Food Wars
Like every mother in the history of the world, I find myself obsessing over what Bridget eats. Or more specifically, what she doesn’t eat. Shelly at Scenic Overlook wrote a great post about it here very recently. We are coming up on Bridget’s 18 month check up and by my scale at home, the girl is barely 20 pounds. She’s healthy in every other way, making all of her milestones and then some. I’m sure I really shouldn’t be worried at all.
But when I see how very little she eats throughout the course of a day, I start to freak out a little. I won’t say she’s picky because like Shelly says, I don’t like that label. Everyone is a picky eater if by picky you mean knowing what foods you like and don’t like. And why on earth would you eat food you don’t like? No one calls me picky because I don’t eat liver do they? Anyway, her food intake is minuscule. We try new foods with her fairly often but I can only count on her eating certain things.
I’ve tried to force some calories into her with ice cream or vanilla pudding for dessert but my kid - get this - doesn’t really like sweets! She likes this one kind of organic oatmeal and cinnamon cookies but that’s about it. Yesterday she ate two bites of a chocolate chip cookie before shaking her head no at it.
Here is the list of things I can count on her eating: cheese, crackers (either whole grain goldfish or Earth’s Best organic crackers), canned fruit (rarely fresh), yogurt, fruit and cereal bars, peas, water and milk. Everything else is a gamble, if not an outright waste of food. I don’t care that she eats very little meat really but is the protein in her dairy enough? Is she getting iron? Does she need a vitamin?
My brain tells me to stick with my philosophy on child food. She will eat when she is hungry. It’s simply my job to provide nutritious foods for her. I will LET her eat, I will not MAKE her eat. I will try to introduce new foods over and over because you never know when a toddler is going to change her mind. In fact last week, scrambled eggs apparently got the thumbs down for the first time ever. That used to be one food I could count on. And it may be again but not right now. She also turned her nose up at banana today for the first time. We’ll see if that lasts. She won’t eat grapes, but twice last week the child ate almost an entire kiwi. Go figure.
I’m sure I’m getting myself all worked up over nothing. She is healthy. She is developmentally right on track. She’s happy. If she were malnourished, she wouldn’t be any of those things, would she? At least that’s what I tell myself so I can sleep at night.
Filed under Mommy Zombie, Random Ramblings |4 Responses to “Food Wars”
Leave a Reply
Subscribe via RSS
My kid is not an eater either… she was in the bottom fifth percentile for weight pretty much forever. Thank goodness for rice with lots of butter. Like your kid- cheese, crackers (goldfish), sparkly water and canned tangerines are certain - sweets are not at all appealign to her. And oddly enough lox, tomatoes, and choking hazard grapes/raisins are new loves…
I stress, but then I figure she will eat if gets hungry enough and she is totally on target with everything else.
Just to say - I feel your pain
I don’t really know what I’m talking about because my daughter has severe food allergies and is on a very specialized diet…
BUT I have worried about the same thing many times and my pediatrician has always said that as long as she’s getting one serving a day of each of the food groups (meat, dairy, carb, veg, fruit) and drinking water/milk she should be good for awhile. He also said not to offer up too many choices. If she likes only 5 things and they are protein/carb/fruit/veggie then she can survive and thrive on those five things until you are both ready to try something new.
He does say there is nothing wrong with a vitamin.
Sydney takes a gummi bear vitamin and loves it.
i hate the whole toddler crazy diet thing. lance will eat nothing (very little) for a week and then eat everything in sight for two or three days, or sometimes he will eat hardly anything all day and then chow down at dinner, the randomness drives me crazy, i would like some predictability.
I am so tired of worrying about food intake, but I cannot help it. As you said, some days I am amazed at how little my kid eats, most of it not especially nutritious. The list of acceptable foods gets smaller every week and it drives me crazy. I have one food she will eat every time - rice pasta. That’s it. I slater it in butter (real butter for her on anything she might eat). I know she isn’t getting the nutrients she needs, but I don’t know what else to do. All the vitamins I’ve checked out say for 2+ other than that liquid stuff that she now refuses (not that I blame her, that stuff reeks). Sigh. I hate this.