Peanut Butter and Honey. To Eat or Not to Eat?

Labor and delivery - $7,500.
Nursing bra - $20
Worry and Guilt - FREE

We all know it. We all feel it. And none of us know how to get rid of it. We worry about many things when it comes to our kids. One of my worries is that my boys are cold at night. Another mommy friend worries hers are hot. We worry that they're thirsty, hungry, unstimulated, watching too much TV, that they are not getting enough "socialization", not enough time outside, too much time inside, you haven't read to them enough and to top it all off their sheets are dirty.

Food is a hot button for most. My friend's twin girls have never had peanut butter because she swears somewhere along the way someone told her they can't have peanut butter until age 3. Even at their last appointment her pediatrician mentioned something about a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. But she's sure that the doctor must have been mistaken. She's got the same notion about honey. To the point where she's got her husband so paranoid that he shouts "Clear the room! I've dropped some Honeycombs! I repeat, alert, alert, Honeycombs are on the floor!" (as in the Honeycomb cereal). Maybe it's true. Maybe they shouldn't have peanut butter or honey until they're 5! And that's another reason why we worry...because for most things when it comes to kids, you hear a zillion different opinions. 

You hear it all the time. "All he ate yesterday was Goldfish" or "She used to love broccoli but now just the smell makes her gag." Pretty much every conversation I have with another mommy includes at least a ten minute discussion about our kids' latest eating habits. What they're eating and how much, what they're not eating, what we may try feeding them, what we wish they'd eat, how they're eating...with a spoon or finger foods, what their favorite food is and so on. I think the reason it gets to us on so many levels is because ultimately we believe this should be the simplest of motherly duties. We give our children food to sustain life. Simple. Or so we think. But really, it's not simple. It's not simple at all.

This begins way before solids as you take your little one to their first well-check and you are quizzed by the nurse dutifully documenting all your answers. And in your postpartum haze you start feeling like the questions are accusations, "So, did he nurse on both sides? How long did he nurse? How many times? How many wet diapers? How many dirty diapers? Did he spit up? Did he seem satisfied?" Stop the madness, you think! I can't take it any more!  Maybe I am a bad, bad mommy!

And what if your child is not measuring up on the percentile chart? The ole' percentiles. How we struggled with those with Louie. Not only do we need our children to eat the right foods in the right quanities at the right times, we then need them to measure up to all the other kids the same age. No wonder we're stressed about it. It's a long running worry, though. Maybe we can take comfort in knowing that it's something innate in all mothers, this worry, this guilt... our grandmothers worried about it and probably their grandmothers too. Of course the worrying does no good. The kids will eat what they want to eat. And in the meantime, we'll continue to talk about it, worry about it and stick another couple of chicken nuggets in the microwave. We're moms. That's what we do.