What's eatin' ya?

I love to cook and what I love best is seeing people enjoy what I've made. I try to plan my meals for 2 weeks with new menus and grocery lists. It's fun to find a recipe that becomes a new family favourite. I think it's a very satisfying mothering experience to have your children enjoy something you've made - even if it has to contain chocolate (for Madeline).

That's why it's been really difficult to feed Claire because it's been a battle instead of something to enjoy. She doesn't often show signs of enjoying her food and I have to feed her based on a timeline - how long has it been since she ate last - instead of watching for her hunger cues. From when she stopped breast feeding (8 months) until now we have struggled with feeding her. Dec. 2007 she had a g-tube put in because we would spend at least an hour and a half on each meal and she would barely eat 1/2 cup of pureed food and maybe a 1/4 cup of liquid. She was losing weight and I was losing my mind so we made the decision. Now her nutrition is taken care of by her Pediasure formula, but we still do oral feeding to start off each meal.

I guess why I am writing this post is to vent my feelings. Sometimes I feel really cheated that I don't get to experience "normal" things with Claire. The feeding issue has been a huge one in our lives. You don't realize how much traditions centre around food and the act of eating together until you have a child that doesn't eat in the same way that everyone else.

I am in the process of trying to change my thinking and it's a lot harder to do than I thought. So much of my relationship with Claire has involved my readjusting my expectations and realizing that different lives are good lives - just because she won't have the same experiences as I did as a child doesn't make her experience less important or valuable or worthwhile. These are things I tell myself but sometimes my heart aches when I remember learning to ride a bike or having friends over, or running through the sprinklers, enjoying an ice cream cone or eating watermelon, going skating - simple childhood memories that will be so different for Claire than they were for me.

So back to "eating." I am trying to focus on the experience of eating rather than how successful the actual act is. We try to all eat at the same time now (well except for whoever is feeding Claire) and we all sit together at the table instead of eating in shifts. I need to be more flexible and let eating be messy and exploratory instead of worrying so much about keeping clothes and hair free of food. I try to let Claire experience tastes and textures even though she might not eat any of it. I'm trying to accentuate the positive - at least she can eat orally (some kids have to have surgery and can't have foods orally because of aspiration), at least Claire can eat somethings like yogurt, cream of wheat, mashed potatoes, pureed fruits, etc. I'm grateful that we have a patient OT who works with us a lot on feeding strategies and that no one has given up on her eating orally.

I love that Madeline enjoys her food. She has a serious sweet-tooth (sometimes the first word out of her mouth in the mornings is "chocolate") but it's so fun to give her things that I know she loves and to watch her enjoy it. I find it miraculous that she can sit on her own and eat her own meal without any help from me. It's those little things that I can appreciate because of my experiences with Claire that I might have taken for granted.

So next time you make a meal or give your kids a treat and they gobble it up - I hope that you can appreciate how wonderful that is!