Food....

Apparently, according to some clever research, breast fed babies cry more than formula fed babies.
I can attest to that. The six weeks of toe-curling discomfort I spent trying to breast feed my son were also his unhappiest. It's just a shame nobody could tell me that at the time, but then as he was barely managing an average of two hours between feeds, I just put his grumpiness down to hunger and soldiered on.
I didn't soldier for all that long. Tiredness, chafing and severe wrist ache were the final nails in the coffin and I gave up for life on the bottle. At eight weeks old he was pretty much sleeping through so I can definitely say that formula feeding had a positive impact on my mental health. Some cope well on less than four hours of sleep at night, some get rather cranky and short and start seeing things where there are no things. When I got my first eight hour sleep I felt so much better.
There are a number of things that felt a little glossed over at the time. All the leaflets about breast feeding were full of pictures of happy contented women showing that breast feeding was easy! Way to go to make me feel even more of a failure and added to my giving up. It didn't feel natural, it felt like torture.
Well, those days are long gone and I have to admit I don't miss them. If we decide to have another then I'll do my best, I'll give it a bash but if it doesn't work out then it just doesn't and I wont let anyone guilt trip me.
Now he's finger feeding a lot of the time other issues have come to the fore.
He likes toast, which is good. He's even had a go at celery and won, which is impressive. He'll eat little pieces of cheese and he likes bread sticks and surprise surprise, he likes biscuits.
We've hit a wall with the carrot though. I've not given it to him in ages as it was just getting spat back out again. Pasta seems to be unpopular, especially as a finger food. I gave him a bowl of soft pasta tubes with bacon in a cheese sauce a few days ago. He looked at it, looked up at me and then totally ignored the food. I tried to put some in his mouth and I came up against a tightly locked little jaw. Mission a failure.
Fruit is now the next big hurdle He still eats banana, but his other favourite - strawberry- isn't on the radar this time of year. I tried him on canned fruit which he seemed to initially love, but now suddenly hates. It goes in the mouth, he looks puzzled and out it comes. Even the little pink cherries you get in a fruit cocktail are refused and they're my favourite.
And yet he will eat some beef mince flavoured with tikka spice with spinach mixed in. There's no accounting for taste.
Well, I'd better go as dinner needs cooking and by the sound of things bath time is winding down. There was a lot of noise earlier, Joseph was trying to play with the toilet duck and Andy wasn't letting him. Tears happened.