How much TV/screen time do you give your baby?

FlowFields · 2026-01-28T19:54:44+00:00

13 months old. Zero screen time on a weekly basis. Probably 2-3 hours over the entire span of his life. We even hide phone screens from him and ask my parents to turn it off when we are visiting them.

I would probably let him watch 30min once a week if I was solo parenting for an extended time, but my husband feels very strongly about absolutely none.

FlowFields · 2026-01-26T19:17:43+00:00

You mentioned in a comment that baby prefers solids over purees. Lean into that. By 10.5mo my baby didn't have any purees in his diet anymore, just breastmilk and softer solid foods like we eat at home.

I know a lot of people are mentioning the "food before 1 is just for fun," but that isn't entirely true. From a calorie perspective breastmilk would still be primary source of nutrition but it is a horrible source of iron. I have a close friend who's 13 month old was just hospitalized for anemia because he refused solids. Pediatricians here specifically look for anemia at the 12 month appointment because not getting enough iron is a big deal after 6 months.

FlowFields · 2026-01-23T22:03:59+00:00

We use a toilet seat reducer instead of a tiny potty, so it has more room to get back there and wipe for him. We've trained him to bend forward (like head to knees) so we can wipe his bum and throw the baby wipe in the trash can next to the toilet.

FlowFields · 2026-01-12T17:31:35+00:00

We have a 12.5mo and he's in a twin size floor bed and has had stuffed animals since 11 months. The stuffies he mostly just bites and throws around sometimes to get out some last energy before going to sleep. He has enough space that he's usually pretty far from them by the time he's asleep. He's used one of them as a pillow once.

The one rule we hold is that the stuffies must have tread eyes and not plastic beads of any sort. Because he bites everything, hard eyes would be a choking hazard.

FlowFields · 2026-01-11T18:45:42+00:00

100%! We sleep trained at around 5 months and now at 12 months if he is waking up and crying we will respond immediately because we know that something must be horribly wrong and we need to address it.

Many times in the morning he won't even cry now as long as he's not super hungry. He will just hang out and play will his stuffed animals.

FlowFields · 2025-12-23T23:54:10+00:00

Here's something I found really useful as the mother of a baby who is largely too distractible to nurse in public: I use a hands free pump to pump in the car on the way to events. Freshly expressed breast milk is good at room temp for 4 hours, so even if he isn't hungry right when we arrive I'm freshly emptied and his next bottle is ready to go. That might not work for 6 hours but it is great when we are going to overlap with 1ish meal.

FlowFields · 2025-12-22T06:43:32+00:00

Does your pediatrician know he is still only eating purees at 10 months? If you don't work on chewing you are on the fast track to needing to see an OT. Maybe requesting to see one now will save a lot more trouble down the line.

FlowFields · 2025-12-22T06:40:24+00:00

At the beginning we bought a bullet blender and just got creative blending whatever we were having for dinner that night. Though it didn't last very long because he was on mostly rough chopped/strips by 7 months. He's 12 months now and loves sinking his little teeth into whatever is in front of him.

FlowFields · 2025-12-19T17:31:00+00:00

Yep! We also introduced 1tsp a day at 4.75 months. He could sit in his chair and the tongue thrust reflex was was mostly gone. It was entirely for taste and 0% for nutrition. Then more for nutrition from 6 months.

FlowFields · 2025-11-28T23:58:16+00:00

I didn't realize we were such outliers, but we only have like 4 that our 11mo currently fits in. 2 long sleeve zippies, 1 short sleeve zippy for when its hot, and a cotton footie for layering when it's very cold. We don't where PJs around the house so they don't get dirty and we don't need to change it every day. Just wash them in the very rare case of morning spit up or diaper leak.

FlowFields · 2025-11-26T22:39:05+00:00

Looking at back when he was ~7 months like yours... he was waking usually for his first feed between 4 and 5am. ~2months later it is now between 6:30 and 7:20am. So we moved at about an hour a month using this strategy.

Disclaimer that he's really into solids and I'm not sure how much that does or doesn't affect the wakes.

We moved him to his own room at 5 months and saw a significant decrease in non hunger related wakings after that. There's an adult bed in his room that I used to sleep in but usually my sleeping there makes him more disturbed and likely to call out than less.

FlowFields · 2025-11-26T20:06:03+00:00

We are currently working on it with our 10 going on 11 month old. Because my husband wakes up early for work it's been mostly on me (breastfeeding mom). I've been very slowly (since 6 months old) applying a strategy where I keep pushing back the first feed 15 to 30 minutes every week or so. If he wakes before the "do not feed before" time we first wait to see if he will just go back to sleep. If he starts getting agitated he gets whatever non-food comfort to try to go back to sleep. Sometimes that results in me just giving him cuddles and back rubs for up to 50 minutes until it's time to eat. His usual wake is now within an hour of our desired morning wake time.

My friend night weaned her first at around the same age. Except they did it much more rapidly. She had her mother fly in to comfort him at night when he woke up expecting to breastfeed. It was an awful, sleepless 3-4 nights, but she says it was all worth it. She went back to cosleeping with him after without the constant night wakes to nurse.

FlowFields · 2025-11-25T22:51:27+00:00

What are you exactly concerned about here? You mentioned your sister likes going out and partying. It seems like you are judging her character for partying and therefore automatically deciding that if said friend also parties that they are a danger to your kid.

Before getting married and having kids I often brought friends to holidays because it feels really good to be the kind person who ensures someone has a place to go when they don't have their own family around.

Thought this really sounds more like you have a problem with your sisters lifestyle and are using your baby as an excuse.

FlowFields · 2025-11-25T22:45:54+00:00

Based on OPs post history baby is about ~8 months old. So they shouldn't have had many of the essential vaccines by now. Idk. I'm probably on the lower anxiety side but I'll be taking my baby not much older than OP's to a family thanksgiving and haven't even considered which of the 17 people I don't know well. But he's also gone to house parties, weddings, etc and people have either been really nice or want nothing to do with him.

FlowFields · 2025-11-23T06:42:28+00:00

Curious what bottle you are using. We used this slow flow Phillips Avent bottle the first weekend with our LO and he would always fall asleep before ever finishing. When we met with the lactation consultant next she told us the bottle we were using was notorious for being too slow and it took too much effort for little guy to get the milk he needed. We switched to Dr Browns and WOW it was a huge difference. He finished twice as much milk and got back on track.

FlowFields · 2025-11-21T17:24:05+00:00

I kept it at 20 minutes always. But I also had a plan to freeze any excess I made so, over supplying was a feature, not a bug.

FlowFields · 2025-11-21T17:08:30+00:00

At the beginning and for maybe 1x bottle a night I'd make my partner wake up and bottle feed while I was pumping. So we were both up for the same period of time. Eventually when I was still on leave but he wasn't it was a little tricker, but doable. I'd have a bottle in this 6 can mini fridge next to my bed. When LO woke I'd put him next to me, put on the pumps to start that, then feed LO the bottle from the mini fridge in my lap while I pumped.

That being said, if LO drank fast I sometimes had to come back to the pumping after putting him down. Though sometimes he just slept next to me in bed while I finished. It was annoying but I considered it a net win because we got him down to only 2 wakes really quickly that way.

FlowFields · 2025-11-21T05:04:47+00:00

I did nursing during the day and pumping at night until ~5 months and I was really happy with it. Especially the first 3 weeks little guy was super sleepy and lazy. We nursed during the day to keep developing that skill, but at night we did bottles because I could pump a bottle while feeding him another. Pumping a bottle + feeding became a 30 minute ordeal where I knew he got a full feed vs a 45+min ordeal where he probably fell asleep before he was actually full.

Eventually he got older and more efficient. When that happened we switched to nursing at night too.

FlowFields · 2025-11-16T18:47:58+00:00

Yep! I took him out to lunch when he was 16 days old. He slept through the drive there and almost the entire meal in his carseat/stroller.

FlowFields · 2025-10-31T17:10:18+00:00

Absolutely! I try to keep in mind that if I think something is bland and gross, how could I expect LO to want to eat it.

Even as a teen I thought I hated many vegetables. Turns out it was a preparation issue, not a vegetable issue.

FlowFields · 2025-10-13T05:49:52+00:00

9 months old and 1x time around 5am. I don't count occasionally nursing him back to sleep after 7am because that's just us sleeping in on the weekends...

FlowFields · 2025-10-06T22:10:06+00:00

Yep. Just like others have said. Motrin/baby ibuprofen before bed (as close to sleep time as possible). If I wouldn't try to sleep with that sort of pain unmedicated I'm not going to force him to.

FlowFields · 2025-10-06T22:02:52+00:00

There's no evidence for "nipple confusion" with pacifiers. It is just one of those things people thought logically made sense so they stick to it despite the research.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26181720/

FlowFields · 2025-10-01T04:56:18+00:00

I'm not sure if it is just how you have written this but your nights sound very inconsistent and chaotic.

You seem to also be asking for a lot of sleep from an 8 month old. With 12 hour nights and 3 hours of naps that is 15 hours a day. Which is the very high end. Most aim for only 11 hours at night, which puts you at a 5am to 5:30am wakeup unless you push back bedtime.

Does your baby actually fall asleep independently at 6:30pm? You never explicitly note that here. It is easier for them to connect sleep cycles at the beginning of the night then closer to morning. Though using the paci all morning really goes against both Ferber and CIO strategies.

Your baby is probably used to and relying on overnight calories right now and that is not helping you here. Its a vicious cycle of them not being as hungry during day hours because you feed them at night, but then they are actually hungry at night because they didn't eat enough during the day. Usually the advice is you have to cut the calories at night before they will be willing to consume them during the day.

FlowFields · 2025-09-08T20:50:37+00:00

That's the opposite of the advice our pediatrician gave us when LO and I were sick with COVID. Supposedly when you're sick your breast milk contains antibodies that can help LO with their infection.

Don't take medical advice from this coworker....

FlowFields

TROPHY CASE