From helpless newborn to active toddler: It only takes 12 months for your baby to experience this incredible transformation. Babies grow and change at an amazing rate, and each month brings new and exciting developments.

New moms and dads often wonder what to expect next and how to know if their baby's development is on schedule. However, instead of focusing too much on developmental milestones, it's important to remember that all babies develop at their own pace. There is a fairly wide “window” for when it is normal for a baby to reach a particular stage of development.

“If your baby reaches one milestone earlier, they may reach another later, because they're too busy perfecting the other skill,” says Jennifer Shu, MD, pediatrician and co-author of Coming home with your Newborn.

Some babies can say their first word at eight months, while others don't speak until just after one year. And walking can begin any time between nine and 18 months.

With those kinds of variations in mind, here's what your baby may be doing during each three-month stage of the first year.

During this first stage of development, babies' bodies and brains learn to live in the outside world. Between birth and three months, your baby may begin to:

• Smile. At first, it will be just for themselves. But within three months, they will smile in response to your smiles and try to get you to smile back.
• Raise your head and chest when on your stomach.
• Track objects with their eyesand gradually decrease eye crossing.
• Open and close your hands and bring them to your mouth.
• Holds objects in his hands.
• Hits or reaches for hanging objects, although usually cannot reach them yet.

During these months, babies are really learning to reach out and manipulate the world around them. They are mastering the use of those incredible tools: their hands. And they are discovering their voices. From 4 to 6 months, your baby will probably:

• Flip from front to back or back to front. Usually the first thing is to go from front to back.
• Babbles, making sounds that may sound like real language.
• Laugh.
• Reach and grab objects (be careful with your hair), and manipulating toys and other objects with their hands.
• Sit with supportty have great head control.

During the second half of this year, your little one will become a baby on the move. After learning that they can get somewhere by turning around, they will spend the next few months figuring out how to move forward or backward. If you haven't baby proofed it yet, you better do it!

• During this period, your baby can:
• Start crawling. This may include sliding (pushing on your butt) or “army crawling” (crawling on your stomach with your arms and legs), as well as standard crawling on hands and feet. knees. Some babies never crawl and go straight from sliding to walking.
• Sit without support.
• Respond to familiar words like your name. They may also respond to “No” by stopping briefly and looking at you.and may start babbling “mom” and “dad.”
• Clap your hands and play games like patty-cake and peekaboo.
• Learn to rise to a standing position.

The last stage of development of the baby's first year is quite a transition. They are not a child already, and they might look and act more like a toddler. But they are still a baby in many ways. They are learning to:

• Start feeding herself. Babies at this stage of development have mastered the “pincer grasp,” meaning they can hold small objects like O-shaped cereal between their thumb and index finger.
• Navigate or move around the room standing while holding onto furniture.
• Say one or two words, and “Mom” and “Dad” become specific names for parents. The average is about three words spoken before the first birthday, but the range is enormous.
• Point out the objects you want to get their attention.
• Start the “pretend game” by copying or using objects correctly, such as pretending to talk on the phone.
• Take your first steps. This usually occurs around a year, but can vary greatly.

What should you do if you think your baby is not catching up?r development milestones, when should they do it? First, Shu says, trust your instincts. “If you really feel like something is wrong, talk to your doctor because if there is a problem, we want to catch it as soon as possible,” she says. “Early intervention is best and you will know your child better.” like no one.”

Remember, however, that it is not exactly when your baby sits up on his own or says his first important words; is that they are advancing in their development. “You don't look at time as much as you look at progression, and she observes that your child is changing and growing,” Shu says. “It's not a race. No one will ask on a college application when her son first walked or said 'da-da.'”

This table shows common developmental milestones that babies reach each month during their first year, in four main categories. Keep in mind that all babies are different and each baby grows at her own pace. There is no precise time when most of these abilities first appear. If your child has not reached a milestone in the month listed in this chart, this is usually a perfectly normal variation in child development. He pays attention to progress, not deadlines.