Amuse bouche... Competitive weaning

Breastfeeding had been a doddle, Karen decided, while organising what Casper was having for his three main meals the following day. Casper was in the mush-with-bits phase, and it was going well.

She could say this to just about no one, though. The world of weaning was a lonely place.

Karen hadn’t seen it coming. She had been so relieved to get through the breastfeeding minefield, that she hadn’t imagined worse to come.

To their credit, neither Karen’s mother nor granny said a word when she switched three-monthold Casper to the bottle. Karen had expected an ‘I told you so’.

Her mother thought breastfeeding was a male conspiracy against women, while her granny believed it was for “Africa, where they aren’t able to keep bottles clean”.

In fact, it was Karen’s breastfeeding support group who couldn’t keep their mouths shut. “Would you not wait until he’s on solids?” one of the mothers had pleaded “Breastfed babies have far better evolved tastebuds.” God, Karen would love to go back there now and show them Casper sucking sweet potato through that vaguely disgusting independent-feeding gizmo. That would show them.

If Karen’s mother and granny had kept it buttoned on the boobto-bottle front, they had enjoyed exchanging eye-rolling glances when Karen puffed with pride over his dinner of mushed home-made smoked-fish pie, followed by mashed mango. “They eat anything at that age,” said granny. “Give it a year and he’ll be picking out the veg.”

“Or eating only white food,” said mammy.

“Yes, like when you were small, Karen,” said granny.

If the breastfeeding was a competitive sport, then the weaning was the Olympics.

Karen’s friends in the yoga-withbaby group were exhausting, all trying to out-papaya each other and competing to have the baby who loved spinach more than any baby in the world, ever. At the moment, Karen’s greatest and only support was the baby-weaning cookbook, whose author smiled at her nonjudgmentally from the cover and would never never tell a soul about the day that Casper turned down turnip. That was a proper support through the difficult first year.