development

- Sarah 4 Comments

Gabriel is three months old

I swear it was only two minutes since I was writing Gabe’s two month update – time really does fly with a baby in the house! So what has Gabe been getting up to now he’s three months old?

three months old

He continues to grow, although he’s not quite as big as Toby was at the same age. I had him weighed nearly two weeks ago and he was 12lb 1oz so I’m sure he’s more than that now. He’s also moving into all 3-6 month clothes, after growing out of the last of the bigger 0-3 month sleepsuits. We just got a bag of Toby’s old clothes down out of the loft so I’m going to swap everything over tomorrow…and then see if I can justify any more shopping, but I think probably not!

Although I said in Gabe’s two month update that I had finished breastfeeding altogether I actually carried on giving the odd comfort feed for a few more weeks and I think he was close to 11 weeks when he had his last breastfeed. He is now usually having five bottles a day, and amazingly for the last three nights he hasn’t had a night feed at all! Yep, he has slept from 7 pm to around 6 am for the last three nights! I am under no illusion that this is likely to be a permanent situation, after all Toby slept for a solid 13 hours every night from being 10 weeks old… until he was 18 weeks old and then he never slept consistently again until he was two! However, it’s a promising sign that he can do and I can only live in hope that it carries on. I’m certainly enjoying not having to get up in the night for the moment.

slept through the night

Day time naps are going quite as well but we are making some progress there. Gabe does usually have at least one nap a day in his crib, sometimes more, and his other naps are either in the car or on my lap while I watch TV when Toby is at nursery in the afternoons. Some naps in his crib he manages two hours but more often it’s between 45 minutes and an hour. There is a sure fire way to get him to have a long nap and that is for me to have a nap with him in bed…which is lovely, but not always practical! Anyway, I’m just going to keep persevering and hopefully he’ll get into more of a nap routine soon. It’s hard to know how much of a role Gabe’s reflux his having on his ability (or inability) to nap. It’s difficult to get the timings of his feeds right – if I put him down too soon after a feed then he’s just sick, but if I wait too long then he gets over tired or starts to get hungry again. His reflux does seem to be mostly under control now – he’s still on Gaviscon and ranitidine. He still struggles after feeds sometimes, crying with pain, and it seems some days he’s much more sick than others, but on the whole he doesn’t seem too bothered by it.

We’re still not getting loads of smiles but it is lovely when he does. He’s definitely a lot more aware of what is going on around him now and will watch as we move around the room. He’s starting to grab at the toys on his bouncy chair now, and even manages to get them sometimes too. He’s making moves towards trying to roll over from his back to his front too, although I think he’s quite a way off actually doing it yet.

grabbing toys

I think that’s about it for this month. I still can’t believe how fast time is going. We already don’t have a tiny newborn, and I bet it’ll seem like no time at all until he’s rolling over, sitting up, and then we’ll be weaning before we know it! I think I said last month that I don’t want to wish the time away but I’m very excited for what is soon to come.

0-3 months

- Sarah 1 Comment

Gabriel is two months old

Two months old already. As life continues at breakneck pace it seems like Gabe has been a part of our family for much longer than two months now. He certainly doesn’t look like the tiny baby who arrived onto our living room floor back in August! As I’ve mentioned in some of my weekly Living Arrows posts we are slowly figuring things out and settling into some sort of routine. I’m still finding some days a struggle looking after Gabe and Toby – there’s still quite a lot of CBeebies getting watched but everyone is surviving and I’m just telling myself that Toby is learning some really important life lessons from Bing and Mr Tumble.

Head up

If you read my post a few weeks ago about the beginning of the end for breastfeeding you’ll already know that we were slowly heading towards completely bottle feeding. Well, I last breastfed Gabe on Friday, and it worked wonders on Thursday night when he was really unsettled after having his first immunisations, but these have only been comfort feeds and he is getting all his nutrition now from formula. I’m pleased we made to eight weeks with him getting at least some breast milk but I’m also happy that we have made the right decision for all of us as a family. Gabe is still suffering from reflux and giving him bottles means he can have Gaviscon much more easily. He’s also taking ranitidine which helps to control the acid. We seem to have things under control with the reflux, and although I’m sad he has to suffer from it at all, at least we’re managing it. And he’s gaining weight well – he was up to 10 lb 4.5 oz on Thursday, which means he’s put on 2 lb in as many weeks! He’s almost growing out of some of his 0-3 sleepsuits now too – his feet are right in the bottom, especially when he’s got a big cloth nappy on at night. Speaking of cloth nappies Gabe still hasn’t worn a disposable since he was three days old and he’s now too big for some of the newborn nappies so he’s graduated to the birth to potty ones and so both he and Toby are wearing the same nappies and I’m having to wash them nearly every day – time for some nappy shopping I think!

Bottle feeding Gabe has helped us get into a routine of feeds roughly every three hours through the day with naps in between (in theory). I’m trying my best to get Gabe to nap in his crib at home but a lot of the time I just end up putting him in our Lillebaby carrier which seems to have magical properties that send him straight to sleep. I actually think I could get him to nap in his crib more if I could spend ten or fifteen minutes settling him but I can’t leave Toby roaming the house for that long on his own so if Gabe doesn’t fall asleep within five minutes then into the carrier he goes! He’s sleeping very well at night though which is brilliant. We’ve now got our bedtime routine pretty much down and both boys are usually in bed asleep by 7:30 pm. Gabe will then generally sleep until somewhere between midnight and 3 am. His wake ups have been getting a bit earlier lately but I can sometimes put him off for another hour with a dummy and a rub on the back – that’s when having the co-sleeper crib really comes into its own. I’m usually up with him for an hour – he tends to drink his milk with a break in the middle for a burp and a nappy change. I had a few nights a week or so ago when I was up with him for two hours but thankfully we seem to back to an hour again now. After that he then sleeps until about 6 am and I’m not sure whether he might sleep a bit longer but Barry has to get up for work then and I think that maybe disturbs him. Whilst Gabe is sharing a room with us (and he will be for a while yet because we don’t really have any other options) there’s not a lot we can do about it anyway.

First smile

We starting to get a lot more smiles now which is so lovely. He doesn’t smile that often but when he does treat you to one it lights up his whole face. I still can’t tell if he’s got dimples like Toby though! He’s very alert now and always looking around to see what’s going on. He’s also a lot happier just to sit in his bouncy chair for a while which makes a world of difference to me – I can usually manage to eat my breakfast without a baby strapped to my front at least!

I’m trying not to wish away these newborn days but I can’t help but look forward to the next few months as Gabe continues to develop and starts to interact a bit more. I’m hoping that as that happens Toby might start to find him a bit more interesting too and they can amuse each other rather than constantly demanding my attention (although I am well aware that that is going to carry on for years yet!)

Two months old

So, at two months old Gabe is well and truly a part of the family now. I’m proud of myself that I’m coping with two kids and despite some tough days we are all getting along just fine!

 

- Sarah 1 Comment

Toby is 27 months old

OK, so I know 27 months seems an odd age to do an update post but that’s when the health visitors round here do a development check so yesterday we had a visit to see if Toby is doing everything he ‘should’ be at 27 months old. We were sent a questionnaire to complete before the health visitor came – most of it was pretty straight forward; things like can he run, walk upstairs, eat with a fork, identify body parts, stack seven bricks, put three or four words together, but some of the other questions seemed a bit odd; does he copy you if you open and close your mouth or pull your earlobe? No, he doesn’t. I mean why would he? He might do if I asked him to but he’s more likely to just look at me like I’ve gone a bit mental! Or another one was if something is out of his reach will he get a chair or box and climb on it to get whatever it is. Also no. Mostly because he’s really tall so most things are within his reach. And if they aren’t then that’s probably because we’ve purposely put them out of his reach and would tell him not to if he started trying to climb on a chair to reach them. Stupid questionnaire!

Anyway, the health visitor didn’t have any concerns with Toby and neither do we. Physically he can do everything other two year olds are doing. He’s very active and loves running and climbing and jumping off things. Mostly he likes jumping on his daddy! He’s still very tall for his age, although at 2 st 2lbs he hasn’t put on much weight at all this year. At two years and three months he’s starting to wear age 3-4 clothes from some shops and is wearing size 8 shoes.

27 months old

Toby’s very affectionate (when he wants to be) and loves having cuddles on the sofa and giving out kisses when he’s in the mood. He is so polite, and it makes me very proud – he says please and thank you without being prompted. He’s very well behaved most of the time, and usually does what he’s asked, even if sometimes it takes a few times of asking! He’s good at tidying up after himself too – sometimes he seems to enjoy tidying toys away more than he does playing with them. He’s got a set of wooden blocks that he likes nothing more than just to take out of the box and put back in again. Although, he’s quite a fan of the tower too – remember that questionnaire asking can he stack seven bricks? I decided to actually see what he could manage today….16 bricks! Nailed that one. He’s so clever too – he can count to 13 (because that’s how many stairs there are in our house), he knows most of his colours, he can identify all 50 of the flash cards in the set we have…he surprises us every day with just how much he knows and can do.

Toby has recently become really friendly too, saying hello and goodbye to people in shops, or the postman when he comes to the door. He also likes to say hello and goodbye to lots of other things too – it can take five minutes to leave the park as he says ‘bye bye slide, bye bye swing…’ today we even had ‘bye bye shop’ after we’d been to the post office! He likes to be helpful whenever he can too. He likes to bring things for Gabe when I’m feeding him. Admittedly they aren’t always things he needs, or wants but it’s still adorable when he presents me with a teddy or a muslin with a ‘there you go Gabe’. Yesterday he was determined to give Gabe his dummy, even when it was quite clear that he really didn’t want it.

I know I’m sounding like Toby is some sort of angel child here – of course he has his fair share of tantrums and whining. He’s going through a bit of a phase of just crying whenever he doesn’t get exactly what he wants, when he wants it, or quite often it will because he wants to do something for himself when he either can’t, or just it would be much easier to do it myself. One of his favourite phrases at the moment is ‘my do it!’ I have to admit I sometimes take the easy road and just let him have his own way if it will avoid a meltdown. At the moment I just feel like he’s coping with so many changes – a new brother and a new nursery, and he’s adjusting so well really that if I can let him have his own way about things sometimes (and I’m not talking about anything major, just things like which shoes he wears, or what to have for lunch) then I can make his life a bit easier and less stressful…which in turn of course makes life easier and less stressful for me too.

I’m sure there’ll be lots more changes for Toby over the next few months – we really need to get him in his big boy bed soon, there’s toilet training to think about at some point (although I don’t think he’s anywhere near ready yet) and the biggest change of all will, hopefully, be a move down to England (and there’ll be much more on that from me in future blog posts!). I have no doubt though that our adorable boy will continue to grow and thrive and amaze us every day.

This last photo was taken one day after nursery a few weeks ago – Toby had been playing in the garden and this picture just captures him in all his snot-covered, grime-coated, adorable two-ness!

27 month old urchin

- Sarah 2 Comments

Gabriel is one month old

One month old already, and what a month it’s been! I’m not going to lie, this month has been really hard, but I’ve already written about that here.

image

There have been some lovely moments this month too like seeing Toby giving his brother a kiss on the head is adorable, and he often does it without any prompting. Toby has also learnt to say ‘Gabe’ now too and when he sees him in the morning or after nursery he says ‘hello Gabe’ – too cute! And although they have been a bit few and far between, those newborn snuggles are very sweet too.

Gabe is mostly still just feeding and sleeping (although mostly feeding!). We are still breastfeeding, but have introduced a bottle of formula at about 7pm so Barry can give him that while I put Toby in bed. We might have to give another bottle of formula during the day too as although Gabe is gaining weight it’s not quite as much as we would like. He was 7lb 3oz yesterday which is only 6oz more than when he was born and he has dropped from between the 9th and 25th centiles down to the 2nd. Considering the amount he is feeding he should really be putting on a bit more weight. I really do want to carry on with the breastfeeding but if he needs formula then I’m not going to beat myself up about it. I went to see a lactation consultant yesterday and she was great. She checked Gabe for any issues and basically said it seems like I’m producing quite a lot of milk but because Gabe isn’t that good at getting the milk from me yet that’s why he’s always wanting to feed and isn’t gaining that much weight. She gave me some things to try to see if we can improve matters and hopefully as Gabe gets bigger he’ll get better at feeding too.

We still think Gabe has silent reflux as well – he’s now on ranitidine (which is the same medicine Toby has) but it’s difficult to know if it’s really making any difference. We found he was starting to bring up most of the feed when we used normal formula so have now switched to anti-reflux formula which is much better.

So there have been a few issues to contend with, and probably one of the hardest months of my life, but Gabe is starting to be awake and alert a bit more now and I know it won’t be too long before he will start interacting more too. It makes the difficult bits a lot easier to deal with when you at least get a smile for your troubles!

- Sarah 1 Comment

Gabriel is one week old

I can hardly believe it but Gabriel (or Gabe as we have taken to calling him) has been here a whole week. I know everyone says this but on the one hand it hardly seems a minute since he was born but on the other it feels like he’s been part of our family forever.

one week old

There have been lots of lovely moments this week, but it has been very hard at times too. A couple of weeks ago Barry and I were lying in bed and we were trying to remember how difficult we found the first few weeks with Toby. We were thinking if we tried to remember we would be more prepared and able to cope this time round. And I kind of think we are. It’s certainly not quite as much as a shock as having a baby for the first time and some things, like changing nappies, bathing and dressing are a lot easier this time round. But there are lots of things that are just as hard.The lack of sleep doesn’t get any easier, and this time we’ve got the worry that Toby will wake up in the night too and then we have him to deal with too. He’s only woken up on two nights since Gabe arrived but both times he was up for almost two hours. I was feeding Gabe so couldn’t go to him but when Barry went to him he was just sobbing ‘mummy, mummy, mummy’ over and over. I was trying to feed Gabe, which I had been doing pretty much constantly for the previous nine or ten hours. He was fussing and wouldn’t latch on, Toby was crying, I was crying… Listening to both my babies crying for me at the same time and not being able to help either of them was I think the single hardest thing I have ever done. Eventually we decided that Barry would give Gabe a little bit of formula so I could go to Toby and get him settled and back asleep. Not the ideal solution but it was the best we could do at the time.

Generally though Toby has been an absolute superstar with his new brother this week. He was a little shy around him the first few days and I think he was quite confused about how he got here, and that he didn’t go away. But he has been so gentle with him, giving him kisses and bringing him toys. It’s just adorable. His language has come on even more this week too. He’s being very helpful, taking cups back to the kitchen and putting things in the bin, all accompanied by his new phrase and the cutest thing I’ve heard – ‘I will do it’. This weekend, for the first time ever, Toby just fell asleep next to me on the sofa. He has only ever napped in his cot or in the car or buggy, and hasn’t been napping at all for the last month or so. Maybe he got the idea from his brother that a nap on mummy’s knee would be a good idea!

sleeping babies

Anyway, this is supposed to be a post about Gabe, not Toby! On the whole Gabe seems to be a pretty contented, settled baby so far. He won’t sleep anywhere except lying on my breastfeeding pillow, either on someone’s knee or on the sofa. We’ve tried putting him like that in his crib (which I know is not a great solution either) but he just seems to wake up straight away. This means that since he was born either Barry or I have been awake the whole time, with the exception of a couple of hours when Gabe has managed to sleep in our bed and we have both slept too. I know that not wanting to be put down is all part and parcel of being a newborn and I’m trying not to get too stressed about it for now but I do hope we can find some way for us all to get some sleep at the same time before Barry has to go back to work in a few weeks.

I’m really pleased with how breastfeeding is going so far with Gabe. I didn’t have a great time of breastfeeding Toby (you can read about it here if you’re interested) so I was hoping we would have more success this time. I’ve still had difficulty getting him to latch, just like I did with Toby – I think it’s just a combination of small babies and my anatomy. I started using nipple shields on the first day this time though, which has helped enormously. Gabe can feed without too much trouble and I have avoided my nipples being shredded. I saw one of the NHS breastfeeding support workers last week and even she, after watching and trying help me get Gabe to latch just said ‘you know what, if it means that you carry on breastfeeding then just use the shields for now’. We also supplemented with formula a few times before my milk came in. Again, from experience with Toby I didn’t want Gabe to lose too much weight and I could tell he was struggling to be satisfied just from my colostrum and my milk didn’t come in properly until about day 5. So feeding itself is going well but we have been having epic cluster feeds every night which are quite hard to cope with. On Friday night I started feeding Gabe at about half four in the afternoon and I don’t think I had more than half an hour between feeds until 12 hours later! We’ve settled into a bit of a routine now in that I feed breastfeed as much as Gabe wants through the evening, usually manage a couple of hours sleep between about 9 and 11pm then feed again until about 2am. At this point Gabe has been getting really fussy and hard to latch on and I’ve reached my limit of being able to stay awake so we give him a little bit of formula and that seems to settle him enough to sleep until the morning. Hopefully as he gets a bit bigger we might be able to stop these top ups, or I am also going to trying to express a bit so we can give him expressed milk instead of formula. For now though I’m just happy that I am managing to breastfeed at all, and for the most part without any real problems.

I’m going to leave it there for now – it’s been a difficult first week at times but it’s also been amazing to see this little boy who I have been carrying for the last nine months and I’m very happy that our family is now a happy family of four. I’ll leave you with this picture of my boys in their matching nappies – I’m so pleased that we got Gabe in cloth nappies from the first week – and they’re so cute!

matching nappies

- Sarah 2 Comments

Nursery wobbles // an update

I was reading a post today by the lovely Eline at Pasta & Patchwork about how her 3 year old (affectionately known as the Bean) has been going through some separation anxiety as she gears up for a work trip away from home. It made me think about this post I wrote back in April about Toby’s nursery wobbles and I thought it was about time I wrote an update.

We’ve had a few more ups and downs since April but happily things seem to be settling down a lot now. There haven’t been any more staff changes at nursery recently and Toby appears to have got used to the new people. I’m sure it also helps that all his teeth have now come through, and eventually we got his awful nappy rash cleared up too.

There are still some days when he cries as I’m leaving but we aren’t having the same drama just getting his shoes on and into the car. Usually if there is something to distract him as soon as he arrives at nursery (a ball or balloons are sure fire winners here) then I can leave without so much of a shout. Sometimes he’s so distracted he doesn’t even say goodbye but often I get a wave accompanied by an enthusiastic ‘Die!’ (yeah, we need to work on that one!) or his new party trick which is blowing a kiss.

Toby is still eating everything they put in front of him at nursery (although hardly putting on any weight – should I be worried about that?). His naps have got even better too and he usually sleeps for about two hours in the afternoon.

Sleeping at night has improved too. We still have some nights when he won’t go to sleep unless I stay in the room, or nights when he wakes up, and frustratingly when he does wake up he tends to take ages to get back to sleep. Last night I ended up sleeping on his bedroom floor from half two until half three because he just stood up and started crying whenever I left the room. But on the whole he sleeps through a lot more than he doesn’t so I can cope with that. We’re also trying to do away with his bedtime bottle at the moment because I think at nearly two he really doesn’t need a bottle any more. We’ve started giving him milk in a cup when he gets in from nursery instead and then he has the hour or so before bed time to drink it.

So, although things still aren’t perfect they’re a big improvement from where they were a few months ago. Hopefully Toby will stay settled at nursery – we’re going to keep him going every day until after the baby is born so he has some stability and doesn’t have to deal with lots of changes all at once. He will be moving to part time in the Autumn but we’ve not decided exactly what days and hours that will be yet. I just hope he stays happy and we don’t go back to the days of screaming and crying every time he gets dropped off.

If your little one is having wobbles about nursery or other separation anxiety then, as hard as it is at the time just try to remember…

This too

- Sarah 6 Comments

Mummy, mummy! (The Ordinary Moments #26)

Something exciting has happened in the last week. Toby’s speech has been coming on quickly of late, and he seems to be learning new words every day, but last week he actually started saying mummy!

He’s been saying Daddy for months and months, I think it was one of the first things I heard him say, and although we’ve had a few mamas they’ve only really come when he’s been crying and could quite easily just been a sound he happened to make rather than actually saying my name.

But last week we started getting a definite mummy. He still doesn’t always get it right and calls me daddy, or now is calling his daddy mummy but he always corrects himself if we point it out. On the downside it also means that he has started crying ‘mummy’ when he’s upset, which is difficult, particularly for Barry when he’s trying to comfort him. But there’s nothing more adorable than the big grin and ‘mummy!’ I get when I pick him up from nursery.

His other favourite words at the moment are ‘oh, wow!’, ‘nee naw’, and of course we still get a lot of ‘hats’ and ‘shoe shoe’. Apparently he has started saying lots of the names at nursery as well this week so I can’t wait to see what we get next.

After a very long break I’m linking up with Mummy Daddy Me for The Ordinary Moments again.

mummy daddy me
- Sarah 3 Comments

Is it time for a big boy bed?

Toby is now 20 (and a half) months old and his sleep issues are already well documented on this blog! Actually, his sleep has been getting much better over the last few weeks and he even seems to have stopped the screaming when we left the room which had become a feature of bedtimes recently.

I have been starting to wonder though whether Toby’s sleep might be improved by a move out of his cot and into a bed. Although he’s very tall he still has lots of room in his cot and (so far) hasn’t attempted to climb out. He does bump against the sides quite a bit when he’s going to sleep and sometimes in the night and I wonder if this is disturbing his sleep.

Happy in his cot

He’s going to have to move into a bed sooner or later and with the new baby arriving in August I’m keen to move him before we need his cot so he doesn’t feel like he is being evicted! Eventually both children will have to share a room (until we move house) but I’m hoping that we will manage to keep the baby in with us for longer than we did with Toby. We put him in his own room when he was six weeks old because his reflux made him very noisy in his sleep and we all slept better when he wasn’t in with us.

My main concern with moving Toby into a bed is that he will then have the freedom to get out and potentially cause chaos. He loves going in the drawers and wardrobe in his room and unless we put locks on everything I can see us waking up to find everything all over the floor! I think we would also need to put a gate across his door as he can easily open all the doors in our house. We currently have a gate across the hall which means Toby can still get to our room. This is fine if we’re there but if we were downstairs I think he might be out of bed and running around all over the place.

Of course, I might be wrong and he might just love a big boy bed and stay in it all night. I know the only way to find out is to make the leap but I am more than a little apprehensive. I think we are going to get a bed in the next few weeks (and I’m planning on going straight to a single rather than a toddler bed) and then we might put it in Toby’s room and see what he makes of it. We’ve booked a caravan holiday in May too and Toby is going to have to sleep in a bed, with a bed rail, then as he’s too big for the travel cot now and I think maybe getting him used to a bed at home first might be a good idea.

I’d love to hear when you moved your little ones into their big beds. Are there any issues I haven’t thought of or was it all plain sailing and I should just stop worrying and do it?

- Sarah 3 Comments

Toby is 18 months old

So Toby is 18 months old (well, more like 18 and a half due to my tardiness in finishing this post). From when I started this blog until Toby was one I wrote monthly updates but I haven’t written one since his 12 month update in July. Six months on and we are definitely the parents of a toddler and not a baby any more. So, what’s been happening in the last six months?

18 months old

Toby is still really tall for his age. I’ve not actually been able to measure him for quite a while but we weighed him at Christmas, he weighs 28 lbs and I’ve just swapped all his clothes over to age 2-3 (although he’s been wearing some 2-3 sleepsuits for a while now). I’d like to keep him wearing poppered vests for the moment but I’m really struggling to find any big enough. I managed to get some plain white ones in age 2-3 from Tesco but if anyone has any ideas where I could get some coloured ones then please do share. He’s also got pretty big feet and is wearing a size 6 – he’s had them a while though and there’s still plenty of growing room in them so his feet can’t be growing too fast.

Our little toddler has been walking for about three months now. We did have a bit of a set back in November when he had some mystery injury to his leg or foot and wouldn’t but any weight on it for a couple of weeks, but whatever that was he now seems fully recovered. Now he can walk Toby loves running about in the house and hiding behind doors or trying to shut us out of rooms. He has been tall enough to reach the door handles for ages but a few weeks ago he worked out how to open the doors too so now nothing is safe from him.

We finally seem to be getting a respite from teething. Toby now has 16 teeth so only his back molars still to come. Even though the teething has stopped for the moment he is still suffering with every cough and cold that comes his way – one of the hazards of going to nursery full time I guess! Speaking of nursery, Toby has been going full time since August now and most of the time he really seems to like it. We’ve had plenty of mornings when he’s cried as I’ve dropped him off, but usually when he isn’t feeling well or hasn’t slept well and is still tired. I hate having to wake him up at 6:30 am and he doesn’t always get the best naps at nursery either so weekends are often spent catching up on sleep, for everyone!

Toby is very talkative and is often babbling away but we still don’t have many recognisable words. He says Dada a lot (and sadly Mum very rarely), and ‘what’s that?’ whilst pointing at things, or at least that’s what it sounds like. He does say see-saw quite clearly when he’s on his rocking horse, or even if I just rock him on my knee. He also says something resembling spider, and if you say spider to him he’ll point to the ceiling because that’s where all the spiders were in our house in the autumn. Oh. and ‘shoe’ is the other word that he definitely knows. We just need him to learn a few words that would actually be useful in helping him communicate now though! Although, he’s not saying much yet Toby definitely understands so much these days. It’s actually quite amazing to see. He can follow some instructions and knows where things belong. Every night he puts his dirty clothes in the laundry basket in his room (even if he does sometimes then take them all out again so he can put the basket on his head!). He shakes his head for no if we ask him questions, but doesn’t seem to have a way of saying yes yet though.

Part of Toby’s ongoing struggle to communicate is quite regular tantrums or crying when he doesn’t get his own way. It’s quite exhausting sometimes and I have to admit I’m a bit rubbish at just giving in for an easy life sometimes. He is usually relatively easily distracted though so most of the time it’s not too bad. And although he might not be able to communicate much he definitely knows what the phone is for, and loves picking it up and saying ‘hiya’. In fact it doesn’t have to be the phone, any vaguely phone shaped object will do.

18 months old on the phone

Sleep, or rather lack of, is still an issue that we are doing our best to cope with. On the occasional night recently Toby has slept all night but usually he’s awake once or twice. He still has a bottle at bedtime and more often than not he will need another if he wakes up in the night. He does seem to be genuinely hungry rather than just seeking comfort from it, but I don’t know what we can do to try and get more food in him during the day. He already has two breakfasts, two snacks, lunch and dinner at nursery plus more food when he gets home! I know he shouldn’t really still need bottles at 18 months but with a full time job I really need as much sleep as I can get and when the options are 10 minutes in the night to give a bottle and then he goes straight back to sleep, or spend half an hour or more with him screaming before he calms down I’m afraid I’m going to go for the bottle every time. I just have to trust that one day he’ll eventually grow out of needing milk in the night and we can all get some proper sleep!

I realise that a lot of this sounds like a bit of a moan, and in all honesty I am finding things pretty hard at the moment. But then Toby gives me a big cuddle, or runs around the house like a loon, or makes us laugh in any number of ways and then I remember how much I love him and I wouldn’t change him for the world.

- Sarah 3 Comments

Saying goodbye to the bottle

goodbye to the bottle

At 16 months old Toby is now almost bottle-free. I know technically he didn’t really need a bottle after he turned one but we decided to take a relaxed approach and see how things went. At 12 months he was still having three bottles a day (plus more if he woke up in the night) and our little routine was going so well we didn’t really want to rock the boat too much! The other reason I was a bit wary of getting rid of the bottle too soon was that Toby wasn’t very keen on drinking much from a cup and I wanted to make sure he was still getting enough to drink one way or another.

The first bottle to go was the one he had before his afternoon nap. When he started nursery in August he was being fed so much during the day (3 meals and 2 snacks) that he didn’t really need an afternoon bottle, although he still had one at home at the weekends for quite a while.

The next bottle we cut out was the morning one. A month or so ago there were quite few days when Toby had woken up sometime between 4 and 5am and had a bottle so there didn’t seem much point giving him another when we got up at 6:30am. This also coincided with him becoming more comfortable with drinking out of his cup (after trying every sippy cup on the planet we had more success with straw cups as for ages Toby wouldn’t tip a cup to drink) and us switching completely from formula to cow’s milk. So now when I get Toby up in the morning (or he gets us up!) we just give him some milk in his cup and he has that while I’m getting him dressed and ready to go out. He doesn’t always drink very much of it during the week when we don’t have very long to get up and out to nursery but I know he has more milk on his cereal and drinks plenty of water during the day anyway.

I was quite concerned though about stopping the bedtime bottle. A bottle before bed was such an integral part of Toby’s bedtime routine that I just couldn’t imagine how we would get him to bed without it. Especially since after starting nursery he had gone back to having 9oz bottles at bedtime rather than his previous 5 or 6 ounces. But, as usually happens, these things tend to sort themselves out if you let them. A few weeks ago Toby started completely refusing his bedtime bottle. He would maybe have a few mouthfuls but then push it away and get himself worked up if we tried to get him to have any more. And so, we decided to give him milk in his cup, along with some snacks (even after eating three meals and two snacks at nursery he still comes home hungry!) as soon as he gets in from nursery so he has time to drink plenty in the hour or so before bedtime.

This seemed to sort of work for a few weeks – he would go to sleep OK without his bottle but then wake up a few hours later and drain a full bottle. I was willing to persevere though and was hoping that he would eventually make it through the night without needing a bottle. However, last week Toby hurt his foot and was also teething, and I think having another growth spurt. His sleep was awful, he was waking up two or three (or more!) times a night and would only go back to sleep after having loads of milk and in an effort to get him to sleep a bit better the bedtime bottle has made a return.

To be honest I’m still not too worried about this at the moment. If Toby still wants a bottle a bedtime (and during the night) then for now I’m happy for him to have one. I’m confident that at some point he will decide he doesn’t want it any more and hopefully he might even start sleeping through the night again eventually too!

If your little one had bottles at what age did they stop? Did you do anything the wean them off the bottle or just leave it up to them to decide? I’d love to hear how you managed the transition.