Food Fights

So. Pre-kid's, I had high expectations for my future children's eating habits.   I love food, and so will they!  I eat healthy(ish), so will they!  They will know how to eat sushi with chopsticks, stuff a pita with falafel, and munch on homemade kale chips when they're hungry.

Sigh. Like many of my other pre-kid expectations (my kids will NEVER throw a temper tantrum in public, I WILL wear a bikini again), the hope of having those kids who 'eat everything' has slowly been crushed.

I don't really know how this happened, but I have some ideas.  In the breastfeeding class I took while pregnant with #1, we were told that kids who are breastfed are more adventurous eaters because they are exposed to a variety of flavors via the foods their mothers eat.  They likened it to the difference between having vanilla ice cream at every meal to being offered a sundae bar with all the toppings.

Yes, those lactation ladies really know how to work a room full of pregnant women.

That's it - I decided then and there that  I would breastfeed my babies until they could say 'show me your tits' like I was their own personal Mardi Gras parade or went to kindergarten.  Basically whichever happened first.

Bonus: all the calories I would burn breastfeeding would make it possible for me to wear that bikini I was saving for after I had kids.

Fast-forward to 7 days post-partum.  Baby boy #1 had been latched on for roughly 90% of his life, only unlatching to scream at me with red-faced fury like I'd never seen before in something that small.  I was at the pediatrician's- exhausted, overwhelmed, and not so sure that this whole baby thing was a good idea.  Baby was placed on the scale.  Doctor turned white and practically barred the door to keep me from leaving - as if I was going anywhere without a way to get this kid to stop crying.

Doctor handed me a bottle. "You need to feed this baby NOW."  Turns out baby was screaming for a reason.  He was HUNGRY and had lost like 20% of his birth weight.  Since he wasn't trying to make weight for JV wrestling or walk a runway, this was not a good thing.   

Three hours later, baby had pounded a 6 oz bottle with so much enthusiasm that I started to prematurely worry about his college days.  He then passed out in the bouncy seat with a satisfied smile on his face and a small dribble of milk leaking out of the corner of his mouth.  And I started sobbing.  I was a JEWISH MOTHER.  My sole purpose in life was to make sure my children ATE.  FOOD equals LOVE.  I didn't love my son! I was FAILING.

Good-bye breastfeeding, hello formula.

Now, this story is NOT to promote formula nor is it to discourage breastfeeding.  Looking back, I realize that the doctor could have used a gentler approach and I could have tried harder.  All I'm saying is, baby lost his 31 flavors of breast milk that day and potentially a future career as a food critic. 

When #1 started solid foods at around 6 months, I decided that although I could not give my son the BEST (aka the breast, duh), I would still attempt to promote healthy, unprocessed food at mealtimes. This worked well enough for about six months, when the novelty of food (both eating it and wearing it) ensured that anything and everything offered to my offspring was received with an enthusiasm I'd never before seen for my cooking, seeing as my husband's way of complimenting a meal is saying "You could make that again sometime."

Then my baby turned one and learned the word NO.  Suddenly #1 realized he had a CHOICE when it came to his food.  I tried to remain strong.  He'll eat when he's hungry.  It's OK if there's more sweet potato and spinach-infused spaghetti sauce in his hair than in his mouth.  It only took 3 hours of dicing sauteeing and stewing to make this food.  THIS IS ABOUT LOVE.

Until the 18 month checkup when it was revealed that baby was not only low on the weight chart...he was FALLING OFF the chart.  Again, the shame, the guilt, the feeling like despite the hours spent steaming carrots and making my own applesauce I was not doing enough for my child. 

So began my free-fall into the world of processed food with added calories.  I'm sure there could have been better means to getting him to gain weight, but I was pregnant with #2 and I was EXHAUSTED.  Enter macaroni and cheese from the box.  Enter microwave panckaes from the box.

Enter a recycling bin to hold all the empty boxes.

#2 arrived, and despite more time spent at the breast, he eventually followed in the footsteps of his brother - from enthusiastic eater to the pickiest of picky eaters in 3 short years.  By the time #3 came I didn't even attempt to nurse.  He got his vanilla ice cream (aka formula) straight up on day one in the hospital.  Organic baby food?  Maybe for a week, and then I started tossing whatever #1 and #2 hadn't finished on his tray as I passed him on the way to break up a fight between #1 and #2. 

And here we are.  Two picky eaters and one in the making.  Lately it's started to seem as if my children think that they live in a world where at 5 pm our kitchen turns into a full service restaurant where kids eat free and I am some kind of new Transformer-like toy that morphs from plain old Mom into a waitress, short order cook and busboy all in one.

This is one Barbie I never played with growing up but maybe one that Mattel should consider making so that girls know what happens when Ken finally puts a ring on it.  

Finally, two nights ago, I had had it.

Husband was out of town and I had just made three separate dinners.  Macaroni and cheese for picky eater #1, Chik'n Nuggets for picky eater #2, and leftover Mexican food from my Mother's Day Feast the night before for myself and my not-yet-a-picky-eater #3.

Each of my picky eaters ate approximately 1.5 bites of their food and deemed it unfit for human consumption.  They wanted fruit, but not the three different kinds that I actually had in the house.  They wanted yogurt but only the kind with the M&M's and only if I stirred the candy in myself.  They wanted juice but not in the juice box, in the red cup with a lid on it and they needed new silverware to replace the 'yucky' silverware that had touched the previous food I had tried to give them.  The baby can't make demands yet but he played his part by throwing most of his food on the floor in solidarity. 

I was starting to feel like the personal assistant to an extremely high maintenance rock band.  Minus the access to some really good drugs.

"THAT'S IT!" I shouted. "No more separate meals, no more getting you something else when you don't eat what I serve you, no more asking for something the minute I sit down to eat MY dinner.  I am NOT your waitress, your personal chef, or your slave."

Crickets.  At this point they're used to my dinnertime rants and it doesn't phase them.  But I was serious.  Food does not equal LOVE (sorry, grandma).  Food equals nutrition.  Food is about nourishing your body and giving you energy to function and focus and grow.  And mealtimes are about sitting down as a family and learning how to be social and polite and not say the word "poop" or "pee" (sorry, husband). 

So, last night, my husband and I tried something new.  Something MY mother did every night, and her mother before her and any other mother that has the inner strength to put up with the whining and complaining and potentially hungry kids at the end of the meal because they realize that eventually the kids will figure out that THIS IS IT and there will be no more sending it back to the kitchen. One meal for everyone. And if you don't eat it you're out of luck.  And Mom doesn't get out of her seat until HER meal is finished.  Everything you need is in front of you and the kitchen is CLOSED.

At the end of the meal Picky Eater #1 had tried everything in front of him, ate half of it, and was excused from the table.  Picky Eater #2 was curled up in a ball on his chair howling because he didn't want this food he wanted OTHER FOOD or else he wanted to leave the table (and, it seemed, the family).  Not-yet-picky-eater #3 was making progress by getting 3/4 of the food on his high chair tray into his mouth and not in his bib or on his lap.

As a great man, named after a great dinner entree of which I make an excellent vegetarian version, once belted out, two out of three ain't bad.

Will this last?  Will I stay strong and let my kids go to bed hungry, knowing that, weight charts be damned, I'd rather my kids go to bed hungry if in the end they learn how to try new foods and be gracious little human beings at meals?  The next time I threaten 'no dessert unless you eat your vegetables' will I actually follow through?

The answer is - I don't know.  But even though #2 managed to smuggle a chocolate chip granola bar into bed with him last night, as another great man once said, "I have not yet begun to fight."