It never occurred to me that an infant can talk. I’m not just referring to meaningless baby babble. I’m talking about real words. I tackled this subject on my BabyCenter blog.
A couple of weeks ago Baby O, now seven months old, uttered the word “dada.” My husband and I figured he was just making sounds, as he had been for months. But the other day I happened to be studying while he played quietly on the floor. He started fussing, and I looked over at him. With his light brown eyes widened and his arms stretched above his head, I could have sworn I heard him say the word, “mama.”
“Was this for real,” I asked myself.
I called out from downstairs to my husband saying, “I think he said mama!”
I picked up the baby and repeated myself as I went upstairs. That’s when my husband shot me the “yeah right look.” Normally I’d agree with him, but there was something different about the way Baby O said it. It was as if he wanted my attention.
I shared this piece of information with a couple of other moms I know, and they seem to agree. They told me about the words their babies were saying too. I’ve heard of infants being able to learn sign language. But, I thought speech development normally occurs later. Were we a bunch of delusional mamas or was there some truth to this. I did a little research of my own and stumbled across an article about baby talk.
According to the BabyCenter Medical Advisory Board, a baby begins by using “the tongue, lips, palate, and any emerging teeth to make sounds. Soon those sounds will become real words – “mama” and “dada” may slip out and bring tears to your eyes as early as 6 months.”
I now realized that my baby boy knows exactly who I am and what that word means. It melts my heart every time I think about it.
