Parents have taken to social media to claim that babies born in 2025 are ‘different’ as they are hitting milestones early – but a paediatric physical therapist has warned against the trend
Parents are taking to social media to claim their newborns are ‘built different’. Babies born in 2025 are doing the same handful of things that have parents taken aback, according to new mothers and fathers posting online. Emily Rayner, the new mum behind the TikTok account @thebakerhousehold, saw her video about her newborn hit nearly 1 million views.
In her viral video, she says: “Public announcement: 2025 babies are DIFFERENT!” She says her child “wants feeding every 30 minutes” and was holding her head up after just two weeks old.
Emily added that her new baby seems to have “constant hiccups” and is searching for milk “24/7”. And it seems that she’s not alone in thinking babies born this year are hitting milestones like this well ahead of time.
Plenty of her followers agreed, with one commenting on the video: “I thought I was the only one, my baby was born July and she does the same.” Another said: “This is my baby but add the grunting”.
Other parents report the same things, while adding other surprising things their baby does including “never” burping and “spitting up all the time”. But those who have been parents for longer have expressed their cynicism.
Other TikTok users said: “Sounds like every newborn” and “That’s just every baby, not ‘2025’ babies.”
Another wrote: “You all realise that every baby no matter what year they were born are no different because every baby is different. Because it feeds more or lifts it’s head has nothing to do with the year it was born.”
Ashley, a paediatric physical therapist, took to the app to express her “sadness” over these posts. She added: “We continue to see these posts every single year.
“But most of the time it is a post of a baby trying to walk at like 7 or 8 months and someone saying that their child skipped rolling, skipped crawling went straight to walking, and how advanced their baby is. Babies don’t skip milestones just for fun.
“Milestones are not random. Milestones are innate within a baby, so when they skip a milestone we should be asking why is that milestone difficult for them to achieve.
“Rolling and crawling matter too. One milestone is not more important than the other.
“We want babies to achieve every milestone and spend a good amount of time with each one. Rolling helps with reflex integration, it helps with learning how to weight shift and learning how to move in different planes of movement.
“All the milestones before walking set the stage for proper gate mechanics. Please let’s not rush babies to walk, let’s allow them to spend time with each milestone.
“Let’s not encourage early standing, and if your child is having difficulty with a certain milestone it’s okay to ask for support. I know it might seem scary or maybe your paediatrician is telling you the opposite of what I’m saying, because maybe they don’t understand motor development as much, but we don’t want babies to skip milestones.”