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M is absolutely not the easiest phoneme to pronounce. It's one of the latest that children develop outside the big 5
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I forget exactly which book it's in, but a psychologist was working with a kid that was adopted from an orphanage in an Eastern Asian country. The orphanage was so understaffed that the babies there got almost no interaction with adults and ended up creating their own way of communication with each other. It was just basic sounds but the one for a caregiver that would go around and change their diapers was referred to as "ma" or "mmm", can't remember which.
I believe the book was either "The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog" , or "The Body Keeps the Score."
Edit: The book is "The Boy Who Was Raised As A Dog" chapter 10. There were a couple dozen words the babies/toddlers made up, the one for adult/caregiver was "muh". >

In Japanese it is "haha". Which is basically fitting into the a-scheme. >

It's still "mama" in Japan.
Haha is like saying "mother" if comparing to English, which a child wouldn't typically call their mama that, especially at that age >

Mama is a loanword imported from Europe. Mom in Japanese is oka-san.
It’s said that mom was just “kaa” but was eventually added “o” as an honorific. >

Well yeah. But mama is what's used in Japan. >

It's an import >

Everyone is saying the early stage word for mother would be haha or okaasan, or mama.
The actual word is kaa かあ
It's actually still used in Tsugaru dialect.
かっちゃん、かあ、おっかあ
This is the Yamato-kotoba version of baby speak for Mama.