I cannot believe that my baby girl is almost one year old! I thought I better update my routine blog posts and let you all know what life has been like for Rosie over the past four months. If you would like to look back on our journey I have the following blog posts for you:
Rosie’s First Two Weeks and My Postpartum Journey
Rosie’s Routine at Three to Five Weeks and Life with Baby
Life with Rosie at Six to Ten weeks
Life with Rosie at Four to Seven Months
Life with Rosie at Four to Seven Months
These blogs posts are full of tips and tricks for the different ages and stages of newborn and baby life.
Rosie’s routine –
I have used Contented Baby by Gina Ford as a routine guide for all three children, if you have read my other routine blogs this is something you will already know. A routine is not for everyone, but for me is enables me to plan my day, whether that be looking after the older two or slipping in some work.
Here is a little look at Rosie’s routine at eight to twelve months:
7am – I wake her for the day if she is not already awake, she breastfeeds as soon as she wakes up. I find at the moment she is waking between 6am and 6:30am. I generally try to wake up at about 5:30am now and make breakfast, lunch and dinner for the all the family. I also make my bed and do any chores I can, or some work. I find the morning a lot easier now that Rosie’s breastfeed is so short, and that she is having solids. Food in the highchair is a great way to keep her busy while I do things like make the school lunches. I stopped expressing in the morning when Rosie was about 10 months so this has also given me more time, YAY.
8.00am – We need to leave for school at this time. Rosie used to struggle to stay awake for this trip but now does most of the time. I was recently reflecting that everything becomes a lot easier once the baby doesn’t fall asleep as soon as they get in the car, which is often at inconvenient times. After school drop off we normally head to the gym and she has about 35 minutes in her pram having morning tea, she actually loves it, and is such a good girl there. It hasn’t always been like this and we had up and down times there, lots of me running around the block the pram, but now we’ve got this!
10:00 to 10.30am – Rosie has a morning nap in the car on the way to an activity or home. She is happy if it is even only 20 minutes, this nap just gets her through until her big lunch nap.
10.30am – I wake her and we do something fun for her for the morning. We do things like playgroup, swimming, parks, beach and will soon start ballet.
11/11:30am – She has lunch wherever we are.
12/12.15pm – Rosie has her biggest nap of the day. I put her down for lunch nap in her cot in her room everyday if I can, and she rarely sleeps out. She has a really good rest in her cot and I am sure it is what helps her to be such a happy girl.
2.15pm – I wake her. Up until about 11 months of age I would breastfeed her when she woke up, now I give her a small snack, then we head to school pick up. Our afternoons are generally spent outside doing some sort of activity.
5pm – We have dinner as a family.
5.45pm – Ryan starts her bath. He generally does all of Rosie’s bedtime routine and I do Ari and Chloe.
6.00pm – She has a bottle of milk, about 150mls. This was expressed breast milk up until about 11 months of age, then I started to slowly add some breast milk substitute to the bottle with a goal to have stopped expressing by 12 months of age.
6.30pm – I take her into her room once Ari is asleep (Ryan then has Chloe to put to bed) and change her nappy and give her some breast milk from my breast. Once she has had enough and is relaxed I tuck her in for the night. She is always asleep by 6.45pm/7pm. I will continue to finish her off with breast milk until I feel like we both want to wean that feed.
9pm – I was expressing both breasts at this time but stopped at about 10 months and began to use my milk that was in the freezer.
In the night – Rosie sleeps from 7pm to 6/7am. She doesn’t wake for a feed. Generally if she did I would know she just needs to settle herself, or I would need to go and help to settled her if needed.
Her day sleep is about 2.5 hours and she sleeps 11/12 hours at night.
Breastfeeding –
When Rosie was about 10 months old I started to drop my expressing times. Remember I started off with three times when she was born to get her that big bottle of expressed milk at night. Firstly I dropped the daytime expressing session, then the morning and then the evening. By 11 months I was no longer expressing. To create her big bottle I used up my freezer stash and then at 11 months old I started to add in a breast milk substitute to her bottle. The goal with all of my babies would be to have moved that bottle over to the substitute at 12 months of age. I will continue to breastfeed Rosie when she first wakes in the morning and just before she goes to bed at night (after she has the bottle.) I will keep doing this until I feel we are both ready to wean a feed. With Ari this was 15 months old and Chloe 24 months old.
Family –
Well, we are still all very obsessed with Rosie and I am still waiting for the novelty to wear off for the children. She is getting more and more active and playing with them. Ari and Rosie have a very fun relationship and he makes her giggle a lot. Chloe and Rosie play beautifully together and I can see their friendship blossoming.
Crawling, standing, walking and everything else –
It all seemed to happen at once! Well sort of. Rose was army crawling from six months old but it took her until she was eight months to work out how to get her tummy off the ground. At 10 months old she was standing whist holding on, and took a couple of tiny steps on Hamilton Island when we were on holiday. Then at 11 months she started to walk and stand independently! She was our youngest walker by far and we are so proud of her. One thing we did have to do was lower the cot once she was standing.
Introducing finger foods –
Rosie took to pureed food really well, but it wasn’t long until she was refusing the spoon and I had no option but to introduce solids. I have a full blog post all about is How I Successfully Introduced Finger Food To Rosie – This Sweet Life. Now at nearly a year old she really eats anything and I don’t make separate meals for her. Rosie loves pasta, rice, eggs, avocado, lots of fruit, and dates are her favourite.
Sleep and night settling-
I think that sleep at night very much comes down to what happens in the daytime. Making sure that children are getting enough rest, not over stimulated and not getting overtired. Being out in the sunshine everyday is also important, in my opinion.
As for settling in the night, the first thing I do if she yells out is to leave her, and give her some time to see if she settles back to sleep. Since I stopped feeding her to sleep in the day (a habit I got into to get her to go to bed quickly,) she has stopped thinking she needs me to settle her back to sleep in the night. This has been huge for us in the past with the other children as well. I found if I fed them to sleep in the daytime they would also want it at night. I have always been big on giving them the space to learn to settle there own little bodies and minds to sweet, I think it is confidence building too.
Ways I would help her to settle would be to put some music on the monitor and 9 times out of ten she would instantly go back to sleep. If I went into her room, I would try not to feed or give her a bottle. I would try to pat her bottom and shush shush her to sleep with my voice. If this didn’t work I would pick her up for a cuddle. Honestly though, at this age I have found the best way for her to settle have been to leave her, and that if I go in she gets more wound up not wanting me to leave. Usually she would only call out for a minute or so and then go back to bed until the morning. If you would like my ideas for night settling for younger ages be sure to check out those blog posts that I have linked above.
Teeth –
Rosie got her first tooth at six months old, and now at nearly a year old has six through and two just peeking. They are so cute! She even has her own little tooth brush that I let her chew on with just water on it.
Holidays with three –
I think it is obvious that we like to travel, and we go away a lot. I had grand plans for travelling with Rosie at a young age, as I did with Air and Chloe, but of course that has not been possible. So, we have done a lot of weekend trips. Rosie took her first plane flight to Hamilton Island, which was honestly a breeze. I fed on the way up and down, and she slept for most of the flight. I have a lot of blog post to help you to travel with children under my travel section, one of my favourites is The Ultimate ‘Sweet Life’ Essentials Guide For Travelling With A Baby. The biggest question I get asked is if I stick to their routine. I do where I can, but I do not stress about it and just go with the flow.
School with a baby –
I had to do a bit of adjusting to Rosie routine once school stated, and honestly it took me a moment to get the hag of everything. I am shocked people suggested I wait to have a third baby once Ari was in school, I found the flexibility of kindy so much easier!
Special occasions –
We have celebrated so many beautiful occasions with Rosie recently. Her baptism, first Easter and my first Mother’s Day with her, just to name a few.
How I am feeling –
I am feeling so great. At the beginning of the year, it took me awhile to find my groove with having a young family, and a little boy in school. Even though I am late to school nearly every day I feel like I have got it now! I feel balanced and happy. Rosie is old enough to feel content being left with other people, and I have started to have a Friday to myself to get jobs done and have some me time. I also feel like I can spend one on one time with the older children again now too, and that makes me feel good.
I am proud of my body for carrying, birthing, and feeding my babies. I am nourishing it well and exercising at the gym. My health and happiness are a big priority to me. I am learning to say no to things that might overwhelm me. Even though I live a busy life I love it in all its fullness and wouldn’t have it any other way. I am writing in my journal everyday and setting myself achievable to do list. Asking for help has also been a big one for me.
Preparing for Rosie’s first birthday –
Rosie’s first birthday is so close and we are preparing a joint birthday party with her brother. It was Ari’s wish when she was first born that they would celebrate their (week apart}) birthday’s together. I have also been gathering some birthday gifts for her. Some of my first birthday gift suggestions include a pram for her to push, a walker to push also, books, and sentimental items like her first hair brush, music box, carousal, jewelry box, those sorts of things.
I will continue to share Rosie’s routine and the changes I make to it in my next blog post. If you have any questions or want me to cover anything in particular in the next blog update please send me a message on Instagram. Just remember that this is what works for me, it might not work for you. Lets keep it light and not judge each other. If you have any tips that you think would work well for Rosie I would love to hear from you. I think that this is a fantastic platform where we can hopefully all pick up tips that might help each other.
Rosie is wearing Marquise in these images.
Thank you for reading,
Disclaimer – As always please remember that I am not a midwife, lactation consult, nutritionist, doctor or any other medical expert. I am just a Mother expressing her journey and opinions. This blog post has been sponsored by Expedia. Natalie Sullivan and www.thissweetlife.blog only endorses brands/items that her family uses, loves and highly recommends. To read the full disclaimer see here.