their toes to spring forward. Unless your baby has a tight heel tendon and her foot can’t be flexed upward easily, or her feet won’t immediately bend at the ankle because her calf muscles are rigid, there’s no reason to worry. Toe-walking will gradually give way to the normal, flat-footed variety in the year ahead when walking becomes more graceful, and your baby learns how to make U-turns and even run.

Just because your baby’s taking her first steps, there’s no need to race out and buy new shoes with artificial arches. Babies are naturally flat-footed and artificial arches don’t help. The main job of shoes at this stage is to protect your baby’s feet (and to keep her socks clean).

Let your baby go barefoot in the house, and use shoes only for out door protection. The best shoes for new walkers are those with thin, flexible soles. Thick leather booties with easy-on Velcro^® or elastic closures are the easiest to use. Avoid ankle-high baby combat boots with stiff soles and those with soles made from nonslip materials that snag on carpeting and cause the baby to trip.

  Tip

It may be time for your baby’s first trip to the dentist. Ask for recommendations from other parents and your pediatrician. A pediatric dentist (pedodentist) specializes in the dental needs of babies and children.

Use cotton-knit socks that are a little longer than your baby’s foot. Don’t use hand-me-downs. If they’re too tight, they will cause your baby’s toes to curl and affect her muscles and gait. Seams should be smooth with no edges that could chafe, and there should be no loose strings that could wrap around your baby’s toes and cut off circulation.

Inspect your baby’s shoes frequently to be sure that her big toe isn’t getting squeezed in the front of the shoe, and examine her feet every time you take them off to be sure there’s no redness from chafing or pressure points.

SCENARIO: You wonder if your daughter is hyperactive. She walked early, and now the minute she wakes up she’s running around, grabbing everything, fiddling with the DVD, or pestering the dog. You decide that every day that weather permits, you’ll take her outdoors to a safe, grassy place with a big ball so she can run around and let off steam. After you’re back home and she’s starting to wind down, you sit down with her on a quilt in the living room and pull out some blocks to drop into a plastic bottle; a few small toys with moving parts; or a baby board book with bright pictures of farm animals. You’re sharing gentle time with her while enticing her to learn about how to compose and calm himself.

   WARNING! Container Alert

Your inquisitive baby can open almost any container, even babyproof medicine bottles, if given enough time and persistence. Watch out for medications in your purse or the nightstand drawer, matches, cigarette lighters, compacts, alcoholic beverages, nail polish, dish detergent, and any other no-no’s tucked away in drawers or cabinets.