Growth Milestones for 9 Month Old Baby

Your baby is 9 months old now and he has come a long way from being the feeble, vulnerable and dependent little thing you brought home from the hospital. His motor and perceptive skills are much developed now and he has become a little adventurer in his own right. One can gauge a 9 months old baby development by some general growth milestones. There is no hard and fast rule that all the milestones given below should be necessarily achieved by your baby, but they nevertheless give you a yardstick of judging his growth.

Motor Skills

Growth milestones for 9 months old baby are especially visible in his development of motor skills.

You would observe:-

• Babies become expert in crawling and some can do it even while holding a toy in one of their hands. 
• Your baby can shift from sitting up to crawling position, pivot back and forth to pick a toy and also pull himself up to stand. It is not quit the right time to give him shoes though. Gripping the floor with the feet helps the baby strengthen his tendons and muscles. Instead, non-skid socks can be used if the floor is too cold to allow him to be barefoot.
• Enhanced motor skills now means that your baby will embark upon figuring out how things work such as how cups can fit into each other, how switch works, and which end of the toy phone he should hold.

Social Skills

The baby’s personality is coming out and he now understands cause and effect to some extent. He is most likely to have already uttered his first words like “Mama” or “Dada” and started to understand language. On being asked, “Where is the ball?” he might point towards it or fetch it. Babies tend to be fussy about meeting strangers at this stage of their development. Another issue of these toddlers is separation anxiety.

If you have not already conditioned his mind to be calm when you are not there, start doing it right away. Peek-a-boo games are a good way of doing that. Since your baby’s memory and awareness is improving, he might throw some unusual tantrums and cry without conceivable reason at times. The good thing is that they are easily dissuaded from such tendencies as the memory is still short.

Growth of a 9 months old baby is variable depending on a child’s individuality. He should get many opportunities to crawl, stand, cruise or scoot with you close by guiding him. If you have not baby proofed your home already, do it right away as your baby is only going to get more and more active with each passing day.

Read more articles on Newborn Care