What Harry thinks about food

How can this be possible? It seems statistically improbable. Impossible even.

My love for food is so great, I thought, that there would be no permutation possible of my genetic make up ever hating food. I held the dominant food gorging loving gene. I dream about food. I would move cities for good food. Food is more than just physical survival for me, good food is integral to the survival of the soul.

My son thinks of food in two ways.

How do I describe this... Let's see. How about I let my son's face do all the talking. Here's emotion number one:

What Harry thinks about food

The first feeling is encapsulated by the look above which I would say is somewhere between indifference and hatred (if that were possible). Just complete and utter disinterest. This manifests in his permanent turning away from his tray, from me, from anything to do with the meal taking place before him. I spend a good part of his highchair time staring at the back of his head. No matter which way I face him, his impressive neck rotation ensures that I have the least access to his frontal face. He basically acts like an arrogant little emperor, sitting there on his highchair throne impervious to all my food prep efforts, bored and angry at all this food as though eating is for such commoners. Like come on good woman, I have so much better shit to do than eat food all day!

The second reaction he has to food which drives me equally nuts is this:

Harry's "laugh it off" measures against being fed

From his royal majesty he transforms into the ultimate jester. He basically acts like meals are a big joke and that food are his props for the Harry Mealtime Show. This mood results in a lot of food throwing, yelling, tantrums and random laughing while he smashes the nearest plate/cup/knife repeatedly banging it into his face/table or sailing it off to the newspapered floor. My favourite thing to see is him face planting into his food, arms out and literally doing food angels on his high chair tray while gurgling to himself. He can do this for the entire meal and I gotta say I'm kind of proud of his artistic flair for protesting.

He started eating last week. Proper food. He was chewing chicken, like actual chicken pieces and hallelujah swallowing it. He was having modest full meals, meat, rice and veg and all without too many tears. I was so happy, I thought we were on the mend.

But alas, it wasn't meant to be. Struck down with some unknown virus since last week, his body weakened and reset our progress. This week it's back to the little emperor/joker on his high chair again, struggling to swallow the slightest morsel of food. This makes it almost more frustrating because I know he has the ability to eat. He just chooses not to.

Anyway, he may not have inherited his poor attitude toward food from me but I suppose I cannot blame him for his stalwart stubbornness. He's certainly a headstrong, strong-willed little boy and one day I will be proud that he can stand his ground to anyone. In the meantime I will simply have to be happy with mopping up all the food after him.

someone save me

My baby the jerk

I've crossed some sort of parenting boundary this week. Not just the one where you leave the birthing suite with a baby with half your DNA thus making you technically a parent, but some invisible barrier beyond lovestruck parenting. You know what I'm talking about. The baby moon phase when you could never imagine your baby being capable of doing anything wrong. When your baby is an angel who poor dear only cries for a reason like teething/sick/hungry/in pain/tired.

Before I knew it I'd been telling people my baby had been teething for pretty much half his life. That's possible right?

Or is it more likely that my baby is just plain being a jerk?

This week my patience has all but run out with my child. He refuses to eat ANYTHING, sleep or do anything that might make life a bit easier for his mummy and daddy. He is totally breaking us. We spend the entire night servicing his night wakings his sleep latency worse with each week. We spend the days preparing and offering food like slaves to an unfeeling God who just laughs and throws it all over the place from his highchair throne. It's like he knows we could never bring ourselves to stop trying. We then spend the rest of the day cleaning up after him whilst my husband and I often at each other's throats being on edge from lack of sleep and battle fatigue.

I have become annoyed. And not just annoyed because of course I've felt annoyance and frustration in spades since he was born. But at some point between 3 and 5 am last night as he stared at me bug eyed refusing to sleep for hours instead squirming and headbutting me in the face repeatedly but yelling like no tomorrow every time I put him down...for the first time I was annoyed and angry AT HIM.

So there - I have crossed over into the parenting territory where you call your baby a jerk for being so damn hard and for effectively fucking with your life.

No longer can he do no wrong. Even his breath doesn't smell heavenly anymore it just smells of bad breath.

Then he wakes up in the morning completely oblivious to the hell we'd just been through to get him to go back to sleep. I actually tore an arm muscle holding him for so long last night.

I suppose I gotta keep him. He is pretty funny when he is awake the cheeky bugger. God I love that kid so much it actually hurts.

Does that make me a real parent now?

Goodbye to my life in the circus

my wild little lion

Relief. Awash with relief.
Like a pressure valve has been located and released.

We had a much anticipated appointment with the paediatrician today to try to work out why my little boy won't eat and why he won't grow.

The week leading up to this appointment was like a long graveyard shift stretch in life. Each mealtime more anxious than the next. Every day became increments of three mealtimes. One always more arduous than the next. Tired stones felt like they were weighing on my body, pulling my heart, my limbs, my soul heavier and heavier with each breakfast, lunch and dinner.

I knew that rationally I had to remain calm and zen as food kept whizzing past me, onto me, onto the floor and everywhere except into his mouth. It took every ounce of zip I have to be the circus clown feeder I somehow ended up being. I did spoon aeroplanes so majestic that my performance could have been in an aerial show. I sang nursery rhymes. I never scolded. I sang praises so high every time he touched food you'd think he'd worked out string theory on his high chair.

I never intended to be the distraction feeder. The bring the iPad out feeder. The bribing with iced milk and chocolate custard feeder. I broke every rule I ever set for myself BEFORE I had a baby.

Listen up future parents and listen good: Parenting is a lot easier to be high and mighty about IF YOU'RE NOT ACTUALLY A PARENT.

By the end of the week, it felt like I was the disgraced circus ring master who had lost control of her little boy who had become the lion that went wild. With each meal, he grew more advanced evolving to each and everyone of my tricks to make him eat. He adapted like a rapidly evolving bacteria and each day it seemed like he ate less and less, got angrier and fussier more and more.

I knew I was NOT doing it right. I knew this was NOT sustainable. Something had to give. And it was not going to be my stubborn little boy.

By the time I walked into the paediatrician's office, I was close to losing it. I sat down on the patient's chair and looked into doctor's soft gingery hair framing his face like a halo of tranquility. He examined my boy, played with him, measured him and sat back on his doctor's chair looking at my 8.5kg wriggly little conundrum crawling havoc on his floor. And to my relief he said "I look at this child and if I didn't look at his weight trajectory, I would not think anything except that he is a healthy child".

So the verdict is...there is nothing wrong with my boy. He just needs to learn how to eat. He is just so strong-willed and independent that something has made him decide he does not like others putting things in his mouth. At least that's a lesson I won't have to teach him for later on in life.

We should never underestimate the power of reassurance of another human being, doctor or not. Just the acknowledgment that the shit you are in must be hard and that there is a way forward unloaded all my heavy stones onto his clinic floor. An hour later, I walked out and left them there.

And what do you know...the little boy gobbled up some fish fingers for dinner tonight all on his own!

Maybe sometimes in life when faced with a seemingly insurmountable problem, all we need is to sit back a little and take a load off.

Eat Pray My Love

This is not an ordinary muffin. It is a muffin baked by a desperate woman. 

One week later it lays furry, mouldy and uneaten in an unglamorous plastic box lid container.

This muffin's disappointingly dire fate mirrors the trajectory of my hopes and dreams for this kid to eat this zucchini-filled cheesy muffin, that bowl of noodles or anything at all that is remotely edible. 

Incredibly, this kid shows zealous initiative for eating anything that is most definitely not food. Furniture, plastic, cosmetics, books or especially anything from the medicine cabinet. He even has the aptitude to eat the banana peel AROUND the actual banana.

Okay, you win baby. I will say it. I am at my wit's end. I do not know what to do.

Three times a day I tell myself that this meal is not my battleground. I am calm, I am zen and my gentle good mother spirit will simply Pied Piper of Hamlin the food down his guzzle through nursery song and dance. An hour later, with my clothes soaked in toddler abstract food art, I sigh and say a little prayer that enough food made it in to sustain his wriggly little body.

I feel like I have tried EVERYTHING. Family and friends' helpful advice. Medical literature on how to handle fussy eaters. Baby advice blogs. I have given him reign. Taken the reigns. Thrown away the reigns.. I don't know how else to approach this. He thinks food is an absolute joke.

All I want is for this boy to eat. I feel like an absolute failure. And a few day's ago, this was finally confirmed so by doctors. Sadly, this little boy's growth chart just stops, literally stops at four months ago. Not a gram or centimetre grown since October 2013 (except for his head circumference.. haha ironically the one thing he doesn't need to enlarge is the only thing that has grown). The medical term for his condition: Failure to Thrive. FAILURE.

Needless to say, I felt fear... then anger...then disappointment... then shame that I have done it wrong or hadn't done enough and through it all just utter desperation.

It's hard to believe that there's anything wrong with him. He smiles, laughs, plays and makes mental leaps each day. Yet his body is so little for his age.

Please eat my boy. I just want you to grow.

Be careful what you wish for they say... I wish I could unwish that he would be my little baby forever.