Let him eat cake... and ice cream... and biscuits...

Like all good mummies I started out by being a bit obsessed about salt and sugar. I would have liked my little cherub to dine on nothing but pure organic vegetables and meat from locally produced sources, but unfortunately I earn less than a squillion pounds a month so I set a new standard for myself: fresh, home-cooked meals wherever possible with no added salt or sugar.

Oh no, my little one wasn't going to be begging for sweets and Maccy Ds - at least not until he was old enough to go to school, when I believed the other kids would corrupt him.

I spent hours lovingly boiling up veg and processing it down, I only bought healthy organic snacks - Organix Carrot Sticks are like cheesy wotsits without the cheese - or any flavour at all really. Although the kid loves them. I spent ages in the baby food aisle reading the small print on porridge packs trying to buy the unsweetened kind.

As for the dreaded Petits Filous pots - I used to refer to that as 'baby crack' - the gateway drug that gets them hooked on sugar.

But the dude had other ideas. He stopped eating. He rejected my delicious mashed veggies and refused to eat anything but those Organix corn snacks. His weight plateaued, his development stalled. Exasperated I called for help and was referred to a dietician.

"Stop worrying about salt and sugar," she said - there was a tiny tinge of weariness in her tone.

"Wha- what?" I wondered if there was a fault on the phone line. "But... it's bad... sugar... addictive... salt... poison..."

"Look" she said. "At the moment the important thing is to get him eating food, enjoying food and putting on weight. High calorie, high-fat foods that he will actually want to eat. Have you tried cake?"

Later that week I interviewed Sarah Beeson MBE, a health visitor with four decades' experience, and she told me there's something the HVs call "Muesli Belt Malnutrition."

Parents - usually middle-class over-anxious ones - are so desperate to instil healthy eating in their young ones that they'll start them on adult style low-fat, low-calorie diets right from the start. Banning white bread or pasta, choosing low fat spread instead of butter.

While that's pretty extreme and rare I can see how people end up in that situation. It's so hard to figure out what's right. You stand in the supermarket aisles paralysed, trying to work out a complicated algorithm of cost+taste+nutrition+ethics. Organic or mass produced? Added sugar or no flavour at all?

Enough.

That night my beloved made a chocolate cake (see above, it was bloody lovely) and we fed it crumb by crumb into our little boys mouth. It took ages but boy did he enjoy it.

He actually enjoyed something! Bring on the baby crack.

5 Things that have been The Answer

So for a while, after our holiday in Italy, Ricotta cheese was The Answer. We're always on the lookout for the Answer. Something that will suddenly sweep in like a magic wand and make everything work properly.

So far The Answer has been:

Corn snacks dipped in something
In the darkest days of spoon phobia these were the only way we could get anything into him - we'd dip the Organix carrot sticks, sweetcorn rings or tomato slices into the mush then generally encourage it in the direction of his mouth. For a while it worked - he would suck the mush off and sometimes even hold it out so we could put  more mush on. And then, just like that, he stopped being up for it.

Ricotta cheese
The great white hope of our trip to Italy. He loved this stuff. Not on a spoon obviously, but the great thing about it is that it breaks up into handy lumps that you can hand directly into his mouth. It's also lovely and creamy and you can mix spinach into it without destroying the taste. He really liked it, right up to the point when he just stopped being up for it.

Soft pears and nectarines
In Italy these were in abundance. Ripe, juicy and big as his head. We'd graze off the skin with our teeth then hold it in front of him and he'd bury his face in it, scraping the flesh off with his gums and having a whale of a time. This still works, provided he's in the right mood but now he has top teeth as well as bottom he sometimes takes a slightly-too big lump which causes lots of regurgitation and choking.

Pre prepared food in pouches
You know the things - they're in a kind of metallic bag with a plastic spout. They provide spoon free fun and he can control how much he's eating by sucking at the spout. This was fun for a while but then he stopped being up for it.

Crispbreads
I heard about these cardboardy wonders from the Tofs Facebook group, which you really must check out if you have a tofling. They're bite-and-dissolve like the the corn snacks but they're a better shape for spreading. When I first discovered these I was overjoyed. I smothered all sorts of things on them - we even managed to smuggle some of the Dreaded Enemy Avocado onto them, which he thoroughly enjoyed (it's a complicated relationship). He loved being in control, biting and nibbling at his own speed. But then he stopped being up for it.

When he stops being up for it, what he does is drop your lovingly prepared whatever straight on the floor, thereby rendering it instantly unusable (depending on how recently I've mopped.) With the crispbreads I was determined not to give up, they were just too good an opportunity.

I got to huge lengths to keep them from going stale and chewy. I break them into small bits and place them in front of him two by two. And sometimes he smiles upon them and puts them into his mouth.

In the course of all this I'm learning that there's no such thing as The Answer. There's no Aha moment, no convenient narrative turning point which makes everything click into place. Every crispbread eaten is progress, but some crispbreads will always end up on the floor. He sets the pace, he's in control.

But things are going in now, and some things are even staying in.

I don't think he's ready for this jelly

His body's too tofalicious for it babe.

He did like splattering it all over the table with his hand, though.

Mind the (incredibly narrow) gap

Sometimes I get frustrated. I want my little guy to get better, fast. I see his little pals from our NCT group moving from one or two cubes of babyfood, to chunks of mushed banana, to ham or cheese sandwiches, while my little one is still battling with me over a few spoonfuls of baby porridge.

I think: he should be moving on now. His oesophagus should be learning how to push down instead of up. He should be eating lumps, grabbing food and shoving it in his mouth, losing interest in breastfeeding. Beneath these thoughts is an image of those other babies, eating and growing, overtaking him, turning into toddlers while he stays behind.

And then the other day on Twitter I found this picture. It's a mockup of an oesophageal fistula and atresia repaired which has been beautifully - OK, grimly - recreated using pig bits. Thanks to surgeon @ffolliet for the tweet.

The tube on the right is the trachea, with stitches in it where the fistula has been removed (I think it's cut off at the bottom just because it's a mockup - surgeons please correct me if I'm wrong.) The tube on the left is the oesophagus. Look how incredibly tiny, how incredibly stretched that tube is. To be precise, as @ffolliet puts it, "The anastomosis is about 6 joined to 2mm."

And somehow, eventually my little boy will use that to swallow food. It's already expanded and grown with him, it will continue to grow. But it's hardly surprising that he's taking his sweet time. I've posted this picture here so I can look at it and remind myself how far he's come.

Sun, sea and sick

Our first ever holiday with the baby - visiting family and friends in Italy - and what an amazing little traveller he is. Despite the fact it took us about 14 hours to get to our destination the little guy took it all with an even temper and even the occasional smile.

He greeted everyone with a happy smile, squealed with delight as we walked around medieval villages with him strapped in his Bjorn and splashed happily in his bath-with-a-view on our balcony.

However, during this week he managed to vomit in the following places:

The airline bag check queue
Over my cousin
Over my aunt
Over my other cousin
On a restaurant manager who was holding him so we could eat something.
On the hire car carseat (car seats are the worst possible thing to vomit on as removing the cover is an epic task. Confession here: we sponged it down lightly and dried it in the sun. The car reeked for the rest of the week, but we're kind of immune to it now.)

Top tip for travelling with a tof baby: ALWAYS GET ACCOMMODATION WITH A WASHING MACHINE. I seriously don't know what we would have done without it.

This fiesta of chunder would have been fine, if he'd actually been eating - but he wasn't.

As the week went on the amount of baby food he would take went from "a little bit at breakfast plus some corn snacks" to "nil by spoon". We decided he didn't like the Italian baby food (liquidised horsemeat anyone?) but it was more than that. Mealtimes were becoming stressful for him, he was actively hating food.

More than once, I had to turn away from him and have a bit of a silent sob. I pictured the surgeons giving him a gastrostomy or drip feeding him just to get his weight up. I was afraid, and of course that fear was making its way down my arm, into the spoon and into his head too.

Towards the end of the week, a glimmer of hope. His dad was eating a ripe, juicy peach when the little lad stretched up and planted his face into it. With nothing to lose (as it had already been lost about an hour before, all over the living room floor) we let him chomp away, raking at the flesh with his gums and two little teeth.

It stayed down!

At lunchtime I tore open my tortelli and fed him morsels of spinach and ricotta cheese. It stayed down too!

In the evening, we went to my cousin's for dinner and while I tucked into the spinach and ricotta tortelli they'd made for me (I know, I didn't say anything) the little guy ate some more ricotta, some more peach, even a few miniscule slivers of ham and miraculously we were able to get a few spoons of ice cream into him. He was happy, he was laughing and licking his lips.

I know enough now not to think "we've turned a corner, things will be fine from now on" but at least I know he's not a gastrostomy case yet. He can enjoy food, and someday, he will.

Hello again, Square One

It's been three months since we started weaning. I get up every morning and make exactly  the same amount of porridge I made on Week One. If I'm lucky, he'll eat about half of it.

Lunchtime - two or three ice cubes of butnip (butternut and parsnip) or sweet potato and something. If I'm lucky he'll eat about four spoonfuls before going onto his sweet.

If I'm lucky, he'll eat his sweet.

At dinner time, I'm lucky if he eats anything at all.

He has started crying at the sight of a spoon, and blowing raspberries the instant it comes near his mouth. The only thing he hates more than a spoon is a sippy cup filled with that revolting poison, water. Last week he nearly ended up in hospital with dehydration.

After that, his already tiny interest in food shrank to almost nothing.

I call the dietician, tell her I don't want him ending up hating food. She says I'm not over-reacting, I'm right to worry, which makes me feel better and worse at the same time. She's going to refer him to a speech and language therapist.

On the Tofs Facebook group there are women whose children are so averse to food it takes hours of persuading to get them to eat one Rice Krispie. Please don't let him end up like that...

The green menace

Avocado makes great baby food. It's high in fat, bursting with vitaminy goodness and incredibly easy to mush up. We're big on avocados in our house, I live with a guacamole addict and I'm pretty keen on them myself. So I was looking forward to introducing our little toflet to this new eating experience.

Sure enough, as soon as I popped some in his mouth he gave me a big smile and opened his trap for a bigger spoonful. There's no feeling more rewarding and wonderful than that. I kept shovelling.

Until four spoonfuls in, he retched, lent forward and deposited a mucusy parcel of avocado on the tray in front of him. Poor little chap looked at me all bemused and opened his mouth for more avocado. I put some in, it came straight back out again.

I figured maybe I hadn't mashed it up enough, as I'd only used a fork. So next time we whizzed it up really finely and added a little water to thin it out a little. Again smiles, again open mouth - again sick.

So avocado has gone from being the weaning mother's best friend to public enemy number one - a green slimy agent of destruction. It's going to be a long time before this little guy gets to eat Mexican food.