Dammit. I have 10 minutes to sort a half hour long task

[Squiff70]

DD's dietician is ringing today at 1.30pm. She previously asked for a 3-day food diary. I asked DP to do it as I have been utterly swamped with other household admin as well as booking a break next week, organising it, sorting pets accommodation, housework and a zillion other things besides.

Suffice to say it hasn't been done. I knew it wouldn't be either. It's always me who does the food diaries and frankly I'm sick of them. DP has had 3 consecutive days off work and I have reminded him at least twice on each of these days. He's either spent the days playing video games on his phone or sleeping because he "needs the break". He is currently at work (best place for him right now).

Do I...

1. Spend the next 5 minutes doing yet another fucking job delegated to somebody else?

1. Make it up as I go along and wing it?

1. Tell dietician it hasn't been done

Depends how critical the details are if you can cobble it together or not. Just spend the next 5 mins online instead 😁

Amen to that! I've got 2 minutes left and will only do a crap job so stuff it, I'll have to wing it.

depends how old DD is too, could she do it herself or is she too young?
How critical is this i.e. should it be a food diary listed to the level of weighing out portions or more of a "has she got a balanced diet / eaten her 5 a day" type chat. If the later then wing it, it the former admit it's not been done.
Could you leave a sheet in the kitchen in future so whoever does the meal prep writes it down rather than it falling to 1 person?

Tell them it's not been done and rebook the next appointment so that he has to take it.

While I appreciate you're pissed off at DH for not doing this.

How is it going to take 30 minutes to write out breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks for 3 days?

Feign ignorance. Her father was going to do it and email it to the dietician so in your mind, this is what has been done.

But obviously you have much bigger problems than this one thing if he's had three days off work and done nothing but relax and amuse himself while you've run yourself ragged.

Get off Mumsnet? <helpful>

My daughter is only 2 so can't do it herself. The food diary is supposed to be detailed- not just WHAT she's eaten but the amounts/weights and basic nutritional content of each food (if we know it) hence it needing half an hour. Not just a question of scribbling it down every time she has a slice of toast or small pieces of fruit.

My daughter had major bowel surgery at 4 weeks old, during which 20% of her bowel was removed. The surgeon advised us that she would likely need a high calorie diet for most if not all of her life to maintain a healthy weight. If she gets an illness like a virus, like a lot of children she doesn't want to eat and her weight plummets at a frightening speed. We're working with the dietician to (supposedly) work out if she's eating enough to grow healthily and whether she has any food allergies which may or may not be contributing to a skin rash she has had for nearly 4 months. She had severe CMPA as a small baby and we spent months working our way up the milk ladder to get to where we are today. She's on a full milk diet now and they are suggesting we try cutting out milk to work out whether that's causing or contributing to the skin problem.

I'm sure you'll appreciate it's quite complex but her medical stuff ALWAYS falls to me. DP (my daughter's dad) is usually very helpful and has always been very hands-on with her. If there's a nappy to be changed or she's hungry or wants to play, he's on it straight away. He is not now nor has he ever shirked responsibility from parenting. In fact, we have another baby on the way. I'm just frustrated that all life's admin falls to me, including making, changing, rebooking medical appointments for our little one. He's fully upto speed with her medical needs and understands everything perfectly. He attends just about every appointment with us, assuming he's not at work AND the medical staff allow both parents into appointments. He's a nurse himself so understands some things better than I do! His problem with doing things like food diaries is that English is not his first language but also he believes (as do I) that he is dyslexic. He finds it all a bit baffling tbh but it frustrates me that he doesn't even try.

Anyway, the dietician phoned. We had a long chat about most things but she didn't even ask if we'd done a food diary! Small mercies. I wasn't going to lie to her but would have given her examples of what our daughter eats in a day.

Do what you can otherwise the appointment is wasted.

I understand your frustration but you need to do what you can to make the best of the appointment.

DH and I delegate. I find it easier to handle pretty much all the medical side myself, and I ask DH to be responsible for other things in order to reduce my mental load.

Sometimes I wish DH would do more with the medical side, because it gets overwhelming but he is generally pretty supportive.

Maybe you can come up with a system that works for you both? I don't know what your DC's diet or your recording system is like, but what I have done in the past is to make a permanent list of easily measured foods (eg: all fluids in 100 ml cups, and record when empty, 1 slice of bread weighs 20 gms, half cup of green veggies etc) and then I would write an abbreviation version of them in a table.

In that case, maybe taking the lead in DDs medical needs might be something you need to do, but he should be doing more of other things, like housework, laundry, pets, cooking/grocery shopping, gardening, DIY, car stuff. Equal leisure time should be the aim.

I'm sure I don't need to ask, but do you get to spend hours playing video games or sleeping more than 7/8 hours a night?

You could have done it in the time it took to make the posts on here!

I don't know if it work for someone so young (you might have to lie about her age to set up an account) but could you use something like My Fitness Pal app and both have a login to it on your phones? It will cover all the nutritional info you need and it has a barcode scanner so you can just zap the packet and enter the portion size.

Actually, no I couldn't. I explained why if you bother to read my update 🤨

Thank you for your advice. We don't have a recording system. We don't log everything she eats unless she has a dietetics appointment coming up. Working out the amount of food she's eaten and the amount of calories in that quantity of food is extremely time-consuming and unnecessarily complicated when there isn't a medical need for it. We only speak to the doatocian every 3-4 months and she asks for a 3-dat diet sheet so it's not worth keeping a detailed log for the rest of that time IYSWIM.

I'm not sure I understand why the dietician needs you to work out the calories and macronutrients.

Surely they'd be able to look at a list of foods and weights (or take photos of her meals) and see instantly whether it's likely to be enough, provide sufficient nutrition/balance for a child to grow well and not include too much rubbish?

Then if they think not, they make suggestions such as 'add cream to soup', will she snack on cheese, don't take her to McDonalds every day or whatever.

To be fair, my DP does do quite a lot at home, especially whilst I'm pregnant. He does around 70% of the laundry and does the dishwasher most days. He mows the lawn (although it hasn't been done for about 6 weeks and is like a jungle now. I want to get our poor rabbits out in a big pen on the lawn so they can run round and get fresh air. I reminded him again last night it's now May and the poor bunnies have been in the (purpose-built) shed all winter and not even seen the garden yet this year!). He tells me he'll do it on Saturday but if it rains we're stuffed.

I haven't even touched the vacuum since December because he does it most days.

He also cleans the bathroom occasionally although I usually do it. If I listed the jobs I do I'd literally be here all day. The difference is he works (very bloody hard) and I'm essentially a SAHM but only because our daughter has additional needs and can't attend a mainstream nursery at the moment. I also have significant health problems which severely impact my ability to do as much of the physical stuff as I would like to.

What DP is completely oblivious to is dust on skirting boards, cobwebs in corners of rooms, dirty marks on doors/walls and general muck not in direct sight (like dust on crevices on internal doors etc). I lived on my own from 18 to 34 years old so I've spent my whole adult life having to do ALL these things myself, but he just doesn't think about them or acknowledge them. If I point out to him, say, a thick layer of dust on a skirting board, to him it's not causing any trouble so nothing needs to be done about it. Ditto cleaning the microwave when he nukes his soup and it explodes. I often find it two days later when it's baked on and impossible to shift 😵

I'm not a clean freak. Far from it! I just want a reasonably clean family home we can all relax in, especially with another baby due in August!

To be honest, I don't understand why either. We've been working for months on how to increase calories (like adding butter or oil to meals). She LOVES cheese but it can become a problem in that she wants it all the time and won't try other things.

She's two and a half and had one McDonalds and one Burger King meal in her life. The fries are devoured but burgers, chicken nuggets etc just get launched on the floor and she won't even try them. I'm fighting a losing battle at times.