Riese turned 10 months old on Monday! She is looking like such a big girl these days – it’s weird that she is now much closer to a toddler than she is to a newborn. I say this all the time, but, ahhhh, cue the tears – my little baby is growing up! (I know, I know, wait until she’s off to college, you say…) She loves knocking down blocks now so it’s hard to get a photo with still blocks in the mix, but this was kind of perfect because I’ll look back and remember what she was like at this stage from this photo! In a nutshell: busy, active, energetic, and so fun. <3
Here’s an update on baby + mama at 10 months.
Breastfeeding
Riese is still nursing 5 to 6 times a day, although she’s definitely starting to get more distracted during feeds and drinking less from me each time. She’s also starting to eat more and more real food per sitting. It’s really bittersweet to think I might not be nursing her for that much longer. On the one hand, it would be nice to have more freedom during my workdays again to be gone and out of the house for longer… but on the other hand I love nursing her and don’t want that sweet time to come to a close. I kind of feel like she will always be nursing, you know? Weird to think that something I’m so used to now will be changing soon. We are still supplementing with some formula, especially in the evenings before bed when she wants more milk than I have/have pumped, and I’m still pumping before bed, but we’ll see how long I keep up the pumping.
I’m not really sure how to let the weaning process play out – we’ve always done the whole nursing thing totally baby-led, letting Riese tell us how often she wants to nurse, but I’m wondering if we need more of a structured approach for the weaning situation? She’s definitely losing interest and getting more annoyed by nursing/trying to run off and do other stuff, especially later in the day – so I’m not sure if I should keep trying or start to be more intentional about weaning/come up with a plan to do so? I’m happy to keep nursing her as long as she wants, especially first thing in the morning when she’s more into it and I have more milk, but maybe the later in the day feeds should start to go? I think I’m going to stop trying to nurse her before bed because she definitely prefers the bottle then (and she always gets a bottle top off, anyway, so that one seems like the logical nursing session to drop at this point), but other than that I’m not sure what to do moving forward. Help! 🙂 Regardless of whether you breastfed or bottle fed, how did your baby wean from breastmilk/formula? And specifically for those who breastfed, when they started losing interest in nursing, did you give them a bottle at that time instead of nursing, or just do more real food?
Real Food
Speaking of real food, Riese LOVES food – we are lucky to have a good eater (for now, anyway – I’m sure the picky phase will happen). Her favorite foods are still fruit, yogurt, nut butter, and meat and fish (we do shredded chicken and salmon a lot and she loooooves it – and she also loves meatballs). She still hates scrambled eggs despite my frequent attempts to give them to her. 😉 The only way she likes eggs is as part of my flour free breakfast pancake – she loves that! That’s what she’s eating in the photo below (along with some strawberries and some sneaky scrambled eggs she obviously ignored, lol).
We are still doing a mostly baby led weaning approach (more on how we got started with that in this post: Our Experience with Baby Led Weaning, and a more recent update on BLW was in the 9 month baby update post). We do pouches, though, when we are out and about and it’s too complicated to bring other food with us, and that has worked well. In the past couple weeks we’ve noticed she’s really starting to eat more real food quantity-wise, and we are starting to offer her real food more often, too (3 to 4 times a day now vs. 2 to 3). Here’s what her food (and milk) schedule looks like right now – we let her lead us so if she’s hungry sooner or later we adjust as needed, but this is just kind of where it seems to settle nowadays:
- 6 or 7 a.m. (whenever she wakes up): nurse
- 8:30/9 – real food breakfast
- 10:30 – nurse
- 12:30 – real food lunch
- 1:30/2 – nurse
- 3 – real food snack (if hungry – sometimes we skip this, or just do a pouch if out)
- 4:30 – nurse
- 5:30 – real food dinner (if hungry/she didn’t have an afternoon snack)
- 6:30 – evening bottle (and sometimes nursing, but like I said above I think I’m going to switch to 100% bottle b/c she’s too distracted and impatient to nurse at this time and I don’t have enough milk anyway)
She usually goes to bed between 6:30 and 7, and sleeps all night (I know, we are so lucky, and I have zero advice because I think we just randomly have a good sleeper) until 6 or 7. In terms of naps, she usually takes two really short naps per day – usually about 30 minutes around 9:30 a.m., and an afternoon nap around 1 or 2 which is usually closer to 45 minutes (occasionally longer or shorter depending). She sleeps in her crib at night and for naps when we are home, but also sometimes naps in the car or in the stroller.
I’m wondering if it makes sense to consolidate some of the nursing and real food sessions so she’s not eating basically all day long, but I know some babies like consolidated feeds and others don’t… thoughts? If we do consolidate, do I nurse her first and do real food after? Why does this feel so complicated?! 🙂
Developmental Stuff
Riese is crawling like a madwoman now, and really into pulling up on things and standing. No walking yet, but she can support herself while standing (with something to hold onto) and she loves practicing walking with us holding her hands.
She still loves jumping in our laps and in her jumper, too. She’s super active and never stops moving. I love that she is more interactive now and that we can play fun little games with her, like peekaboo, rolling a ball back and forth, clapping, waving hello and goodbye, or crawling around together (she thinks it’s really funny to be chased – I love her laugh!). Speaking of crawling, she is FAST now – and always goes directly to either the electrical cords or the dog bowls. Of course!
Riese also loves using us as human jungle gyms, and going on the baby swings at the playground! She also really loves music – I’ve taken her to some baby/toddler music classes that she LOVES – and I’m going to sign us up for a baby gymnastics class, too, because I think she’ll have a blast. We are also starting swim lessons in a month – she doesn’t love water/bath time, so we’ll see how that goes…!
Also – SHE HAS TEETH! A few weeks ago she was reeeeeally fussy during the night and screaming when we tried to get her to go to sleep and sure enough a couple days later we noticed a tooth peeking through! Now it looks like there are three teeth peeking through as of today – randomly all are on top, with no teeth on the bottom yet, although apparently bottom teeth normally come in first?
Mama Postpartum
I’m feeling more like myself physically every day, but still not 100% there which I’m sure is normal (and probably related to still nursing – did those of you who nursed until around a year or longer feel more like yourselves physically and in terms of workouts and stuff when you weaned, or was there not much difference?). I still have a little bit of numbness, tenderness, and puffy-ness at my C section incision area – not sure if that is normal at this point? Probably. I need to be better about doing scar massage more often because I bet that would help! But, running is starting to feel more normal physically (just hard still!) and as the weather cools I’m really excited to start running a little bit more seriously again. Not seriously like training for a marathon or anything, but just in terms of being able to slowly start increasing pace and distance a bit! My first postpartum race – the MCM 10k – is coming up in a month! I’m pumped. 🙂
The main thing I’m working on otherwise right now is trying to figure out how to get more excited about work again. (I’m working 3 days a week, and I feel really lucky that I am able to spend 2 full weekdays at home with Riese.) I’m still enjoying my AnneTheRD client work, but I’m in a bit of a rut with the blog, so I’m trying to figure out how to make my blog work more fun/engaging again for both my sake and yours. I think part of the problem is that I’m usually working alone on blog stuff, and it feels, well, lonely, especially since blog-related work is a large part of my workday. (It takes a lot more time to run a blog as a business than you would think!) So that said, if anyone local is also extroverted and does a lot of recipe development/playing around in the kitchen and wants to meet up on a frequent basis to do so together, let me know. 🙂 I’m wondering if it makes sense to do this with a fellow dietitian/food blogger/recipe person as just a casual meet up (I’m talking to a dietitian friend about this already and excited about it!), or whether to hire an intern or assistant or something… or both? We’ll see. Now that I’ll have more time and flexibility soon on workdays because I won’t be nursing all the time (since I work from home, I’ve been fortunate to be able to nurse Riese during my workdays), I think the more opportunity I have to collaborate and work with others in person rather than just virtually to develop content, brainstorm new ideas, etc., the better. It would be a nice way to keep things fresh and I think would benefit you guys as well as me!
Speaking of nursing, it sounds like Riese is ready to eat, so it’s time for a work break! I’ll catch you guys back here tomorrow – have a great day!
