How much do babies 'talk' at 5 mo?

[Lacrymosa]

My daughter is a pretty noisy baby, but its mostly grunting and sigh's and most often fussing. Every once in awhile, once every two weeks or less, she'll do the baby 'talking' at me and dh. But in looking over information on the internet on 5 month old development, it says baby should be talking at/with you much more than that.

Is this at all cause for concern or is this normal?

[Miss Chris]

Don't worry. It's way too early to worry.

Really, no one here can really know from your description how much your baby talks and no one can really tell you what is or is not "normal" because the variation between children is huge and she's so young that it many ways the variation is also totally meaningless. Some babies are big talkers (my daughter was a non stop babbler and is still a relentless chatterbox) some are not. Just like some people are big talkers and some are not. Our new baby is due in February and I find myself sort of hoping once in a while that it will be a little bit more introverted because if I get another one like the first I may go completely bonkers . Seriously, she's the most amazing kid in the world (obviously) but she is an absolutely unstoppable word manufacturing machine.

All that said there were things she never did that were on "the list". You know that thing where you're supposed to make a sound and the baby babbles it back at you and there is kind of a tiny infant mommy conversation made of cute babbling? The mimicking thing? She never did that. No interest in mimicking, no interest in tiny conversation, zip. Meant nothing in the long term. Now she's going to be 4 in March and she talks to strangers on the street, people on the subway, dogs walking by, everyone.

Most likely before you know it your daughter will be giving you her in depth opinions about life, the universe, and everything and you'll be wondering where the pause button is (just for a second).

Good Luck
Miss Chris

[Abraisme]

It sounds like she's still in a perfectly normal range. Some kids are quiet, some yell and some babble all the time. My DS didn't babble much at all and then went on to be a late talker (started talking at 2). Now at 6yo he's a perfectly normal kid with the same amount of language as all his friends..

Olivine (4mo) is a TALKER, she'll have full on conversations with herself or us if we're talking to her. She can make ah, oh, ba, and she almost has ma. She also sings herself to sleep on a regular basis (ahhhhh-ahhhh-ahhhh type sounds). I have a strong feeling that she's going to be an early talker, which has it's up and down-sides.. Ha ha..

My good friend has a 9mo that is also very quiet. She likes to observe everything, but doesn't have much to say. She's perfectly normal otherwise.

So long as Asia is meeting her other milestones, will make eye contact, etc, then she's probably fine.

[odoole]

My 4 mo. son used to have a lot of baby conversations with coos and aahs and grown-up intonation and everything. He also used to make a lot of "ma" "muh" "eng" sounds whenever we would lie him on the back. That has stopped recently, and he almost never does it now. But at the same time, he's become VERY busy with his hands and is obsessed with grabbing things and exploring them and putting them in his mouth.

So I miss all the vocalizations he used to do, but I'm not worried (yet). I think babies tend to work on one thing very intensely at a time. He's dropped some of his other cute baby tricks (like sticking out his tongue to mimic us) and picked up new ones to replace them (rolling over, etc.) Before, when he wasn't as mobile, his ability to make noise fascinated him. Now his ability to control his muscles is more interesting.

At least that's my take.

[elmh23]

Sounds perfectly normal.

My son does have a speech delay and when we first started getting speech therapy he was measuring at the development of a typical 7 month old (he was 16 months old.) At that time, he was only making sounds without opening his mouth (and really it was only one sound) and he had just started to say mamamamamama but it wasn't for me, it was because he was pissed off. He didn't even really fuss as a baby, seriously no real crying ever or showing he was unhappy with sounds.

That is a delay. Your child sounds very typical for a 5 month old