Rhea is 10 Months old and officially my oldest breastfed baby

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So I missed the What I Wore Sunday linkup this week because we had to go to Palm Sunday Mass on Saturday and my parents weren’t with us to take the picture. That is my excuse and I’m sticking to it. Happy Holy Week!

Rhea turned 10 months on Saturday! This is a big milestone for both of us because 1) I’m not pregnant again yet (that I know of), and 2) since I’m not pregnant, my supply hasn’t died and we are still nursing! I must say, it is pretty nice not to have to shell out the big bucks on formula this time around. I do have a question for you nursing mamas, though. Since I have never nursed a baby this long, I don’t know what is normal. She has a nice long morning nurse when she first wakes up and sometimes a good nurse at night (but not always), but I cannot seem to get her interested in the two nursing sessions during the day before lunch and dinner. She just latches, then unlatches over and over again during those sessions without actually nursing for longer than five minutes and then refusing to continue. Is that normal at ten months old? She eats a lot of solids at this point, so I figured that maybe it was normal to only have two good nurses a day instead of four. But I was getting worried that she wasn’t getting enough to drink during the day, so she has been getting sippies with water during meals.

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Milestones: She is officially crawling! Up on all fours and everything. She is crawling all over the place and loving her newfound freedom. She is pulling up on things to a kneeling position, so I figure pulling up to stand is around the corner. She also has two new teeth finally peeking through at the bottom! I will spare you the typical blurry photo of her gums with my hand in the corner wrenching her jaws apart. You can just take my word for it. She is also sleeping in her crib in a room with Ruth. It went really well the first week and then terribly the week after, which I discovered later was due to those teeth. Now, she babbles herself to sleep when I lay her down and sleeps right through the night! She will stand and play with her little play table for a while, but she is not interested in walking behind push toys yet. She can race around in a walker while I cook, though. She eats pretty much everything we eat, and is an expert at feeding herself and drinking out of a sippy cup. She calls me, “mama” and can also say “dada” and “uh oh” when she drops something.

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Likes: Riding around on her sisters’ push cars (she is always crawling over to them and putting her hand on them while looking at me meaningfully), eating (she will screech in dismay if she sees me feeding her sisters without her), baths, being tickled, when Rose plays peekaboo with her, crawling around and getting into things, running after her sisters in her walker with Cheerios on hand, snuggling, soft plush stuffed animals.

Dislikes: Being buckled into her car seat, when Wren gets too close, nursing when there are more interesting things to see and do, when we won’t let her pull Ruthie’s hair, she has just recently developed a stranger danger thing with men she doesn’t recognize.

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Wren pulling her in for a big kiss. Not sure why Rhea always shrieks when she sees Wren in her immediate vicinity.

Thanks for making it through another wordy update on my progeny. I hope everyone has a wonderful Holy Week! I have been working on developing a family culture a la inimitable Kendra Tierney with holiday family traditions included, so I was thinking about either doing the Seder Supper on Holy Thursday or the Stations of the Cross on Good Friday. Perhaps we can just do a washing of the feet at home? Does anyone know which one would be better with young children? I know the Easter Vigil would be way too ambitious for us. Insert grimacing emoji here.

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10 thoughts on “Rhea is 10 Months old and officially my oldest breastfed baby

  1. sarah isis (@disisd)

    My babies are different…. They boycott the bottle when I’m working which meant nursing all night long. Well, not all night. But they didn’t leave my chest for most of the evening.

    When I’m home with Lucy, her best nursing times are in the morning and night…. At 9-10mos, babies are so easily distracted that they’d rather watch their sibs specially when not that hungry.

    Agree with julia at the ritz. Healthy Babies will eat when they’re hungry 😉

    Reply
  2. juliaattheritz

    I think Will was still doing 4 feeds a day at that point, but he is a boob fiend, so.I wouldn’t worry about it- a healthy baby won’t starve themselves and she would let you know if she was hungry at this age.

    Reply
  3. Rachel A. Hanson

    Elizabeth was down to 2 or 3 nursing sessions a day by 10 months too. And those usually were in the evening – one before bed & one night time one. She started rejecting our morning nursing session by about 6 months old, haha. Constipation was an issue for a while, but she LOVED prunes & would sometimes even have one of those pouches. She has since grown out of her love :'(.

    Reply
    1. sylvia.hobgood@gmail.com Post author

      Ok, that is good to hear. The other ones had to wean when they were still doing four full feeds at least, so this is completely uncharted territory for me. 😳 For some reason, with formula they don’t really drop any feeds as they reach a year, so I was freaking out about it with this one.

      Reply
      1. Rachel A. Hanson

        I feel like making sure our kids get fed is emotional no matter what.

        When Elizabeth started refusing that morning feeding I was a hot mess! I went to an LLL meeting for some support, and didn’t find any there. It was so sad :'(.

        But now she’s 2 and demanding Peeps for breakfast, so I think we’re doing okay.

      2. sylvia.hobgood@gmail.com Post author

        Yes. This. I still can’t forgive myself for when my supply died when I got pregnant with Rhea and I didn’t realize it and Wren dropped from the 50th percentile to the 5th 😳

  4. katylady

    Oh, isn’t this age so much fun?! Especially if they’re on a good nighttime routine (I miss those days…). Two good nurses a day seems about right, IMO, and I think she’d be waking in the night if she *needed* more. My babies always tended to wake at night to nurse when they were teething, too. We did sippies of water from about 10 months and then introduced cow’s milk at 12 months (I did sometimes use very diluted prune juice if we noticed BMs not happening every day, or if they got a cold). Always love seeing photos of the beautiful Bass sisters! 😘

    Reply
    1. sylvia.hobgood@gmail.com Post author

      Thank you! Yeah, constipation is a good point, I didn’t think of that! I’ll keep a lookout for that.

      Reply

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