My typical day with a 9-month-old

What? Really?

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We’re really here already. We’re really just about at the point where I have not been pregnant as long as I’ve been pregnant. (I was a week overdue, so not quite, but who’s counting?)

This was actually a really big month. As big a month as the month I went back to work. So many developments! She got two teeth! She started crawling! She talks to us constantly. I can see my little girl is really starting to gain independence and a personality that is separate from us and it is exciting and terrifying at the same time.

So, our typical day:

6 a.m. Her wake-up time has gotten earlier. But I don’t mind as much because it’s lighter outside, and she is waking up fewer times during the night. I would say that 1 out of every 5 days in the last 4 weeks this has happened in our bed, not hers.

6:30 a.m. She’s done nursing, so we go downstairs and I put her in the carrier and we take the dogs outside. Now that she’s getting up earlier and it’s lighter our the dogs need to go out earlier?! I don’t know.

6:45 a.m. I put her in the jumper (one of three contained places I can put her) and take the world’s fastest shower.

7 a.m. Take her upstairs to my room and close the door while I get dressed. She likes to play with the various laundry on the floor. I can’t leave her in her room at this point like I used to because I have to close the door (or she’ll head for the stairs) and when I close the door, she cries because she’s alone (I get it, kid).

7:30 a.m. We eat breakfast together. I got this amazing whole-fat organic yogurt at Tiller and Rye and I mash up fruit in it and give her that. And I make oatmeal for me. But she likes my oatmeal and I like her yogurt, so it works out.

8:15 a.m. We’re finished our naptime routine of changing out of jammies, then a book, then a song. The goal is that she is napping by 8:30 a.m., which we’ve hit a 75 percent success rate in the last two weeks.

8:30 a.m. I get on the bus to go to work. I lent my brother my car and it’s not that bad to take the bus. I only missed it once in two weeks!

10:30 a.m. First pump of the day. Meh.

– this is the part where I’d like to say I run, but honestly, that is the exception. Maybe once or twice a week I have gotten do this. Also that half-marathon took a lot out of me and my hip was cranky. –

1:30 p.m. Second pump of the day. When I’m good about keeping an eye on the clock.

3:30 p.m. Third pump of the day. My goal is to get 10 oz. per day. I now have to do this three times a day to make that happen. And my daughter is eating more than 10 oz. while I’m gone anywhere.

4:45 p.m. Catch the bus home. Nurse the baby.

5 p.m. Take a walk with dad and the baby and one pug at a time.

5:30 p.m. Start dinner. Hopefully it has vegetables.

6 p.m. The three of us eat together. This is really important to me but it’s not always easy to do because the dinner we have planned isn’t fast, or I get home later than I planned, or just reasons. But I think Felicity is disappointed when I feed just her dinner, she just doesn’t seem to eat as much or as long as when she’s by herself.

6:30 p.m. Bedtime routine starts – bath, lotion, books, bed. For the last month since we sleep trained I can put her in her crib and she falls asleep on her own pretty much with no fuss. She doesn’t sleep through the night — she is usually up at least once, maybe twice — but she can fall asleep on her own, at least.

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Things I’ve learned since the last time I wrote this

  • I was so stressed about exclusively breastfeeding and not having to supplement with formula. So I was stressing that she was eating more than I pumped every day. And then I realized, you know what? She’s eating solids now and it’s already not exclusively breastmilk, so why stress about running out of frozen milk (which I’m like, not even really in danger of?)
  • There are so many things to stress about and I realized I have not even begun to realize just how many things could go wrong until she started crawling.
  • Every age has it’s high points and low points. But in general things are much easier now than they were in January, February.
  • Sleep training was worth it. I didn’t do it a day before I should have and I couldn’t have waited a day longer.
  • I always found it difficult to envision the next age. I think this is why I took so long to pick her name, it was hard to imagine that this was a person we were making out of nothing. But now I am starting to see myself as her mother, and Felicity as a person with a separate personality and desires and wants. Like, that this change has been a lot about me for the last year and a half, and now it feels like it’s about her.

 

Things that I see are changing

Honestly, a lot of the same things as I said last month. She’s so much closer to words now. Ba-ba-ba-ba and Da-da-da-da and Ma-ma-ma-ma and Na-na-na-na. Not sure if she’s very deliberate about which ones she says, but I am sure she says them with conviction.

I’ve accepted that the days of taking her somewhere and having her nap in the stroller are over. That comes with the good (I can put her down for naps on her own now!) and the bad (we can’t ever leave the house during nap time!).

I tried running with her without the carseat in the BOB stroller and while she’s probably big enough, she still fits in the carseat attachment and I think we both like it better when we look at each other, so we’ll keep doing that, if only on the weekends, because it’s hard to fit that in the morning or the evenings.

I … haven’t stepped on a scale in weeks. I don’t care. I have so much going on in my life right now compared to when I started this blog, I do what I can. I consider it a victory to make a dinner that didn’t come from a cardboard box and my standards for what counts as “exercise” include running up and down the five flights of stairs in our new building. Is it where I want to be for the rest of my life? No. But for the time being, I am a peace with 10 extra post-baby pounds.

Until next time. <3

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Pattie Reaves

About Pattie Reaves

I'm a new mom and renegade fitness blogger at After the Couch. I live in Brewer with my husband, Tony, our daughter Felicity, and our two pugs, Georgia and Scoop.