Tag: Babies
Weening Nursing To Sleep at 18 Months
Question:
I’m looking for a gentle advice for my almost 18 months old who will only fall asleep nursing. A little history: he is my second baby; and I had a birth injury and needed a long time to heal so we both got used to cosleeping and nursing to sleep, which worked out great at first, but there was a point when I realized what I created 😔. I’ve tried to gently break that habit earlier but it didn’t work and I gave up. I’m considering to just wean at this point because I’m tired of getting up several times at night 🥴😔. He just wants the breast to fall back asleep with (in his mouth). He sleeps in a floor bed in same room as his sister. I don’t believe in cry it out and looking for more of a gentle approach, if there are any. Thank you!
The Judgemental Mom’s Response:
Have you tried just giving him an actual cup of milk at bedtime? Thats how I weened my son off of nursing to sleep at this age. A 360 cup of milk and just rocking him. Which after turned into he was him laying in bed with his milk while I rubbed his tummy or back. Then it was he drinks his milk at, or around, bedtime, then he lays in bed and I rub his tummy. Then it turned into some nights he wouldn’t fall asleep so I would say “okay im going to let you settle down now I love you baby” and he would roll around for 5 minutes and pass out. Or I would sing a song to him over the monitor and he would pass out.
Growths spurts/sleep regressions are still hard on his sleep tho, hes 2.5 now. I dont see anything wrong with rocking him to being sleepy now. Any kiddo needs some extra connection from time to time. Keep in mind at/around 18 months its another big growth spurt so it might be even harder for you.
Take it slow and be easy on yourself and your expectations and remember that theres nothing wrong with co sleeping, nursing, or both!
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Gender Reveal Game
One of my best friends was expecting a bundle of joy.
It sparked my creativity to put together something super cool for her! Especially because it was right at the beginning of when the pandemic hit and we were all social distancing. I spent quite a few nights racking my brain on how we could do something fun together – but apart. Not to mention, some of the friends that were to be part of the gender reveal party were scattered in various directions, living at least an hour apart.
SO, I started with that and worked from there. When I had everything figured out and put together, it was GENIUS. So why not share it with others out there that could be scratching their heads trying to put something together for their own expecting friend?
Here’s how it went. I put together an opening “poem”, a game guide, and then a bunch of questions. We had 8 people in total (that number included myself – this game may not work well for larger numbers of participants but it could be a good base to work from). Each person got a question, plus a bonus question.
For this game, you have to work backwards off of the end answer to get things to fit together smoothly. The end-point of the game was that my friend was (obviously) either going to have a BOY or a GIRL – so using the “alphabet-number chart code” i.e., A=1, B=2, etc., BOY would have totalled 42 and GIRL would have totalled 46.
Unfortunately I wasn’t going to know the gender until after I had to send out the game to everyone, so added the bonus questions. Each participants bonus question was worth 1 OR 1.5 points depending on the gender. I notified them of at the beginning of the game what it would be worth – which by the way, we played this together on video messaging.
With the questions you can change up how you do the points. You could keep it simple and make each question a certain amount of points (given the amount of people participating and if you know the gender already). I decided to keep it extra interesting so after calculating how many points each question had to be (minus the bonus points), I broke it down so it wasn’t just the question that was giving the points, but amount of letters in the answer to question. I.e., if the answer was a 5 lettered word, that question gave the person 5 points. Necessary? No. Just made everyone think more!
Since there was 8 of us, it worked out really well in terms of being able to do the bonus questions and use them to fill in the answer I wouldn’t know until a few days before the party. (Remember I had to mail them out much sooner than that so I had to make something work.)
All the questions tallied 34 points together (before the bonus questions). If she had had a boy, the bonus questions would have all been worth 1 extra point each (multiply by 8 people), making the total point tally 42. If she had had a girl, the bonus questions would have all been worth 1.5 extra points each (multiply by 8 people), making the total point tally 46.
Everyone kept track of the answer points as we went through the questions out loud together. Each question was worth a different amount of points so that I could achieve the base point total of 34 (which doesn’t divide easily among 8 people). Who ever figured it out first yelled it out over the video chat! It’s a lot of work, and a lot of thinking, and you gotta hope the participants are good with math LOL. But it’s super fun and makes for lots of laughs. Not to mention, it kind of changes up the typical gender reveal games!
Shoot me a message if you tried it and let me know how it worked! Good luck and best wishes to your expecting momma!
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When You Want To Keep Nursing So Badly
I had wrote this Feb 28th, 2019
This is what it looks like to so badly want to keep nursing my baby
Its almost my only option right now anyhow.
3 different milk production supplements plus a prescription to help increase supply.
That container of formula? Thats amino acid based formula, which only comes in half the size of normal formula – 400g – at double the price – $55 Canadian.
My son is so sensitive to milk protein, he can’t even have regular hypoallergenic formula because it contains hydrolyzed milk protein. Soy formula began to bother him as well which we were warned about by fellow moms.
Sad it took 10 MONTHS of his life for ME to figure his struggles out because his PEDIATRICIAN is useless and kept shrugging everything off or giving prescriptions for side effects.
DID YOU KNOW AMINO ACID FORMULA IS COVERED BY OHIP DUE TO THE COST OF IT? Nope, it wasnt his doctor that told me that or offered a prescription for it.
Did you know I wouldn’t even be having to supplement him with formula after nursing had his ‘pediatrician’ chose to recognize his oral ties? She knew they were there, just didn’t believe in fixing them so she never said anything!
Guess what? That pediatrician chose the wrong mom to snuff off. Because this mom happens to be the kind of mom that can and will make a formal complaint to the board of physicians and surgeons of Ontario; and I did.
Not just for my son, but for every other struggling parent and child that gets stuck seeing that doctor
My son was 10 months old when I had originally wrote this; he is almost 2 now. Thankfully for his sake he seems to be finally starting to grow out of this intolerance/sensitivity/allergy. So many things I wish I knew sooner.
May the next generation of Moms not have to deal with the ignorance of doctors and CMPA or any other infant digestive struggles.
If you are interested in learning more about CMPA and easy Dairy-Free recipes, head over here.
Mentally, Mom 