What the hell do I feed my kid?
Raise your hand if you've felt personally victimized by those “What I meal prepped for my 8-month-old baby” posts
Before my son was born, my husband and I would send each other baby meal prep posts: reels of moms (and, occasionally, dads) sporting clean hair and real pants, steaming and mashing and blending organic carrots and peas and chicken and then portioning it all into cute little glass containers for the week.
Despite rarely having the time or energy to plan meals for ourselves, we agreed that this was the way.
“We’re definitely doing this.”
“So excited to cook real food for our baby.”
Now I see those videos and just think: have you muted your child’s screaming in the background? Or do you mean to tell me that he just… sits there contentedly while you cook, or grocery shop, or wash his food-stained onesies, or load (and unload, and reload) the dishwasher?
My son is 10 months old (8.5 months adjusted) and has about a quarter of a single tooth poking through his top left gum. I am constantly worried about how or what or when to feed him.
His appetite for solids has proven unpredictable: one day he’ll crush a tin of sardines, the next he’ll cry in disgusted horror upon being served a spoonful of mashed banana (which, to be fair, does kind of resemble snot). Lately, he has shown less interest in eating his food than in dropping it on the rug for our dog to lick up.
I’ve heard to just let him eat whatever we eat, but:
A) we often don’t even think about dinner until he’s already gone down for bed
B) we’ve been living off frozen pizza and bagged salads since we both went back to work full time, and I don’t think his single snaggletooth is quite ready for either of those.
I recently panic bought some boxes of fancy baby purees that amount to about $4 a pouch and half the time end up being squirted down the drain. Yet more things to feel guilty about: the expense, the waste, the notion that I’m setting my child up for a lifetime of picky eating by failing to introduce him to enough diverse tastes and textures before age 1.
How are people doing this? Finding the time to plan and prepare nutritionally dense, age-appropriate meals for your baby, when you’re getting by on protein bars between meetings?
If I see another photo featuring a silicone suction plate piled with omelette strips and fritter spears I may cry. At least that’ll make two of us.
