The carrot stick method

Talk to any dietician, most health visitors, nutritionists and nurses and they'll want to sign you up to baby led weaning - or Baby Edwina as one of my friends insists on calling it. It makes perfect sense - for too long we've been shoving spoons in babies' mouths without giving them a choice in the matter. I mean, as the dietitian said to me, how would you like it?

"Cook a few different things," she said. "Soft boil some carrot sticks, broccoli florets things like that. Lay them out in front of him, let him pick and choose. Let him feel the texture, put his own fingers in his mouth to discover the taste. Let the baby lead."

It sounded so appealing, so free and easy. No tension at mealtimes, no persuading him to eat his greens - he'd learn to love broccoli. In fact, he'd teach himself to love it. The problem was that I couldn't give him anything at all with lumps in. Just three months before he'd had a dilatation - where they use a little balloon to stretch the scar tissue in his oesophagus in order to allow more food down. Fully stretched the gap measured 8mm. That's not going to fit many carrot sticks.

"Well," the dietician said, "mash the food up, but do the same. Put a little bit on his lips with your finger. Let him play with it."

So I mashed up some sweet potato and placed it in front of him, in one of those bowls with suckers underneath so he wouldn't just throw it on the floor.

He threw it on the floor.

I gave him some more and he squished his hands in it. He smeared it in his hair, the high chair, the walls. He threw gobbets of it all over me. In short, it went everywhere but his mouth.

I dabbed some on his lips. He ignored it.

Everything he picks up - from rattles to cuddly toys to bits of wood in the garden - goes straight in his mouth. Everything that is, but food.

I shoved a spoon in his mouth. Some went in. I beat myself up about it for a bit, then I gave him some more.

If only this was a blog about the best places for toffs to eat.

It isn't. It's about my gorgeous ball of energy of a son, and my ongoing quest to get him to eat.

The little guy was born in Autumn 2013 with something called tracheo-oesphageal fistula and oesophageal atresia - a huge mouthful of a condition, which is ironic really because it means is he was born unable to swallow.

The technical bit
Essentially he had a gap in his oesophagus and a small tube joining the top part his opesophagus and his trachea. Surgery on day two joined up the two tiny parts and got rid of the extra pipe, but life is still complicated for a tof child. They get reflux - it has to be said some of the vomiting is quite spectacular. They have a distinctive 'tof cough' that provokes stares from strangers in the street. And then there's the swallowing problems.

The part of his gullet that the doctor stitched together is narrower than the rest, because of scar tissue. And because the top and bottom  parts have been joined together artificially, the nerve endings aren't connected so sometimes the food gets pushed down, sometimes it gets pushed up, and sometimes it just queues up, unsure of what to do.

The first few weeks of his life were terrifyingly stressful but he soon settled down to happy breastfeeding. When weaning started, it became a whole different ball game. So I thought I'd start this blog to share my ups and downs with other tof parents out there, to vent when things get frustrating and - when things go well - to brag in a smug parent kind of a way. I'm trying not to include too many pictures of my lovely little chap, simply because I want him to have his privacy in years to come.

I apologise if some of the medical info here is a bit shonky. There's much better information about tof here written by people who know a heck of a lot more than me, and there is a lively and brilliant Facebook page for tof parents which provides extra support.

Extra note: If you're American it's called TEF/EA. Same condition, much more sensible spelling.