Your 34-Week-Old Baby

As your baby approaches nine months old, you may notice their “conversations” getting a little more expressive and more complex. Those strings of sounds may seem random, but baby is doing more than just making noise. They’re gradually progressing their speech skills to be closer to the language(s) spoken around them (which means that soon you’ll actually be able to understand what they’re trying to say).

Babbling is a key communication milestone, and it mainly involves a lot of mimicking of sound and rhythm. Dr. Chris Klunk, a board-certified neonatologist with Pediatrix Medical Group, explains what babbling typically looks like at this age, what variations are totally normal and how parents can best support baby’s early speech skills.

🚼 Baby’s Development 

Babbling

If it feels like your baby’s sounds are getting bigger, going from coos and gurgles to simple yet clear consonant + vowel combinations, they’ve probably officially entered the babbling phase.  

While baby doesn’t understand what most words mean just yet, they’re still going to try their best to mimic the sounds they hear you make every day. For many babies, their earliest babbling will sound like “ba-ba,” “da-da” or “ma-ma,” often with lots of enthusiasm (and volume). It may sound like they’re saying your name and fully understanding the meaning, but it’s still a little early for that. These sounds are just the easiest ones to say right now, and they help baby practice the mouth movements they’ll eventually use for real words.

And as fascinating as baby’s growing sound library is, it gets better: the sounds your baby makes are influenced by the language(s) they hear. “[Babies] definitely don’t all sound the same,” Dr. Klunk says. “Factors such as the language and accents they are exposed to will change how they sound as they try to copy what they hear.” So they’re not just learning to talk; they’re learning to talk like you.

If your baby hasn’t quite reached this milestone yet, it may be normal. “Not all babies start at exactly the same time,” Dr. Klunk says. Some babies may take an extra few months to up to a year to find their voice, but if you’re concerned that your baby may be behind in their speech development, consider talking with your pediatrician or a pediatric speech therapist.

💡Try This with Baby: Talk, Talk, Talk

You may already do this, but make a point to talk to your baby throughout the day, even just to narrate daily tasks and what’s going on around them. And be sure to leave pauses for baby to respond, or respond to them if they babble first. That back-and-forth is a big deal for baby’s developing speech skills.

And don’t think too hard about what you should say or how you should say it; there’s no pressure to do it perfectly. “If anything, the emphasis here is on how much speech they hear, and communication they get, and less about the content,” Dr. Klunk says. “Anything that gets you and your baby talking is a step in the right direction.”

So go ahead and babble back. Repeat their sounds, talk through what you’re doing, describe what you see or read books out loud together. All of it helps. Just remember that baby’s daily conversation needs to come directly from their caregivers and other in-person people around them. “TV and other screen time is not a substitute for two-way communication and face-to-face interaction,” Dr. Klunk says. Your voice, expressions and attention are what really help baby’s communication skills develop.

👀 Looking Ahead

• Overnight trips without parents: As baby gets older, you might wonder if they’re ready for short overnight stays with grandparents or other trusted caregivers (so maybe you can have a night away). Separation anxiety can be strong around this age, so it helps to ease in slowly, ensure caregivers have all the supplies and info they need and provide a little extra reassurance at first (to both baby and caregivers).