Changes

Now that Riley is one, there are some Big Life Changes coming her way. According to the “experts,” now is the time to wean from nursing, transition from bottles to cups, and take away the pacifier. Honestly, part of me has been looking forward to stopping nursing for long time, and what really kept me going was knowing that traveling with Riley would be SO much easier if i was still nursing her (especially on the long plane flights). Now that the time has come though it’s not as easy as I thought it would be, and I’m starting to understand why some mothers defy social convention and go on nursing their kids well beyond one year.

Riley’s had a rough time adjusting back to life in california. With all the time zone changes and travel she got very tired and had trouble sleeping through the night. Add to that feeling crummy with a bit of a cold and you get a baby who just wants to be held by mommy and daddy all the time, and definitly does not want to stop nursing. It’s kind of sweet. She rests her head on you chest and holds on tightly with her arms, and occasionally points her little finger in the direction she’d like you to walk for some new scenery. I kind of love when she’s in these cuddly moods, but I know we need to help her get back to her giddy, independent, explorer ways. So the plan is:

1) get Riley back on a solid sleeping schedule and give her life some stability and consistency.

2) Since she doesn’t seem interested in the bottle anyway, we’re just going to stop giving it to her. This step is easy.

3) Slowly reduce the amount of nursing she does and try to convince her to drink milk from the sippy cup, which she is currently vigorously resisting — even though she likes drinking water from the sippy cup. She definitly does not like the taste of cow’s milk or formula and will actually spit it out if you manage to get it into her mouth. But she won’t even drink my milk out of the cup. kind of interesting. So we’re mixing small amounts of milk into the water, which she will drink, and plan to slowly increase the milk:water ratio.

4) Once she is sleeping well and fully transitioned to the sippy cup and not nursing, then we’ll start to think about phasing out the pacifier (though we are always trying to reduce how much she needs it).

I write this post not because I think it will be particularly interesting to anyone, but more because I think recently we’ve tended toward projecting a very glowing view of Riley’s life and our experience as parents, and it’s not actually always like that. As she gets older she’s become much more interactive and fun and we have a great time playing with her, but parenting her also becomes more complicated. How do you balence good nutrition with your baby’s constantly changing likes and dislikes? if she doesn’t drink milk, will she get enough calcium? How do you balence the desire to hold her and sooth her and nurse her and never let her cry, with the knowledge that she needs to learn to how to put herself to sleep and become more independent? How do you deal with temper tantrums? It’s just hard. Definitly worth it, but definitly hard.

Anyway. I know this time of transition will be followed by another period of transition and then another and another and I know we’ll eventually figure it all out. and the good times definitly out weigh the bad. Which is, I guess, what makes it all worth it.