One day on, one day off

Our toddler seems only to feel hungry every second day or so, or every second meal…or maybe it’s only when we serve up something recognisable and delicious. We can’t tell, but we no longer worry.

Time was, back when she was six months old and firmly turned away almost every kind of food, preferring to subsist entirely on breastmilk, that her not eating would stress us out. A day on which she ate something was a Good Day, whatever else happened. And even the best of days together could be overshadowed by a foodfight at the end of it.

Part of the problem was that we really wanted her to start sleeping through the night, and our theory was that if she ate a lot of dinner, she might not wake three times a night for milk. If we had known that she would not sleep through until she was 11 months old, and that she’d continue waking at least twice a night till then, and that she’d never agree not to be breastfed on each occasion…would we have felt more relaxed about her not eating? If we’d known that food would suddenly, mysteriously, morph from playstuff to delicious, at around ten months, would we have bothered offering her three (rejected, messy) meals a day for all those months?

Well, now she’s seventeen months old, and in the best of plump-tummied health. She is still a breastmilkaholic, but eats hearty little meals crammed full of fruit, veg, dairy products and porridge – when she wants to. Nothing could be clearer than her eagerness to be fed or feed herself, when she’s hungry, unless it’s the sealed lips and lashing head when she is not at all interested. At the moment she seems to be rather vegetarian, but we expect that, like everything, this is just a phase.

However, having said all this, I must admit the days when she keenly eats what I offer are still Good Days. It’s so deeply satisfying to feed your child.