76 Week Old Baby: Your Baby's Development and Your Recovery This Week

Your toddler is doing more for themselves this week, and feeling more too.

At around 18 months, your toddler can eat most foods with a spoon (with spills), drink from a cup, comb their hair (sort of), and show new emotions like enthusiasm, embarrassment, frustration and possessiveness. That's a lot for a little person to carry.

Both can happen around this age, and they're handled differently.

• Nightmares: your toddler wakes up scared, remembers the dream (often), and is comforted by you. They usually happen in the second half of the night. Cuddle, reassure, back to sleep.
• Night terrors: your toddler screams, thrashes, eyes may be open, but they're not actually awake and won't remember it in the morning. They usually happen in the first 1–3 hours of sleep. Don't try to wake them, it makes it worse. Stay close, keep them safe, wait it out. Most night terrors pass within 5–15 minutes. Night terrors often run in families and fade by school age.

• A steady bedtime routine and enough sleep (overtiredness triggers night terrors).
• Avoid scary content, including things on a nearby TV.

Your toddler also loves scribbling right now. A pack of chunky washable crayons and big paper is time well spent.

Spoons held upside down and hair combed sideways count too; they are just messier than the textbook kind. Every small victory you cheer today builds the confidence behind the next 18 month old baby milestones. And on the harder nights, your calm presence is the safest place they know.

Around 18 months. If you've been breastfeeding, full weaning is often around now or in the next few months.

WHO recommends breastfeeding to age 2, extended breastfeeding is healthy and normal in many Indian families. Your timeline is yours.

If you are weaning at 18 months

• Drop one feed every 1–2 weeks. Slow weans are kinder on body and emotions.
• Daytime feeds usually drop first. The bedtime feed is often the last to go.
• Replace the comfort element, a cuddle, a story, warm milk in a cup, with the dropped feed.
• Engorgement: express small amounts to relieve, don't fully empty. Cold cabbage compress.

Mum's body during weaning

• Periods often regularise
• Breast shape changes again (volume drops)
• Hair fall may bump up briefly
• Hormonal shift, you may feel surprisingly emotional for 2–3 weeks

Indian foods to support weaning

• Foods to slow milk: peppermint tea, sage tea, cabbage compresses Foods to support body: iron-rich (palak, methi, dates), calcium (curd, paneer, milk), protein (dal, paneer, eggs)

A small note

• Some mums grieve the end of breastfeeding more than expected. The closeness, the hormonal calm, the unique role, losing it is a real transition. Grief is fine. It passes.

Worth flagging

• Painful red patches with fever (mastitis), engorgement that doesn't settle in 48 hours, sudden blood in milk, or a lump that doesn't shift after feeding, call your gynae or a lactation consultant. Mastitis can flare during weaning; treatable with antibiotics and rest.

A small note on emotional weaning

• The end of breastfeeding can quietly feel like a loss, the closeness, the hormonal calm, the unique role. Talk about it with someone who gets it. Friends who have weaned, an online mum group, or a therapist if it is hitting hard. Grief is fine; you don't have to be "happy about" weaning.

If weaning stirs up feelings you did not expect, let them come; endings this tender deserve acknowledging. Be as gentle with yourself through this shift as you have been with your baby, because mother self care matters most in the in-between seasons. Whatever your timeline, it has been a beautiful chapter.