Of good motherhood and arsenic
Over the last fortnight, newspapers have given us the following information about feeding small children:
1) A plant-based diet, wrongly administered, can ruin their health.
2) Many of the toddler-friendly ready meals marked “healthy”, “organic” and “all-natural” contain more sugar than a McDonald’s doughnut.
3) Some baby rice has “dangerously high” can you buy canada goose jacket online levels of arsenic in it.
And you know what? Good. I’m glad. Bring it on. What else have you got? Tell me there’s cyanide in the water, cat wee in milk and mercury in apples. Reveal that vegetables bring on rickets, porridge triggers heart disease and every child that hasn’t had a black canada goose parka daily beaker of scotch since birth is doomed.
Throw everything you’ve got at my baffled, anxious, well-meaning mother’s brain. I’m done. Yesterday was my daughter’s second birthday; we achieved our dream of getting her through the first two years without added salt or sugar and that is it: from now on she’ll be on an exclusive diet of Mars bars, turkey twizzlers and gin.
Well done us! In two whole years, we never gave her salt or sugar! Arsenic, yes. More arsenic than you’d find in the complete works of Agatha Christie. Really ladled it into her, the old arsenic. Magnificent. Saw us right through the weaning phase.
Thanks to the news, I will forever look back on October 2015 to April 2016 as the period buy canada goose jacket edmonton when I went out at least twice a week and walked round the supermarket or greengrocer’s, selecting the freshest bunches of spinach or kale or cabbage or carrots, paying the mark-up for organic versions, scrubbing off the earth until my hands were raw… then every day, every single day, hunched over the hob, lightly and carefully steaming the day’s allocation… pureeing them in the vegetable water to preserve the vitamins… washing up the pot, the blending bowl, the blades… and then, last of all, the final flourish, just before spooning the results into my daughter: stirring in a “dangerously large amount” of arsenic. Terrific.
I say “every day”. I mean most days. Sometimes we travelled. We’ve managed the odd night away, weekend away, even fortnight away, in the two years since she was born.
On those best canada goose jacket reddit occasions, I carried ready buying cheap canada goose outlet jacket online meals – but not just any old ready meals, special healthy ready meals, don’t worry about that. When going on proper holidays, I actually spent money sending boxes of them to myself in foreign countries.
Oh yes! International postage! God forbid I would risk being stuck abroad with the little one, separated from my trusty pans and blender our web page, forced to feed her something that’s been cooked with a knob of salted butter or a sprinkle of caster sugar. Why would I risk that, when I could spend vast amounts of time and money supplying myself with black friday 2013 canada goose sale packages of special healthy meals that now turn out to contain so much fruit juice and “agave syrup” that I might as well have turned her upside down and squeezed a 500g bottle of treacle into her?
I’m not complaining about the time spent. That’s how I wanted to spend my time. Different people react to parenthood in different ways. Many of my closest friends, who love their children immeasurably and certainly as much as I love mine, need space from them. Quite apart from the financial imperative, they need for their own sanity to create separate professional achievements, maintain separate relationships or just have quiet days off.
That’s not how it’s been for me. To my surprise, it turned out that I find childcare infinitely interesting. It’s more rewarding than anything else I do and there’s no real peace or pleasure in being away from her. I’ve kept working a bit, but only to try and have some sort of skeleton career going for the future.
The sad thing is, I thought I’d done well with the food. I’d estimate that 80% of my satisfaction in the job of parenting is seeing her hunger assuaged with proper nutritional goodness: vitamins and minerals, fruit and veg, like watering a tiny plant, scattering it with tomato feed and standing back to watch it grow. I’m a terrible mother in so many ways, but, when it comes to mealtimes, I’ve really put in the elbow grease.
And the arsenic.
Then there’s the special “baby cereal” that turned out to be vastly more sugary than Weetabix… the special “follow on” toddler milk, “packed with goodness”, that turns out to have contributed to a national children’s dental crisis…
So it’s not the time I mourn, it’s the job satisfaction. The pride and self-worth derived, then snatched away – as if you’d spent two years working on an office report, handed it in and watched average price for a canada goose jacket the boss laugh as he amazon canada goose jacket set fire to it.
This wasn’t about being buy canada goose jacket online canada a faddy, trendy, Gwyneth Paltrow of a parent. I saw the raised eyebrows of the older generation when they noticed she doesn’t have sweets or ice cream, orange squash or milkshakes. They wanted to say (but knew buy canada goose coat online not to): get over yourself, that stuff was good enough for you at her age! And I wanted to say (but didn’t): I’m trying to recreate exactly what it was like at my age, when there wasn’t so much sugar in everything else! We’re told there are spooky additives in everyday groceries! I’m just trying to give her the chance to develop a normal, human, non-American palate!
But, like William Goldman said about the film industry, nobody knows anything. They didn’t know. We don’t know.
So perhaps it should just be Mars bars and turkey twizzlers from now on; toffee apples and videogames, cans of Pepsi and 18-rated films. If we can’t manage “healthy”, we could at least offer fun.
Problem is, the plan worked too well: her tastes are set now. She won’t want cupcakes and iPads, she’s too keen on wooden toys and spinach. And arsenic.
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