Our Noah Oliver has officially been a toddler for two months now and I’m loving it! As special as the baby year is, it’s also tough in many ways; primarily because of the sleep deprivation-induced brain fog, which can make it hard to enjoy life at times. For me, being able to spend Noah’s second year with him is also very special because I very much feel like I missed out on a lot that happened during Maia’s second year. I’m sad to say but I don’t even remember much of it. I was away for 12-hours per day during the week and only saw her briefly in the morning and for 45-minutes in the evening. And it’s fair to say when I was with her, I was exhausted to the bone from working full time in my finance job and being pregnant with Noah. Witnessing the development of small children (note: I have no experience with older kids, so hence just talking about the little ones here) is very special and interesting, and personally I find the transition from babies to toddlers hugely fascinating! Suddenly Noah has taken massive leaps in his development in ways that make him seem more like a ‘real person’. He is engaging and communicating with us and Maia more and is really starting to show his personality. With Maia being back in nursery school in the mornings, I’ve had some one-to-one time with Noah and I’ve been able to really concentrate on him- I feel like we’ve bonded in a new way. For example, I’ve been taking him to the park after his nap and he’s been able to swing, slide, and play in the sandpit and really enjoy the outings, rather than just sit or sleep in the buggy while I run errands or run after Maia.
It’s fair to say this winter has been a challenging time for us, starting the year in lockdown and then isolation, and then being sick with COVID-19, then suffering with Noah’s molars, and then the whole family got a cold… At times it’s felt like a never ending sh*t storm, excuse my language. The cold and wet winter and the third lockdown, which has already lasted three months, and will not end until June 21st this year (if all goes well), have not helped either. But although many of my day-to-day struggles relate to the children, they are also my main source of joy. They are the reason we get up (too early) in the morning and following our routines and concentrating keeping them happy gives me more purpose than anything else ever has. And even when it’s been hard, for example when the sleep was poor with both kids full of cold, there are fun and interesting things happening during the day – such as Noah starting to walk!
Noah turned one on January 20th and so we had another lockdown birthday party with just us four. We waited for the weekend to celebrate and had a lovely day, despite being confined to our house because we were in isolation after the COVID-19 outbreak in Maia’s school. Luckily though, we were not sick on his birthday! We didn’t yet know we had caught the virus and we were all still feeling well on Saturday 23rd of January when we had our celebration (I got very sick on the following Monday). For the first time ever I actually baked, together with Maia, birthday cupcakes for Noah, and we blew up balloons and sang to him. He had a few presents too, the biggest one being a slide with a basketball hoop, which we intended for the garden but which has stayed in the playroom- it’s definitely been a big hit during this lockdown. It started snowing the next day and overall January and February were very cold and wet, so we have spent a lot of time indoors at home.
I mentioned above that Noah has started communicating with us more and more, but I don’t mean verbally. Although he’s trying to say words, he’s not talking yet, but the nonverbal communication is very clear. He waves bye bye, claps his hands when excited, points the snack cupboard when he wants a rice cake and even shakes his head to say ‘no’. Ironically the last skill he learnt on Mother’s Day! He loves playing peekaboo- he goes hiding behind a corner or under a blanket and pops his head out with a big grin. He also loves nursery rhymes with hand gestures “If you’re happy and you know it”, “Row row row your boat” and “Wind the bobbin up” being the favourites. Noah understands a lot more now; if you tell him to go find the car/elephant/teddy he will go find it and bring it to you. He also understands the word ‘no’ but his reaction so far is to laugh mischievously and carry on…
Physically Noah is active, and I mean very, very active. I always thought Maia was an active baby but Noah’s eagerness to climb everywhere is on another level. He climbs the stairs, the sofa, the toy box, he even tries to get on the window sill where they stand every morning with Maia to wave goodbye to their daddy, who returned to working from the office in February. Luckily, Noah has also been quite quick to learn how to climb down, but we still get tumbles and falls daily… Interestingly, just like Maia, Noah took his first steps at exactly 13-months. Because he started walking with the walker already at 10-months I thought he might take off sooner, but he’s been happy to use props to get around. And just like Maia, he has been increasing his step count gradually, instead of just swapping crawling to walking overnight. He’s at the stage now that I no longer count the steps, but I’d say the walk:crawl ratio is 1:1. I thought our house is pretty baby proof since we’ve always lived in it with small kids, but turns out Maia was just a bit easier in many respects. Noah has already figured out how to open all of the kitchen cupboards and being taller than what Maia was, he can even reach the knives in the cutlery drawer! Which means we need to add more child locks… The stair gate was installed months ago, and I’m so glad it’s there.
I struggled with Noah’s naps for months, but they have also suddenly improved. After the nap sleep training in October, I got him used to napping in the cot, but he still took a lot of settling (cuddles and patting etc) and would often wake up in between sleep cycles. I stuck to our routine and just carried on, even though I needed to resettle him and endure some tears, and then finally he started sleeping longer and longer stretches. Shows that consistency really is the key with baby sleep! Because Maia was at home with us for the first half of the winter term, I let Noah sleep as long as he wanted in the morning because it gave me time to do ‘big girl activities’ with Maia, and in fairness that worked well for us, even if it meant the afternoon nap would be shorter. Noah now self settles for both naps and tends to sleep about 2.5-3h across the two naps. Maia still has a nap in the afternoon as well and although it’s still a challenge on some days to settle them both down for a simultaneous nap, on most days it does work. They both need a bit of quiet one-on-one time with me to settle down and that’s the challenge – it often feels like a game of ping pong where I’m covering both sides alone. Noah finally stopped waking up at 5am once we night-weaned, and he sleeps quite solidly from 6.45pm until 6/6.30am. Teething and snotty nose really bothered him though and disrupted our nights, but luckily that seems to have improved again.
Speaking of weaning, I finally stopped breastfeeding two weeks ago! So in the end I breastfed Noah roughly as long as I did Maia, for 14-months, which was important to me (to treat them equally). I had always thought I could carry on for longer because I had no external pressure or reason (such as returning to work) to stop now, but really the goal was to wean at Noah’s pace and that’s what we did. He was ready to stop and I was too. He has been eating solids well for months (now with a fork too!) and drinks water and some cow’s milk from a sippy cup, so he hasn’t needed my milk for nourishment, although I always thought it’s a good bonus. Mainly we carried on with nursing for the bonding and the nice cuddle time, but because I had separated nursing from sleep times too, I found that the nursing sessions became rarer and rarer. This meant that my milk supply dropped and then Noah’s interest dropped as well. I found myself in a hormonal limbo, suffering from PMS for a few months without actually getting my first post partum period. This was not fun at all. My body was gearing up for fertility again, but that occasional ‘nipple chew’ from Noah was enough to keep my period at bay although not enough to stay in that blissful bubble of no hormone swings. So, even though I felt emotional about stopping breastfeeding, I also started feeling more and more ready to let it go. I waited until Noah got his 12-month jabs (six weeks late, because of our COVID-19), just in case he would get poorly because I thought the boob would provide comfort, but actually he never got sick. So on March 6th, we had the last morning boob. Weaning went really well for us! I think it also shows he was ready for it. During the first week he would occasionally come to me, pulling my top and getting frustrated when he didn’t get what he wanted, but most of the time it was just a matter of distracting him for a few minutes and he would forget about it. The first week was harder for me and I felt very hormonal, super bloated and emotional, but exactly two weeks later I got my first period in two years. I hope that as my cycle normalises, I will feel better. It’s actually quite exciting to think this will be my first summer in five years that I’m not pregnant or breastfeeding! I bought a few nice, supportive bras (you know when you know) from Victoria’s Secret and upped my skincare routine with anti-age products like retinol which you’re not allowed to use when pregnant/nursing.
So now it’s time to enjoy the spring with my two toddlers and I can’t tell you how much I’m looking forward to sunnier, warmer weather and the lockdown restrictions easing!
xoxoxo,
Sini