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Your baby at 8 months: development milestones & what to expect
At eight months, your baby’s personality really shows from smiles to mischief and a bit of frustration too. Here’s what to expect and how to support their development.
9 min
Your baby is developing a full-on personality these days – no doubt full of smiles and lots of cheekiness. You’ll see it come out during playtime, bathtime, mealtime – basically, all the time! Of course it’s not all sunshine and roses. You might also be seeing more of their temper coming through as they begin to feel the frustration of the things they can’t – or aren’t allowed – to do. It’s all part of becoming a fully-fledged little person.
Physical development milestones at 8 months
This is a really noticeable period of difference – where some 8-month-olds are very mobile and others are not at all interested. Don’t worry if your baby is one of the latter – plenty of babies aren’t crawling at this point. So long as they are thriving otherwise, you can rest assured they will get there. Keep going with the tummy time, plenty of playtime, and make the most of their newfound ability to sit independently to try different types of activities.
For those who are super active, the next stage after crawling is cruising. This is the intermediate stage between crawling and walking, when babies are pulling themselves up on the furniture and using it as a prop while they get to grips with moving their feet. They might also enjoy you holding their hands while they toddle along. It’s strange how different they look once they’re standing upright – especially if this coincides with new teeth coming through. All of a sudden your baby starts to look quite grown-up! It might still be a few months before your little one starts walking though – so no need to rush out and buy shoes just yet. Babies are best off barefoot while they’re learning to walk and shoes definitely aren’t needed indoors.
Milestone checklist
- Crawling – Most babies start to crawl between 7 and 10 months, so if your baby isn’t there yet, they will be soon!
- Cruising – Time for another safety check – your little one will soon be pulling themselves up on the furniture! Make sure it can withstand a bit of a tug, or remove it from their play zone.
- Shuffling – Some babies forgo crawling in favour of the bum shuffle, an adorable way to get around.
Child brain development at 8 months
Your baby’s understanding is growing day by day, so now not only can they understand their name and yours – they might also understand a whole range of words attached to favourite objects or activities. It’s wonderful to watch them really listening when you speak and trying to talk back – and these ‘conversations’ are so important to their language development, so keep it up!
Also ongoing is their fine motor skill development – that pincer grasp (especially useful for food!), moving things from hand to hand, bringing their hands together to clap. It’s all happening! Help them develop further through play and at mealtimes by challenging them to pick up finger foods alongside whatever spoon feeding you’re doing.
Your baby is also getting to grips with object permanence – i.e. the understanding that things still exist even when you can’t see them. Suddenly your little one is very aware they are being left – and worries that you won’t come back. The good news is this same skill brings a new element to your play – they will be able to search for hidden toys or be the instigator of a game of peek-a-boo.
Social & Emotional Development
These new skills also feed into new types of behaviour. While your little one might be really outgoing with you, they may become shy or anxious around other people. This is because they have a sense now of what is familiar and what isn’t – and they have yet to learn how to interpret these unfamiliar situations.
Separation anxiety, shyness and clinginess can all make you think you’ve done something wrong – but it’s actually the opposite. Your little one feels so safe with you because you’ve forged a wonderful bond. Now you can use that bond to help them feel more secure in unfamiliar surroundings and build their confidence. Throughout their childhood this conflict between wanting them to try new things and not wanting to push them outside their comfort zone will be something of a constant, so best to start how you mean to go on – with plenty of support and reassurance and positive talk.
Sleep & Feeding
Rhythms and routines at this stage
You’ve reached three meals a day by now and are probably down to two naps – often one shorter one in the morning and one longer one in the afternoon. On paper, this is much easier to manage – you can plan your days around the afternoon nap and fit your baby groups or activities into the morning. But the addition of messy meals can mean you also spend a lot of time cleaning up, wiping down and changing outfits. This too shall pass. Remember just a few months ago, your little one was up and down to nap like a yoyo – now you at least have proper awake time and (hopefully) a bit of a rest in the afternoon.
Mealtimes
Your baby is having breakfast, lunch and dinner, plus milk. How are you managing to fit it all in? Most babies want milk when they first wake up, a kind of first breakfast if you like. This tides them over while you get yourself sorted and them dressed before you go into second breakfast – the food variety. And variety is the key word – even if your little one has their favourites, it’s still worth experimenting with lots of different types of food so that they grow up willing to try new things.
Next is likely to be lunch – though some babies (especially those who are breastfed) might want a top-up of milk mid-morning, then another feed in the afternoon. Though this will probably fall before their afternoon nap, try not to feed them to sleep if you can help it. After their nap, they might wake up hungry again and it will soon be time for tea. The last milk feed will be at bedtime, but again try to separate feeding from sleeping if you can – otherwise what can happen is that your little one expects some milk every time they wake in the night, even if they could manage without.
Mess
Babies are messy eaters – there’s no two ways about it. At this age, they’re also very much in the ‘let’s throw this on the floor and see what happens’ phase, which is frustrating, to put it mildly. It can feel like you’re always washing something – the baby, their clothes, the floor – and like there’s never enough time. Here are a couple of tips:
- Naked mealtimes – if it’s warm enough to sit in the highchair with just a nappy on, let them. It’ll save you washing clothes, and after tea you can put them straight in the bath.
- Silicone bibs – The bibs with a scoop in them let your little one drop their food and safely pick it back up again. They’re also much easier to rinse clean than cloth bibs, or even the wipeable bibs, which can end up going a bit mouldy.
- A tablecloth on the floor – Try limiting the damage to the floor by popping a wipeable table cloth under the high chair that’s large enough to catch the worst of the damage. Then, after mealtimes, you can pick it up and shake it outside for the birds before giving it a quick wipe down. It might save you getting the mop out.
Looking after yourself
How are you feeling about your body these days? Often, post-baby, people will reassure you by saying things like ‘nine months on, nine months off’ and now your baby is 8 months old you might be thinking that nine months is not quite long enough. But is it even possible to go back to the way you looked before? And do you need to?
Your body has done something amazing – and is fundamentally changed by that. Many women find their hips are permanently widened and their rib cage is enlarged. Those are things no amount of dieting could fix. Then there’s your breasts. Whether you’ve been breastfeeding or not, you’re likely to see a difference – bigger, emptier, a totally different shape. And your tummy – stretched absolutely to capacity during pregnancy; inevitably the muscles are looser than they used to be.
All of which is to say that your body has been through something massive and the differences that you see are to be expected. It’s really not that long since you had a baby and your entire life is currently consumed with looking after them, so be kind to yourself. Take it easy. If you have a tricky relationship with your body, try talking to someone about it – a friend, your partner, or even a therapist. Because what you really need is not to get to some ideal body type, but to a place where you feel like you and your body are on the same team.
A Note on Development Milestones
Developmental milestones are guides – not deadlines. If your baby isn’t ‘keeping up’ with your friends’ babies, it isn’t an immediate cause for concern. Every child develops at their own pace. That being said, your health visitor and GP are there to support you with any queries you might have and will always be happy to see you with your baby if you have any worries.
