Nourishment of many sorts
Yesterday I overcame two things:
1) my blogverse colliding with my mumgroup (that would be this one where we’re openly multiple vs. oh-so-not)
2) my general blahness this week
to go to Ann Douglas’s launch party for two of her latest parenting books: Mealtime Solutions and Sleep Solutions (actual titles are a bit longer but I am lazy). I didn’t go to the blog festivities, just the reading/signing at the Ella parenting centre. I’m not prepared yet to step off this page in person at some event, even if I am happy to have some mom bloggers as readers. But I did say hi, and I took mums from the mum group with me. So baby steps. That felt very naked to me.
And it was great. My big question about food was answered, which was: now that my dr says - which she did! - to move towards just feeding Noah what we’re eating, more or less (chopped up, less salt, etc.) what do you do if what you eat is largely spicy? The answer seems to be serve it slightly less spicy and then work your way up. But it was just nice to hear other people obsessing about it. It was super nice to get out and to a literary event. And Noah had a blast screeching at the other babies and trying to out-volume Ann Douglas.
I wasn’t dressed well enough for Leaside, but I didn’t care. Believe it or not.
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I have a theory that you can either worry about sleep or worry about food. I worry about Noah’s food way more than his sleep. Partly because he’s a relatively decent sleeper, but also because with sleep I figure eventually, he will sleep. But food is this minefield.
I thought I was allergic to milk and wheat and eggs growing up. In fact, it turns out my mother just took me off all three because I was allergic to something and it worked. I eat all three now. But what I remember of the experience, besides feeling - because my mother made it seem this way - that Milk and Wheat and Eggs were POISONOUS (hence the random capitalization) was odd.
Because you cannot attend a birthday party, particularly in the 70s, without there being wheat and milk present.
So avoiding allergies is a big thing for me and current wisdom says that if you don’t introduce wheat, milk, and eggs before age one (and indeed milk and eggs are in some circles especially not supposed to be introduced) you lower the risk that your child will develop an allergy.
So I’ve kept toast, pasta, teething biscuits, etc., away from Noah because of the wheat. Milk and soy are big question marks to me. And eggs, eh, well, eggs are pretty easy to leave out.
And I’m paranoid about choking, because I’m freaky about anything to do with oxygen, because I saw my daughter come out grey and limpless and saw the scans of her damaged body and also stared down life with a severely handicapped kid, and so breathing is a big deal around here. So I will be chopping Noah’s meat and carrots and everything ’til he’s 12. Oh well, we’ll help fund his therapy.
The other thing is bacteria/food safety. I grew up with my mother, who is nothing if not paranoid about food poisoning. Let me define paranoid. To serve chicken she puts on latex gloves, puts newspaper on the counter, puts the cutting board that is chicken-only out, prepares the chicken, gets it in the oven, throws out the newspaper and gloves, and bleaches the cutting board, sink, sink handles, oven handles, and counter top. That’s just one aspect of her fear in this area.
One of my (our) earlier memories is my mother screaming that we didn’t rinse a pot well enough and the soap will poison! yes poison! us all. So for years we saw food as just something that would kill you as soon as feed you.
Meanwhile, I live with Carl, whose family actually has some really sanitary habits, like scrubbing out the sink after every round of dishes. But who also don’t read due dates and leave things on the counter overnight and so on and so forth.
Over the years we’ve evolved a middle ground where the kitchen is clean and food is properly kept, but there is no psycho disinfecting and you can finish your meal in peace. I do intellectually believe that a few germs are okay for you (better than anti-bacterial stuff, which we generally don’t use anyway), and I also intellectually know that certain food-borne diseases are really bad and everyone should be careful, particularly since current farming/butchering processes are really bad for spreading things around. And okay, I just don’t buy sprouts any more ’cause there are just too many sprout-related things every year.
Plus growing up most of the food tasted bad. My mother really tries hard, she does, and she fed us night after night. But, in the words of my sister “I didn’t know until I moved out that meat could taste good.”
With Noah I want to do the utter opposite. Lyria has led us into a world of appreciating food and eating well and enjoying a range of tastes and cuisines and all kinds of neat stuff, and it’s so cool. And we’re keen to bring that to our parenting! But oh FEAR that we’ll screw up along the way.
And so when Noah’s/my doctor said on Tuesday that Noah’s pretty much ready to eat more-or-less what we eat (ground up a bit, and in a gradual way), it freaked me out! I thought we had a while longer to keep him in his pristine world of homemade organic baby food + organic jarred ground meat + boiled water and cereal or the occasional bit of oatmeal.
I mean wheat! germs! salt! not to mention that we have occasionally been falling to the dark side of takeout!
But today Lyria calmly dropped $35 at Essence of Life, and tomorrow we’re going to Fresh from the Farm for non-certified organic, Mennonite-raised meat. We’ll be okay. Really.
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