u/Ok_Squirrel_9601

My baby turned 1 earlier this month and, for many reasons, we want to night wean. His weight gain is excellent but he is still just not super interested in solids despite our best efforts. We initially wanted to wait until we felt confident that he was actually getting enough food during the day to night wean, but the doctor suspects that he is making up for a lot of the calories that he would be hungry for during the day by nursing at night. The dentist is strongly encouraging night weaning now that he has molars too. But, more than anything, I am just tired. I’m a working mom and I had terrible pregnancy insomnia so we are talking about nearly 2 years of not getting more than 5 hours straight of sleep.

We started trying to night wean about a month ago. I started by trying to nurse him for shorter amounts of time… it results in massive meltdowns as soon as I pull him off the breast (sometimes worse than if I’d never fed him in the first place). We pivoted to my husband being the one to get up for all wakings but my son will scream “mama” for upwards of 20 minutes before falling asleep again despite my husband’s best efforts to soothe him… and then he just wakes up again an hour later to do it all over again. If I go into soothe him and don’t offer the boob, he screams and arches and tries with all his might to push away from me so he can get my shirt up (to the point that I have to very actively make sure he doesn’t just yeet himself out of my arms). We try offering water but it just seems to make him madder and, often, wakes him up entirely.

He falls asleep independently at bedtime and for naps. He’s such a chill, happy baby during the day but at night it’s like he’s been replace by a milk hungry gremlin. We offer 3 meals and 2 snacks but, as mentioned, intake is very hit or miss. We offer a wide variety of food (usually what we are eating with minor tweaks) but it’s rare he shows interest in anything that isn’t fruit, pasta, or cheese. I stopped pumping at work right after he turned 1 and he takes cows milk just find during the day on top of nursing 2-3 times morning and evening when I’m home.

At this point I just feel so defeated. I don’t know if this is true hunger or just a comfort thing and I really don’t know what else to try. Is my husband just supposed to let him scream himself to sleep in his arms until he finally learns milk isn’t coming? It’s so freaking heartbreaking but I don’t know how much longer we can keep going through this cycle.

TLDR; how the heck do I night wean my 1 year old?

Tomorrow is my babies 1st birthday and I am making his smash cake. While we aren’t super militant about zero added sugar in everything, we do avoid added sugar for him where we can. For the “frosting” I was planning to make a plain whipped cream frosting but the catch is that I want to finish making the cake tonight to minimize the number of things we have to do to get set up tomorrow. If I whip the whipped cream tonight, I’m worried it will deflate and weep in the fridge by tomorrow afternoon.

I’ve read you can use gelatin but I’m not sure if that will change the consistency drastically? I know that it’s a smash cake and it’s literally designed to get messed up but I’d still like to take some good pictures with it. I am also planning to share a couple cupcakes with other babies/toddlers/kids at the party (don’t worry, normal cupcakes are also being served) so I still want it to taste reasonably good.

ETA: I didn’t realize minimizing added sugar for babies/toddlers was so controversial! To clarify, we aren’t doing this because we believe refined sugar is inherently “bad”, he just hasn’t had a lot of sugar in one sitting yet and I have seen more than one baby vomit on their first baby after eating a lot of cake. I figure he’ll probably eat some regular cupcake too so for his smash cake I’d rather give him something that he can eat as much as he wants without having to worry about taking it away.

This weekend we are hosting my baby’s first birthday. Originally it was just going to be our immediate families - which is already quite a few people - but it has snowballed into a much larger gathering (situations like my grandma needing someone to drive her to and from, in-laws unexpectedly joining, etc adding to the total number of people). I’m starting to get really stressed about hosting this many people in our relatively small townhouse.

Our dining room has a table that seats 8 but we plan to push the table against the wall to open up the space + use the table as a buffet style serving station for pizza/cake/drinks. The chairs will go around the room for seating (9 dining chairs). We have a sectional in the living room that comfortably seats 5-6 people, a large bean bag, and a love seat. We were originally counting on taking advantage of the deck (seats 6) and backyard but now there is a chance of showers so I fear we can no longer assume that will be an option. Our basement is nothing special but has some open area and another 3-4 seater couch - we are hoping the older kids will hang out down there if weather doesn’t cooperate.

Are we being totally unrealistic? What can we do to make the party feel less cramped and/or uncomfortable.

My 11 month old is basically a full vegetarian at this point and I have no issue with that in concept. We offer meat/fish various ways and we are lucky if he brings it to his lips, let alone takes a real bite. We focus on other iron/protein sources (tofu, eggs, nut butters, beans) but I would love for him to consume some fish for the omega 3s and allergy exposure. He devoured sardines when we first started solids but now that never happens. We have offered him salmon plain, simmered in creamy tomato sauce, well seasoned, etc. No luck getting him to eat more than the tiniest of nibbles on a good day. Same with skipjack tuna, mackerel, white fish.The only seafood we’ve been able to get him consume is scallops and they are way expensive to offer often.

Any unique ideas how we can disguise salmon or other fatty fish? We will continue to offer it in non-disguised methods as well, of course.

I love romance books in concept but, in practice, I have a tough time finding ones that really hit the spot for me. My favorite books tend to be Lit Fic (Sharks in the Time of Saviors, How High We Go in the Dark, and A Place For Us are some of my favorites, just to give an idea) but I love to cut the more serious novels with a light, fun kindle read. This usually means a cutesy romance or a thriller. Both are often hit-or-miss.

My biggest gripe with most romances (and many thrillers, for that matter) is just how on-the-nose the writing is. It’s hard to explain exactly what I mean but I get a bit irked when the author starts over explaining as if the reader can’t be trusted to understand what’s being implied. So often I’ve been yanked out of a story because it starts reading like “I looked into John’s eyes and I saw the love he had for me and, all at once, I realized I loved him too” for every single paragraph. I really don’t need or even want a literary masterpiece, I just want something a little less… corny? Seriously no shade to those that love the really fluffy romances, it just takes me out of the story. I also don’t love dual perspective romances as a personal preference.

Just to give some ideas of romances I’ve enjoyed in the past:
* The Bodyguard by Katherine Center (but I have yet to find another Center book that hits the same way)
* The Marry Me, Juliet series by Jodi McAlister (but I didn’t vibe with the Academic Affair by her)
* Listen for the Lie by Amy Tinera (Not a romance at all but the romantic subplot was fun)
* Hot take but I really enjoy how Sally Rooney writes complex romantic relationships
* Sophie Kinsella has been a go-to comfort author for many years

I feel like I need someone to explain this to me like I’m 5. My baby is 11 months old and has never had formula (he has outright refused any attempt at supplementation) so I pump for the 3 days a week I’m in office. Over the last month-ish, baby’s milk consumption has gradually decreased and he is usually consuming ~10-12oz of breast milk during the day while I’m at work and nursing 2-3 times a day outside of that (morning, before bed, and once over night). I pump 2x to produce that amount. On days I work from home, he nurses 4-5 times total with occasional on demand comfort nursing. His solid consumption is still very hit-or-miss so milk consumed/nursing sessions can have some variation depending on the day.

At 1 year postpartum, the PUMP act no longer guarantees pump breaks outside of regular breaks and I would really rather not pump on my lunch. So how am I supposed to wean off pumping during the day? I know some doctors allow some cows milk introduction to daytime bottles at this point but our pediatrician discouraged it until he actually hits one year old. If I start scaling back on pumping, I won’t have enough milk for days I’m in office. But I don’t want to dare going cold turkey on daytime pumping in a month.

I know I can’t be the only one confused by how we are supposed to navigate this transition. Advice? Thoughts? Am I overthinking this?

Context necessary. We moved into our house about a year ago but we are just starting to get to know our neighbors. We were friendly before but ever since my husband got his grill, he and our next door neighbor have become much more acquainted. A few weeks ago my husband was doing some deck repairs and the neighbor gave us two of the burgers he made. They are an Ethiopian family and he explained that he adds the berbere spice blend when making them and these were genuinely some of the best burgers I’ve ever had. My husband and I talked about how we would need to return the favor but hadn’t gotten around to it.

Fast forward to today, my husband goes out on the deck and the neighbor happens to be out on his. My husband mentions we had a rough night last night with our 10 month old. A few hours later? Our neighbor rings our bell with a plate of food.

We do not want to return this plate empty. The problem is that we know them but not well enough to know their palates (eg, if they like sweets, if they have allergies, etc). My husband is Iranian and, since each time our neighbor has brought us food it has been something with an Ethiopian spin, our first thought is to give them something Iranian in return. But nothing jumps out as a “giftable” food.

What seems like a safe bet? At the end of the day, who knows if they’ll eat whatever we provide but we at least want to try to give them something generally well received by all palates.

Specifically in the context of home cooked meals. My husband and I eat healthy-ish probably 75% of the time. Before we had a solid eating baby, we meal prepped a lot of grab-and-go breakfasts like whole wheat muffins, baked oatmeal, etc. These things are usually primarily sweetened with whole foods (ie, banana) but will usually call for 1/4 cup or so of other sweetener (maple syrup, sugar, etc). Other times we might make something like glazed carrots that have sugar in the glaze. These things are sweet but not the type of sweet things that you’d usually worry about a child eating. We have been adapting a lot of these recipes to have zero added sweeteners because these days I try to make sure everything I spend time and energy on cooking are baby friendly but… no denying they aren’t as good.

We’ve given him tastes of things with moderate amounts of added sugar before (store bought bread, baby puffs, frozen pancakes) so I don’t really know why we feel the need to avoid it completely in our own cooking. My husband wants to avoid added sugar as much as possible until baby is 2 but I don’t want to completely restrict it only for him to end up a sugar crazed toddler when he finally gets a proper taste.

Just looking for some perspectives. What’s your philosophy on added sugar? When did you start relaxing about it?

Exactly what the title says. It’s not the biting of objects that’s the problem, it’s that he won’t stop biting us. My arms are covered in teeth marks and bruises. While reading him a story, he’s biting my arm. While carrying him around, he chomps on his dad’s shoulder. Try to wipe a booger off his nose? He’ll grab your thumb and try to bite it with all his might.

He has 6 teeth already and while I think this could be teething adjacent, it definitely isn’t the sole issue. He very clearly thinks it’s a game and usually laughs immediately after the chomp. We did go through a biting while nursing phase but were able to nip that in the bud by consistently stopping the feed if he bit. I’m kid of at a loss here because I can’t always just walk my whole self away every time he does it. It feels constant but definitely gets worse towards the end of the day (couldn’t even finish his bedtime story tonight because he just kept biting me HARD). We try not to have a reaction but it’s so tough when it actually hurts to not acknowledge it. He is too young to understand “no” so… what do we do?

I know this is probably like any other baby phase and will pass with time but we really would like this to stop sooner rather than later.

This comes after having a full meltdown after buying some dresses for a few birthday parties/informal gatherings over the next few weeks… none turned out to be nursing friendly.

I just want to feel cute this spring/summer. Half my clothes don’t fit me and, even if they did, they aren’t particularly convenient for public breastfeeding. Not being able to wear a normal bra has me feeling like an orangutan with my boobs resting on my belly half the time (or, worse, one boob is sad and deflated post feed while the other is flashing highbeams) and the actually supportive nursing bras aren’t usually as convenient or comfortable in my experience. So many dresses have fake buttons on them so I’ll have a second of hope thinking that I could make it work… only to be crushed when I realize they are fake. The dresses that are actually advertised as nursing friendly? Twice as expensive and half of them have the flaps that wouldn’t be necessary if the buttons on the dang thing were real.

I’m 9 months into breastfeeding. I plan to cut back to only morning and night once he turns one so I’m not interested in buying a bunch of specific “nursing” clothes but I’m so tired of this. I love breastfeeding but I just want to wear a flattering summer dress without having to undress completely to feed my baby.

My husband has been in love with this name ever since I mentioned in passing that Ottessa Moshfegh and that her parents named her Ottessa as an anglicized variant of Atoosa. For context, my husband is Iranian and I am American. I also love the name. We also both love that there is an obvious “familiar” nickname (Tessa). This is extra important to us after having our son who has a relatively easy to pronounce Iranian name that is still constantly mispronounced because it is “foreign” sounding.

But I worry that, as it isn’t really documented elsewhere, it’s too entwined with the author and the automatic assumption will always be that we named our daughter after the author. There is also the uniqueness factor.

I’m not pregnant but we have a close family friend considering naming their daughter Atoosa but won’t use it if we express that there is any possibility of us using Ottessa in the future (we are not requesting this, for the record - my husband has just been very vocal about how much he loves the name and that it would have been our son’s name if he were a girl).

We started solids at 6 months and he was crazy about them. Anything we put on his plate, he’d try and usually finish. When he hit 8 months, he started showing signs of preference. He might go crazy for the asparagus and ignore the broccoli. We didn’t worry… figured it was normal for a baby to have preferences. Then he started refusing foods he previously loved (used to hound steamed veggies but suddenly wouldn’t bring them to his mouth, bread used to be a favorite but was now tossed the second it was put on his tray). Now it has been a month of his foods dwindling and dwindling and the only things that we can consistently get him to eat are avocado, banana, tofu, and (sometimes) oatmeal or yogurt.

Food wastage has never been higher and food consumption has never been lower. We thought it was teething related but all four top teeth have been erupted for over a week and there is no sign of improvement. He has a pediatrician visit next week and we plan to discuss this then but… until then… I’d love to know if anyone else had something similar happen? Did it eventually improve?

Note: We’ve tried the recommendations we can find online (eating with him, not forcing, ignoring food throwing) with no improvement. We thought he didn’t like his high chair because we can occasionally get him to take bites of food while we are holding him that he would usually refuse in his high chair so we even tried a new high chair and still no improvement.