Week 4 - Part 1 : Failing

  Week 4 – Part 1 Monday and Tuesday

Plunket Visit

In Aotearoa, as well as health care being free, child well being is also free and fabulous. Firstly, birth is seen as a natural occurrence and not a medical emergency – unless of course it turns into one. Secondly there is lots of child well-being monitoring as well from a sort of community nurse system called Plunket.  I had my first visit from them as a SAHD, on Monday with mixed results. 

Failing

I was a bit worried they might say something about his weight, but all growth measures are moving along consistently with each other, although the Plunket scales only read 9.04Kg. We reweighed him on our own scales and he was indeed only 9kg. That means he’s lost 500g in a week.  This is pretty alarming and makes me feel like I’m failing poor Francis in his nutrition.  Actually, not just feeling it, but, unfortunately, actually doing it as he’s lost 500g. So, yeah I’m feeling pretty shitty and sad right now.

SPACE support

During our sharing circle at SPACE I told everyone about our eating issues and weight loss. The ladies were really great and supportive with lots of suggestions, such as loading his liquid gold with peanut butter, making him some bliss balls and just really sticking with it.

I took some food with me to SPACE and sat him with the other kids as they had their snacks, in the hope some of their good eating habits would rub off on him. He did pretty good, and was quite adept at stealing food from the other toddlers. His favourite thing to steal and taste was marmite/vegemite cigars, so I will have to plug my nose and make some of these for him. Hope I can do so without gagging.  There was some on-line discussion later on with the ladies about which of these two obnoxious waste products is the tastiest. Maybe I’ll go with vegemite.

Francis did eat quite well before we went to SPACE, I had made a smoothie for him and was straining the fruit pulp out of it, when I thought I’d try to feed him some from a spoon and lo and behold he ate it all. So he at least got some vitamin C.

Reinvigorated

SPACE was truly a fillip today, so I was all reinvigorated with a new sense of food purpose and ready for when Mr F awoke from his nap. Here’s a list of the food I tried, one at a time, for his lunch….

Salmon and mayonnaise

Pe-ana

Pita bread

Hummus

Cheese

Buttered toast

Smoothie

Liquid gold

Rice rusk

Apple

Strawberries

Kiwi fruit

As you can tell from such a lengthy list, he was either do a Mr Creosote impression or not eating any of it. If only it was the former L

Defeated

Here’s a list of the food that got rejected, pinged to the floor, thrown to the floor :

Salmon and mayonnaise

Pe-ana

Pita bread

Hummus

Cheese

Buttered toast

Smoothie

Liquid gold

Apple

Strawberries

Kiwi fruit

Spot the difference? The exception to the rule was those damned rice rusks from the forbidden drawer.

Every time he rejected something I would return it to the fridge, at which point Mr. F would TOTALLY lose it. Being a logical person myself, this totally twisted my melon. How could he have such a meltdown when I was taking away stuff he didn’t want?

At this stage I was really defeated and super depressed too.

Partial Victory

So we had a change of scenery and spent some time hanging out the laundry and then swinging on his swing.  Right before Ananda got home we went back inside and just for kicks decided just to try and feed him some straight old smooth Peanut butter, from a spoon. Surprisingly to me, he did eat a whole two tablespoons of it. That’s the American side of him coming through!

Call the Calvary

Ananda’s arrival heralded two happy events: 1) A Francis poop 2) Good eating in the evening when I was off playing football (losing again!!!!).

And yes in that order.

So I’m going to take this as a sign that my theory is right that a non-pooping Francis will not eat. A happily pooped out baby will eat quite merrily. Q.E.D.

I am also taking it as a sign that he’s not deliberately trying to piss me off by not eating in my presence – which at time really feels like it.  Can be quite lonely being a stay at home parent on days like today.

Today’s Tale of the Tape

47.5cm – Francis’ bonce size

74cm -  How tall he is now

12 – lunch foods items tried

11- lunch foods rejected

13- lucky number for peanut butter!