Eat Pray My Love

This is not an ordinary muffin. It is a muffin baked by a desperate woman. 

One week later it lays furry, mouldy and uneaten in an unglamorous plastic box lid container.

This muffin's disappointingly dire fate mirrors the trajectory of my hopes and dreams for this kid to eat this zucchini-filled cheesy muffin, that bowl of noodles or anything at all that is remotely edible. 

Incredibly, this kid shows zealous initiative for eating anything that is most definitely not food. Furniture, plastic, cosmetics, books or especially anything from the medicine cabinet. He even has the aptitude to eat the banana peel AROUND the actual banana.

Okay, you win baby. I will say it. I am at my wit's end. I do not know what to do.

Three times a day I tell myself that this meal is not my battleground. I am calm, I am zen and my gentle good mother spirit will simply Pied Piper of Hamlin the food down his guzzle through nursery song and dance. An hour later, with my clothes soaked in toddler abstract food art, I sigh and say a little prayer that enough food made it in to sustain his wriggly little body.

I feel like I have tried EVERYTHING. Family and friends' helpful advice. Medical literature on how to handle fussy eaters. Baby advice blogs. I have given him reign. Taken the reigns. Thrown away the reigns.. I don't know how else to approach this. He thinks food is an absolute joke.

All I want is for this boy to eat. I feel like an absolute failure. And a few day's ago, this was finally confirmed so by doctors. Sadly, this little boy's growth chart just stops, literally stops at four months ago. Not a gram or centimetre grown since October 2013 (except for his head circumference.. haha ironically the one thing he doesn't need to enlarge is the only thing that has grown). The medical term for his condition: Failure to Thrive. FAILURE.

Needless to say, I felt fear... then anger...then disappointment... then shame that I have done it wrong or hadn't done enough and through it all just utter desperation.

It's hard to believe that there's anything wrong with him. He smiles, laughs, plays and makes mental leaps each day. Yet his body is so little for his age.

Please eat my boy. I just want you to grow.

Be careful what you wish for they say... I wish I could unwish that he would be my little baby forever.