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.