My daughter was almost six months old when a visit to the child health clinic was planned.
The road there was difficult, as many things are when you have an almost six-month-old baby. We had forgotten the vaccination cards, but we had had a disastrous night and not only that. In the morning my daughter refused her bottle of breast milk and if anything could hurt me deep down, it was that. That you have, with extreme reluctance, hooked up to a breast pump for several minutes, carefully frozen everything, later reheated it just as carefully and then it was REFUSED. Your liquid gold. Won during an -I dare say- energy-consuming production process. That you can then just relax, because reheating twice is out of the question. I couldn’t handle that very well. I have never been a fan of the ‘pump and dump’ phenomenon. It might have given me quite a bit of zest for life (read: glasses of wine) if I had been into that, but I thought throwing away milk was a mortal sin.
Well, that consultation agency. Despite the forgotten vaccination cards, my daughter was allowed to be vaccinated, which of course brought tears to both her and my side. In case you still haven’t noticed, I’m a whiner. As always, we received a pack of brochures upon departure. One brochure in particular really shook me. It was a menu. A daily menu for babies from six months. I was terrified. At four months we carefully started with practice snacks. These practice snacks were mainly received with a lot of disgust. We didn’t have much work to do on that yet, because we didn’t eat more than a spoonful at a time. I once mashed a variety of fruits and vegetables into an ice cube tray and froze them, and we’ve been enjoying them for almost two months now. And by pleasure I mean shivers, horror and nausea.
Burning hoop
Now suddenly there was that daily menu. And there was a lot on it. It really was a day’s work: in the morning a huge plate of porridge had to be eaten, an hour later there had to be a fruit moment, around lunchtime bread had to be eaten, in the middle of the afternoon it was time for a snack, a few hours Later, dinner could be served (vegetables, potatoes/rice/pasta, meat/fish/meat substitute) and we could also start introducing water and weak tea. I just barely fell off my chair. I couldn’t get even a single mashed carrot into this child’s mouth. They might as well have told me she’d have to jump through hoops next week.
Catering company
Besides the fact that I very much doubted whether my child would ever eat all of this, I was also quite shocked by the time it would all take. Because this entire menu had to take place in addition to the bottles she already received. And I already had a day job doing the whole pumping and feeding thing. Let alone everything else that comes with having a baby. I wondered if I wouldn’t be better off just quitting my job and starting a catering company, because catering would be what I was doing all day long anyway.
Arrested by the health clinic
It’s now five months later and I did indeed quit my job, but that was for other reasons. I also did an incredible job of adhering to the daily menu and all subsequent daily menus. Or rather: my child did not adhere to it well, because she did not eat most of it. Bread has only recently been introduced and when I even think about bringing porridge, she knocks the spoon out of my hands with such bloody force that the ceiling could be whitened again. A new visit to the clinic is scheduled for this week and I have already resigned myself to the fact that they will probably arrest me. I have already put the vaccination cards in my jacket pocket. Can I immediately demonstrate during the interrogation that despite my incompetent behavior, I am perfectly capable of learning from my mistakes. Maybe I will be released early and live to see the day when my child eats a full meal. In about twelve years or so.
Tara (29) is mother of daughter Rosie (1). Follow her momlife via Instagram.com/tarastokdijk
