My little boy is growing up! Time is flying! It seems like just yesterday he was learning to walk!
So I am writing this one week late - and a lot has happened in that week!
Nic is learning to talk! More and more words!
This week he has consistently learned to use the following words:
"Pop pop" - as in the balls in the toy go pop, pop, pop
"Bye, bye" - as in bye, bye!
"No, no, no" - as in NO NO NO - this is his favorite!
He has also learned a very cute way to express himself! Nic and Jac like to bump heads! A lot! Especially when we are all trying to get to sleep! We have tried to teach them to do this less and we call it "bump head." So if one of them bumps their head we will ask them, "Did you bump head?" After a bit of doing this Nic started tapping his head when he would bump it and we would acknowledge that he had bumped it. Very cute! Now he taps his head with his hand whenever he bumps any part of his body - which is at least 10 times an hour when he is awake!
Nic is not hitting as much anymore - he still does it quite a bit but it has lessened somewhat. He has been proving to us what a good arm he has on him. He can peg you with a ball from several feet away. He likes to wind up before he throws and he stands there with something in his hand held behind his head for quite a while before he throws it.
He has not been eating as well. He has mostly been playing with his food and mushing it in his mouth and then spitting it out. I think he may be teething but I am not sure. Last week he woke up four straight nights at 4 am and stayed up for at least 2 hours! So hard! He has gone back to sleeping through the night (with nursing!)
Two nights ago we decided to try giving him a bottle before he goes to bed rather than just nursing. After his 15 month visit at the doctor's in which he suggested that he might be nursing all night because he wasn't satiated I thought that perhaps the doctor was right. I know that I am not making as much milk as I used to since he doesn't nurse as frequently. We only had yogurt drink in the house so we gave that to him - he gobbled it down - and slept for the first part of the night rather than nursing. Tonight he fell asleep with the bottle and didn't nurse at all! Weird for me! I am sure he is not going to wean yet - or at least I hope he isn't. I love nursing him and when it is gone I am never going to nurse again - so I am enjoying it while it lasts! I just want to sleep a tad bit more at the beginning of the night and let him sleep a little more also!
Nis is very quickly transitioning from being an infant to being a toddler - in this last week all of sudden he is able to express himself more and seems to be understanding a lot more language - so expressive and receptive language improvements - very quickly! (It is of course a build-up but when you hit that asymptote it just seems to take off!)
Nic is now 85% head, 50% height, and 28% weight (15 month measurements). I think the charts must be at least a little bogus - there is no way Nic is 28% percentile weight - he is solid - with a nice little belly! The head I believe!
My kids have all nursed a lot at night - Right now, Henry has a couple of longer sleep periods when he first goes to bed, and then it seems like he nurses constantly from 4am -7/8am or so (I'm sure it's not constant, but it seems like it is!).
ReplyDeleteWhen Emmett was about 12 months, I really needed a more restful night so we night weaned him - meaning from about 11pm to 6am I didn't nurse him. We accomplished that by having David take care of Emmett when he woke up instead of me (he accepted not nursing better from David, because he didn't expect it). There were three difficult days with David spending a lot of time rocking, but after that it was better. Just a week or so after night weaning, Emmett slept much longer without waking up (probably 8-10 hours).
Luke, of course, was an entirely different story. I didn't night wean him until he was closer to 2, and he didn't sleep through the night after that. He really didn't sleep all night until we moved him out of our room and into the room with Emmett.
Both of them, though, were night weaned long before they were done nursing (both nursed past their second birthdays). So it's not necessarily the case that weaning at night will lead to a total cessation of nursing. Do you still nurse him down for naps? With Emmett, that was the last to go. Luke stopped falling asleep while nursing before he weaned, so I think the first-thing-in-the-morning nursing was last to go.
Anyway, that's how it went for two of my boys, to give you an idea of what you might consider and what you might get!