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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

to feel equally sad at what I heard a young mum say:

30 replies

deliakate · 23/02/2010 09:05

Her baby had been weaned for about 3 months, and she told me she had cooked for her once or twice, but the baby "didn't like" her cooking, and so she was going to be on pre-prepared food from now on. For the rest of her life. The mum wasn't really overweight, but I felt like saying to her that she was going to push her child in that direction if she never cooked at home. Sad, not to mention costly!

OP posts:
fernie3 · 23/02/2010 09:19

well my first had all homemade food as a baby in little icecube trays. Things like "Plaice and tomatoes" it cost more than our food did lol. My second had mostly jars because I had run out of time to cook him meals and also wasnt feeling well for the first year of his life. With my third I didnt have time to fiddle about getting the skin off tomatoes and I couldnt be bothered with jars and the stains they made on clothes so she had what we were having cut up small. By the time she was 10 months pne of her favourites was chilli lol.

All of the eat a healthy diet now and what they ate as babies hasnt affected them at all. It would be sad if ALL she fed him for the rest of his life was say iceland ready meals but I doubt that and in any case some ready made foods can be ok. I wouldnt be too sad to be honest.

thesecondcoming · 23/02/2010 09:27

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

WorzselMummage · 23/02/2010 09:35

If you cant cook then jars are easier.

Like fernie my first had all home made organic cubes..

my second eats either the same as us - chilli, curry etc etc or he'll have a ready made meal. I just couldn't be arsed fucking about with a Mouli this time and to be honest i didnt have the time anyway.

Those fruit pouches are a bloody godsend

skihorse · 23/02/2010 09:36

What difference does it make? She probably can't even cook meals for herself, never mind a child.

EggyAllenPoe · 23/02/2010 09:37

well, as i generally did 'potatoe & canned tuna' or 'yoghurt and tescos value white fish' (and still do) that's pretty cheap..

its a bit sad she didn't just try something different - there are just some things the seem not to like....

but in the whole scheme of thngs, not a tradgedy. she may change her mind later, who knows.

thesecondcoming · 23/02/2010 09:41

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

WorzselMummage · 23/02/2010 09:46

Hell yes i mean it !

I used to puree loads of veg and puree and cube it and have bags in the freezer. I'd use the cubes for breakfast with wheatabix or in custard with tea, whatever.

Now I buy the pouches and use them in the same way but without the faffing. I always have one kicking about in my bag that ds wil have as snack when we're out and about, he adores them !

He's 14 months old now so eting proper fruit too but i do love the pouches.

They are just fruit..nothing else on the ingredients.

EcoMouse · 23/02/2010 09:47

I find it sad that the mum doesn't have confidence in her cooking skills or that her skills might be limited. It looks like her child will have similar gaps in her life skills.

That I wasn't taught to cook at home has been one of my big frustrations (I left home knowing how to run a farm, stables and feed a variety of animals but not myself!).

I've self-taught and my DC's help with meals from very young ages. I think at the very least, a good practical understanding of food and cooking is so important.

WorzselMummage · 23/02/2010 09:48

fruit not veg... durr.

ShinyAndNew · 23/02/2010 09:50

I waited untill 6 months with dd2 and she just had what we had, but less of it and I stopped using salt in our cooking.

Dd1 had jars from 5 months, but at that time I wasn't eating myself. It was just me and her and I was living on toast and low fat yoghurts, so cooking wasn't practical. She does eat home cooking now, but she is very fussy. Although this was the same with the jars.

alypaly · 23/02/2010 09:53

was trying to imagine the flavour of veg and weetabix

WorzselMummage · 23/02/2010 09:54

Carrot and wheatabix might be quite nice !

Sprout and custard anyone ?

EcoMouse · 23/02/2010 09:55

These are great though

WorzselMummage · 23/02/2010 09:56

[thumbs up] !

Madsometimes · 23/02/2010 10:01

Both my dd's were very hard to wean. I used to make them homemade baby food, but they would not eat it. I gave them jars, and they rarely ate those either! They started to eat normally at about 1 year old. All my friend's children were desperate to move onto solids, but my dc preferred milk. However, they are perfectly normal children now, and their favourite meal is Sunday Roast.

SpicedGerkin · 23/02/2010 10:04

Why does it matter that she was young?

elliedodger · 23/02/2010 10:12

It is a shame that she isn't willing to try again. No child is going to like every single meal. I got raised on ready meals because my mum was convinced she didn't have time to cook. We even had microwave versions of things like pasta and tomato sauce which take no time to cook whatsoever. I was overweight as a child. I ended up teaching myself to cook healthy meals in my teens using Jamie Oliver and Delia books which I asked for as Christmas presents, and eventually started cooking for the whole family every night after school. Now I've moved out my mum survives on microwave meals again and is very overweight and always has a cold .

I think learning to cook is just about practice. Even if you only master a few recipes, it's better than ready made stuff which is full of salt and contains all sorts of things which interfere with your body. It makes me really sad to hear about kids who have to eat like that.

TottWriter · 23/02/2010 10:26

For me the sad thing is that the most defining thing about this mum is that she was 'young'. My mum was 30 when she had me, and thirty-five when she had her last child, and we were (all three of us) fed more and more on prepackaged and ready meals as we got older and she got lazier. Seriously, the most defining meals of my childhood were microwaved fishfingers with a heap of peas, and chicken nuggets with mixed veg, or oven chips cooked in the microwave. Sure, every noe and then she would try a bit harder, but it astonishes me to this day that my DP is more or less perfectly happy to prepare all of ours and DS's meals from scratch, including grinding of spices on occasion.

Yes, it's a shame that she is giving up on cooking for her child, but that should be the sum point of the AIBU. I was a week shy of my 21st when I gave birth, (guess what, an unplanned pregnancy six months into a relationship!) and I felt so intimidated going to groups at first thinking people were looking down on me for being a 'young mum' and not someone who had had a career etc first. It does make me a little sad to hear the phrase 'young mum' being associated with poor inadequate women who hjust don't have a clue. I know that's probably not what you meant, but it did come across that way.

Jamieandhismagictorch · 23/02/2010 10:28

thesecondcoming - you have voiced exactly how I felt when I was weaning DS1 about 9 years ago (thankyou for doing so non-judgmentally ).

I did have a lack of confidence - I felt bad that I had to have an EMCS, felt bad that I'd "failed" to breastfeed, and the jars were an extension of that. When I tried him on my own food, he did not like it, so I went to jars (I'm not a bad cook BT, unlike the mother in the OP)

I had more confidence by the time I had DS2, but he did not like to be fed, and so mainly had fingerfoods (lots of banana !).

DS1 was a very fussy eater - and I don't know when the jars were a cause or a symptom of that ....

Now, both DSs eat well and healthily.

GetOrfMoiLand · 23/02/2010 10:28

Tott you took the words out of my mouth.

There was a 'young mum' in inadeqacy mode thread yesterday.

It pissed me off. There is an assumption that young mums = benefits + incompetent + scumbag.

That is not the case.

PatsyStone · 23/02/2010 10:33

It matters that she's young because it means some people can express utter horror at how incapable she is, pity her poor child and feel uber smug at how they do everything perfectly just by virtue of not being a young mum (whatever that is).

Jamieandhismagictorch · 23/02/2010 10:33

Tottwriter - I was 30 when I had my first DS, so not young, as you say !

Also, something else occurs to me - do people think that these poncey pouch things appear somehow more "acceptable" than the jars ? It seems that way to me.

I still think most of what I gave DS1 was not unhealthy, but it had a texture which was more palatable to him. The problem, to me with some jars (eg pasta and other savoury dishes), is that it doesn't really taste like homemade food.

PatsyStone · 23/02/2010 10:34

oops I am slow and others put it less defensively than me

TottWriter · 23/02/2010 10:45

GOML - well, as it happens, I am a young mum on benefits, and I can be pretty incompetent at times, but that's another story altogether!

My DP does get a bit grumbly about how we're 'benefit scum' at times, but the fact is, he's my carer so can't work, and I lost my job due to epilepsy and then got stuck in limbo waiting for the ESA people to make their arbitrary descision as to whether or not I could work. As it happen I can, but they took so long we had concieved our second child by then (for age gap reasons), so now I'm doing some training while I wait to have this baby and then be a Teaching Assistant. Things are often a lot more complicated than they seem.

And actually, one of the main reasons DS hardly ever had the jars was that he's a fussy little sod and used to turn his nose up at them after the first spoonful. We've bred ourselves a proper little food snob.

Jamieandhismagictorch · 23/02/2010 10:49

Tott - yes, it's funny - I had friends who said they'd love to use jars, but the DC wouldn't eat them .....

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