The foodie and a fussy eater

Read this if you want to gloat with your perfect eating baby or gain solidarity in numbers if you share my pain of a fussy eater. Gain an incidental exercise routine and ways to avoid hurting your back whilst feeding along the way.

Oh geez, bother and much more explicate words. We are trying to master solids. When you read this, maybe the recommendations would have changed, but today it is try to start solids from 4 months.

As you may have read in other blogs we did a lot of travelling early in her life so for a myriad of reasons getting a routine for solids was hard.

But aside from this excuse I think along with my husband’s good looks, our daughter has acquired his trait of fussy eating. Unlike me who lives for good food, good wine (and her family and friends). It has been a traumatic experience of hysterical cries, choking and all round terrifying experience for all.

This is not an article on how to feed solids as this is also (obviously!) not my skill point! This is just a little anecdote that will maybe make you feel better if you are failing miserably like I am or give you some ideas to make your experience happier.

I shouldn’t admit to this, and rather, portray how perfect I am at parenting and how perfect my child is, but that is not me. I am very honest and hopefully we can all comfort in sympathising with each other’s parenting trials. Please share below.

“a traumatic experience of hysterical cries, choking and...”

I was trying everything to make her happy during feeding time and somehow I made her laugh immediately after hysterical cries by standing up and jumping up and down singing a song I made up “To the left to the right and up and down”. What does this mean? I literally just got off the phone to my OT friend to ask her if there was any sensory integration explanation for why this made her happy and she said, “No she is just laughing at you because you look like an idiot!” “She is enjoying you making silly faces, smiling and laughing with her, sharing an intimate light hearted experience together”. “You are just over analysing things” as academically I tend to do.

“she is just laughing at you because you look like an idiot...”

Not that we should endorse getting up from the table when eating, but at this stage it is about creating positive experiences around food and that is what did it, so my long winded point to this story is, is that if you are in this predicament try this as an incidental work out- squats up and down and lunges left and right. At least you are getting some exercise in during this time consuming and trying time.

“at this stage it is about creating positive experiences around food...”

The other point I want to make is on manual handling while feeding. I have washable plastic toys on her high chair to again make the feeding experience a pleasant one. With the infantile grasp she regularly drops the toys to the floor. If self feeding she will also drop the food to the floor, potentially throw it and create a Pro Hart painting on your floor. Try your very hardest to not bend down to the floor to repetitively pick up the toys or thrown food, unless you want to stand and squat to pick it up (incidental exercise) as this not only encourages in an older more cognitively conscious baby to throw more food/ toys it creates a big risk of hurting your back with the bending and twisting. Put down a big sheet/ paper that you can wash/ throw away.

NOTE Since writing this blog 4 weeks ago I just want to say that she has finally got it- at 8 months!! This was after said OT friend visited and said listen to your baby and feed her what she wants. Don’t persist with foods that are not working, she doesn’t like them. Stacey went in calmly with no personal fear of failing and tried hand feeding her different foods and she slowly took to it. Some children find a spoon coming at them scary. I had tried the self feeding but she didn’t take to that either (which was not helped with my clean freak mentality). After Stacey left I felt much calmer and confident that she would be able to get it and very quickly she has. She likes more complexly flavoured foods with herbs, hummus and all forms of cheese so maybe she will follow after her mother after all?

Summary

Try to make feeding time a positive, happy experience.

Keep trying different foods to see what they like, don't persist with those they don't like.

Try feeding them and independent feeding to see what they prefer

If all fails do a song and dance to diffuse the tension!

Melli Tilbrook is a Physiotherapist based at Adelaide Physiotherapy and Pilates Studio, Beulah Park.