How is my little guy already 10 and a half months old?! He’s seeming like such a big boy lately, especially now that he has started walking.
He’s definitely not our little baby anymore!
It has been ages since I’ve shared a baby and mama update here on the blog, so I wanted to share a little more about how Wes is doing now at 10 months old, and how I’m doing 10 months postpartum!
Read on for some big updates, plus whether having two kids has been what I expected it to be, how my mental health has been lately, and more!
Want to save this post?
Enter your email below and get it sent straight to your inbox. Plus, I'll send you great content every week!
Wes: 10 Month Baby Update
I did a poll on Instagram stories asking for any questions/topics you all wanted me to address in this post, and got lots of good questions!
Let’s get to it.
Wes’s Current Favorite Things to Do
Now that Wes has learned how to walk (he took his first steps about a week before turning 10 months), he wants to do it all day! He often walks around and around our main floor, just doing laps basically by himself. Practice makes perfect. 🙂
He loves chasing after Riese, either crawling or walking. He loves knocking down block towers, and toys that make noise.
He really loves music – he loves walking over to the little piano we have next to our big piano, and he will hit the keys and try to “sing” too, it’s so freaking cute.
He has started playing peekaboo which is my favorite. He’ll hide behind a curtain and then pop out with a huge smile.
He has 6 teeth – four on top, and two on bottom. He’s drooling up a storm and biting on things a lot these days which usually leads to more teeth, so we’ll see!
He especially loves holding on to my pants while I’m trying to cook, which is not my favorite. 😉 Oh and yes, we are still wearing Christmas jammies, obviously.
I had forgotten how physical this age is – they are big but still want/need to be carried around a lot! My arms are getting a serious workout every day and I’ve already tweaked my back a few times hauling him around. #old
We are also in the phase now where he HATES getting his diaper or clothing changed, and will basically lose his mind unless you can find something super interesting to distract him on the changing table.
Trying to change him is basically a full body workout at this point and it’s not super fun for either of us. Trying to remember when that phase ends…
Breastfeeding/Weaning Plans Update?
A number of people asked for an update here, and it’s actually the biggest update I have for you in this post: we are officially done with breastfeeding as of last week!
It’s interesting – as a second time parent, I just kind of assume that things will go the same with baby number 2 as they did with baby number 1. And, time and time again, I’m proven wrong.
See also: sleep (Riese was a good nighttime sleeper pretty early on… Wes was not and we hired a sleep consultant around 6/7 months to save our sanity).
Breastfeeding is another example of this!
Overall, breastfeeding was SO much easier the second time around. Part of this was that I felt more confident and knew what I was doing this time, and part of it was that Wes didn’t have the lip tie situation that Riese did and was able to latch pretty easily from the start with minimal pain on my part (not the case with Riese – OUCH).
Since he was able to latch better from the start, it also meant that my supply wasn’t an issue like it was with Riese, when I was always just barely keeping up.
I started using the Haakaa (<- Amazon affiliate link) right away when Wes was a newborn and was able to build up a very substantial freezer stash of milk without doing any actual pumping, which was awesome.
That said, unlike Riese, who liked bottles, starting around 5 months Wes completely refused them! Part of the problem was that since I was always around and had enough milk this time, we basically only did bottles a few times, and it didn’t occur to me to offer them more frequently because the few times we offered one when I was gone he was totally fine with it.
And then one day around 5 months Matt tried to offer him a bottle one day when I was out and Wes was like “what the heck is this, no thank you!”
He continued to refuse bottles until he starting eating solids and we began offering him small bottles of breastmilk while he was in his high chair to wash down his meals. This got him used to bottles and then he decided he in fact LOVED bottles.
So much so, in fact, that starting when he was about 9 months he started on and off refusing to nurse. I had no idea what to do as Riese never did this!
My super mature adult response to Wes refusing to nurse was to burst into tears, obviously. He was still nursing first thing in the morning reliably but the rest of the day was totally hit or miss, and it got really stressful not being sure if he’d refuse or accept, and then if he refused having to go pump.
Then one day right before he turned 10 months, he started refusing the morning nursing too. Not gonna lie, it was a pretty low point when he completely refused that first time and I ended up having to make him a bottle instead at 5:30 a.m., which he chugged while resting his head on my painfully full breasts.
At that point I decided that if he was done, I was done. I didn’t want to keep forcing it if he was over it, and pumping moving forward wasn’t a good fit for my mental health.
Over the past few weeks, I pumped a little to make sure I didn’t get any clogged ducts, but slowly reduced the frequency, and I offered him the breast often still just in case he changed his mind, but he was super over it.
Thankfully we introduced formula a couple months ago and he’s been perfectly happy drinking that or breastmilk – he doesn’t mind either way which is great.
I have a lot of mixed emotions about being done with nursing, as I do with all things motherhood – isn’t that how it always is? The push and pull of the polar emotions?
On one hand I feel really sad that we are done – this is my last baby, so I’ll never nurse again. It was a special time we had together, something that was just ours, and now it’s done. I’m grateful that one day about a week ago I did get him to nurse again one more time which was wonderful because I knew it was the last time and could really focus on being in the moment.
It didn’t feel good that before that the last time we’d nursed I didn’t know it was the last time, and I couldn’t even really remember it, you know?
It feels like such a bittersweet transition and part of me feels like he doesn’t need me anymore and it’s just hard to watch your baby grow up and walk right out of your lap and into the big world.
But the other, increasingly bigger, part of me is – to be honest – THRILLED.
Not having the logistics and stress and mental load of trying to figure out how to plan work calls and meetings and appointments around nursing and having more flexibility in general is a massive gift.
I’m also going on my first trip away from him in July when he’ll be 13 months, and originally I was thinking I might have to be pumping on that trip and I’m not gonna lie, I’m really happy I won’t have to deal with that and transporting milk on a plane.
I’m also happy to have my body just be mine again for the first time in nearly 2 years. It’s a good feeling, especially when I go running and my chest is noticeably lighter. 🙂
While we’re on the topic of breastfeeding, about which apparently I have a lot to say, have any of you ever dealt with a galactocele? It’s like a clogged duct in that it feels like a hard mass, but it doesn’t hurt and it just kind of sticks around for ages.
I have one on my right side that developed late last summer/early fall, a month or two after I had a clogged duct right in the same area with a brief bout of mastitis. Wes didn’t really like nursing on that side anymore in the recent months as it was making it hard for him to latch as it got bigger and harder.
I went to the doctor recently to make sure I didn’t have breast cancer (very good news: I don’t), and they determined it was a galactocele and drained it for me; they use a massive syringe needle situation and suck the milk out. Yeah, it was as fun as it sounds.
Unfortunately, though, it’s back again. I’m hoping it will just go away as my body totally adjusts to not producing milk anymore, as what I’ve read online says that can often happen. It does seem smaller already, so here’s hoping.
If anyone of you have dealt with one, I’m curious to hear how it resolved!
What is Wes eating these days and what is his daily schedule like?
Wes LOVES food. My goodness this little man can EAT!
He seriously eats as much real food as we do some days, and definitely eats more than Riese (who is in a very picky phase right now and mostly just wants to eat bagels and cream cheese, fruit, and peanut butter and honey toast – I do sprinkle it with hemp seeds and she’s cool with that though which is a win).
Wes basically loves anything we put in front of him, and we feed him solids 3 times a day – breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
He’s getting bottles about 6 times a day now – right after he wakes up in the morning (usually around 6am), before and after first nap, before and after second nap, and before bed (usually around 7 or 7:30pm).
Both of his naps are typically about an hour and a half. Sometimes one of them will be closer to 2 hours which is amazing. Riese was a super short napper so this has been awesome.
Whenever he wakes up from his first nap, we do a 3 hour wake window before his second nap and that seems to work well for us.
Here’s an example of a typical day for him:
- 6 a.m. – wakes up, has a bottle
- 7 a.m. – breakfast with us + Riese before she goes to school (if it’s a weekday)
- 9 a.m. – nap time, he drinks a bottle before he goes down
- 11 a.m. – wakes up, has a bottle
- 12 p.m. – lunch with whoever is around (either me or Matt or our babysitter)
- 2 p.m. – nap time, he drinks a bottle before he goes down
- 3:30 p.m. – wakes up, has a bottle
- 6 p.m. – dinner with us + Riese
- 7 or 7:30 – bedtime, he drinks a bottle before he goes down
We usually offer him 6 ounce bottles and sometimes he wants all of it, sometimes he only wants a little. We leave it up to him.
A few of his current food faves are:
- My banana protein pancakes (Riese still loves this too, which is nice, so I can make it for both of them!)
- Oatmeal (all kinds)
- Mashed avocado, hummus, or nut butter on toast with hemp seeds sprinkled on top
- Steamed veggies
- Fruit cut into small pieces
- Eggs (either scrambled or fried or boiled and sliced into small pieces)
- Plain Greek yogurt, sometimes with nut butter stirred in too
- Shredded chicken or fish
- Mashed beans or peas
- Quinoa
- Roasted potatoes (white and sweet) – I just dice them up once roasted and leave off the salt
We usually just give him a little of what we are eating, and just prepare it without the salt.
We are still doing baby led weaning (<- all the details, via a post I wrote when Riese was little) and let him feed himself for the most part, although Riese does like feeding him and he enjoys that too. 🙂
And I’ll be honest sometimes if it’s something super messy like rice or yogurt I’ll just spoon feed him if I don’t have it in me to deal with another massive mess…
If you want some tips, here’s an old guest post that could be useful: Vegetables for Babies: 5 Ways to Encourage Eating Veggies.
Pros and Cons of the Age Difference
This is one of the questions I got on Instagram stories!
Our kids are 3.5 years apart, and I do see a lot of pros for having kids closer together – namely, they may be closer growing up, and also you don’t prolong the super intense infant phase for as many years, but waiting longer felt like the right call for us.
I really like that by the time Wes was born, Riese was able to be more independent (ish). She could go up and down stairs by herself without me worrying, and she was old enough to want to “help” with Wes.
The con here is that she had a lot more time getting used to being the Queen and the sole focus of our attention, and that was a hard adjustment for her, especially as she is not a kid who likes playing by herself/doing her own thing.
But overall, waiting longer felt like the right call for us for sure.
I see the appeal of the “get it over with” approach in terms of just continuing the nursing/pregnancy train right along with no break, but for me, I really needed that year in between where I had my body to myself and could reset a bit.
Having that space helped me be a lot more able to enjoy the baby phase this time around, I think, vs. being super overwhelmed (although I feel like that a lot too, don’t worry – but just less so than I imagine I would have if our kids were closer in age).
Has having two kids been what you expected?
Another Instagram story question, and I thought this was an interesting one!
I think like with most things in life and motherhood, going from 1 child to 2 has been both exactly what we expected, and also not what we expected. 🙂
In a lot of ways, going from 1 to 2 felt much easier for us than going from 0 to 1. We were already set up in the kid routine and eating dinner at 6 p.m. and out doing a lot of kid stuff, so it wasn’t like our whole lives changed like they did going from no kids to 1 kid, you know? That just felt like such a bigger transition for us.
I felt much more competent this time around having a baby, and in a lot of ways having an older kid already made the baby feel a lot easier by comparison. I was able to relax and enjoy the baby phase so much more this time as I felt more calm overall, knew better what to expect, and also really knew how quickly it goes.
But then there’s what I talked about earlier, where you just sort of assume that what one kid did the other will do, and that’s definitely not always the case. Babies are different and have different personalities, so what works for your first kid may not be a fit for your second.
That was definitely the case for us with sleep. Riese loved the merlin sleep suit and pacifiers, Wes didn’t like either! When we stopped trying to force what we were used to and let him choose his own way, it worked out so much better for everyone. A good lesson in there. 🙂
One of the coolest things about having two kids, though, has been seeing them start to interact and play more together.
Riese is Wes’s favorite – he adores her and anytime she’s around he wants to be with her.
Her love for him is very big and can be a little smothering at times, and she doesn’t love when he knocks over stuff she’s building, but they are often super cute together!
Riese loves crawling around with Wes and chasing him; he thinks it’s hilarious and always lets out a huge laugh when he turns and sees her right there behind him. It’s so fun.
I still can’t believe Wes is walking already! Riese started walking around 14 months – Wes seems to be doing everything earlier than she did, probably because he has her to watch and learn from.
One fun new thing is that last weekend they took their first bath together! Riese was super excited about it and helped me wash his hair. It was very cute to watch them splashing around together. 🙂
How is your mental health?
Hit or miss, to be honest. Some days I feel good and other days I find myself getting really easily overwhelmed and overstimulated.
Two kids is amazing and it is also a LOT.
As someone who finds chaos and mess and noise triggering, two kids is doubly hard as one kid, and I find the 3 and 4 year old age have been especially challenging for me.
Some days I feel like I’m able to show up and be the parent I want to be, and other days my patience is short. I know I’m not alone here.
I’m continually working on ways to make sure that I have my own needs met because if I don’t have my own needs met (with things like time for daily exercise, alone/quiet time, etc.), it’s much harder for me to access joy and to be the present, patient, and fun parent (and wife!) that my family deserves.
Being a parent is the best gift I’ve ever received and also the most challenging thing in the world. It’s worth it AND it’s hard.
And I’ll leave things there. Thank you for reading and for being here – I appreciate you! <3
