Twin Babies Development – Milestones from 6 to 12 months
This period of your babies’ growth at 6-12 months is so exciting! They are now learning and exploring in a big way. You may even find yourself thinking more often, ‘where have my little babies gone?’, wishing that time would slow down.
While the updates to their baby books may be few (or not at all – it’s tough keeping up with 2 or more after all!), it’s impossible to miss the milestones at this stage! So many ‘big deal’ developments are going on – first word(s), crawling, standing, cruising around and generally becoming more social (and sometimes clingy at the same time!).
When you have twins it is difficult to avoid doing comparisons because you may have one baby start to crawl and move around while the other is content to just hang around lying on their back or sitting up and seem to have no interest in ‘catching up’ to their twin.
To avoid unnecessary worries it is important to remember that your twins are unique individuals who happen to share a birth date.
If you notice huge differences in development, like 3 months delay in hitting milestone for any of your babies talk to their doctor about it. They will be better able to advise if there is a problem or observe them a while longer before recommending any intervention.
Baby Development at 6-12 months
Let’s take a quick look at what should be happening at this stage of development (if they were premature, keep in mind their ‘adjusted age’ to compare):
Free Download: Get your pdf copy of this and other stages of development up to 2 years
While it may be hard keeping up with the demands of your newly mobile twins and keeping them out of harm, it is important to take note of where your babies are in terms of development and what you can do to help them reach those milestones.
As you may know by now my girls were preemies (born at 31 weeks) and so I have always been concerned about them hitting developmental milestones and constantly watching for signs of any delays or long term effects of their prematurity.
I shared a video of Typical (normal) and Atypical (delayed) development at 6 months in a previous post. The video by the Pathways Awareness channel is very good at demonstrating the differences (with actual babies) of a baby who is at normal development by 6 months and one that is not. You can watch it here: 6 month Old Baby Typical and Atypical Development
If your little ones are a bit older at 9 months or so, you can watch this video instead – the Help Me Grow MN organization shares clear examples of the milestones your 9 month old should be mastering:
Real stories of twin development at 6-12 months
To make this even more relevant to you as a twin mom, I have done some searching online to find twin moms who share their twins’ development during this period.
Here are a few who have documented this on their blogs or public social profiles:
Two twin moms share an overview of their twins development on the whattoexpect.com multiples forum:
Source – whattoexpect.com multiples forum
Source – whattoexpect.com multiples forum
Jena from Someday Mama shared a video log of snapshots taken all month long with her beautiful girls at 8 months old and touches on updates such as talking, sleep habits, social skills and more:
A twin mom on the babycenter.com forum shares in response to the question, “What should my 11 month old twins be doing now?”:
Source – babycenter.com forum
Twin Mom Emma from the Crazy With Twins blog records her twins development at 9 months in a hilariously cute way (from each baby’s perspective). Read her full post here – Life through the eyes of 9 month old twins:
I have shared my twins development at 6-12 months in the comments section below. I would love to hear which milestones your twins hit up to their first birthday, please share in the comments below.
You can use this quick guide I put together for you with developmental milestones to track by stages up to two years old:
‘Til Next Time
