Since she figured out solids at the end of last year, Talia has been fantastic, eating all sorts of homecooked meat and veg. She had started to catch up with her weight and all was going well… until now.

A week or maybe a little longer ago, she started objecting to receiving food on a spoon, pushing it away with her hands and turning her head to the side. With a bit of ingenuity (”say aaah Talia!”) I could get a spoonful in, and after carefully digesting this first mouthful with all the seriousness of a wine connoisseur judging expensive shiraz (up to but not including the spitting out stage), she would then allow me to feed her the rest of the meal.

I thought I had it all under control until the beginning of this week, when she decided that not even the first spoonful would be considered acceptable, under any circumstances. It has been very difficult to deal with, as I don’t want mealtimes to be a fight, but I can’t let her go without a healthy diet. It’s not that she won’t eat – just that she won’t allow herself to be fed. It wouldn’t matter so much if she was older and able to use a spoon, but at the moment she will only accept a limited range of finger foods – and they are subject to change without warning. Savoury pikelets were a hit on Tuesday but thrown out of the high chair on Wednesday. Raisin toast has come back into favour, as have avocado finger sandwiches, but baked ricotta is now out and her acceptance of random veges appears to depend entirely on her mood, the phase of the moon and whether or not the wind is blowing from the west.

This is the sort of point where you realise that being a mother is a full time job and then some.

The bottom drawer of our freezer (we have an “upside-down” fridge) belongs to Talia. It’s full of plastic tubs containing ice-cube-sized portions of stewed fruit, mashed veg, pulverised chicken, flakes of fish in cheese sauce etc. Wedged in the middle of this oyster of solids was a little pearl – the last remaining bottle of my frozen expressed breast milk (EBM).

I’ve rambled at length about the ups and downs of milk production. It wasn’t easy, but it was worth it. I wanted to do more, but now I’m happy that I did as much as I could. If I had to do it all over again, I would. So what’s the story with this bottle of EBM? Talia stopped breastfeeding exclusively last October, and ceased completely at the end of January. It’s now the end of March. This bottle of liquid gold was dated 21/6/07 – the day before Talia came home from hospital. This bottle of milk has reigned, happy and glorious, over the bottom drawer of the freezer for NINE months, as one by one all the other bottles (older) and baggies (younger) of EBM were defrosted and used up. (Don’t worry, my freezer is cold enough that it was safe to keep it longer than the usually recommended three months). This bottle was a testament to my hours of expressing but also a life-line which I had clung to for months in case of emergency, but which was no longer needed now that Talia is healthy and happy with formula and solids.

So last Thursday, a week after Talia’s first birthday, I liberated this vintage bottle from its cryogenic home and defrosted it. On Saturday, Talia’s bottles were half formula and half EBM, the final instalment of my first gift to her. It doesn’t usually happen, but she completely finished every bottle. That night we both went to sleep satisfied.

I browse a number of websites for parents of premature babies, and the topic of “when should I start my premature baby on solids” comes up time and again. Some people believe you should go by corrected age, others feel that actual age is appropriate because prem babies are digesting milk from very soon after birth. However, regardless of which side you take, the fact remains that if your baby is not ready to eat, no amount of coaxing and saying “yum, yum!” is going to help.

When Talia was not thriving on just breast milk, I consulted the lactation consultants from the NICU, who suggested I start Talia on solids at 4 months corrected (7 months actual) rather than offer formula. What a joke! Talia was nowhere near ready to start, and my efforts only ended in frustration for me and bewilderment for for my baby. In contrast, she took to the formula like it was nectar of the gods.

Time passed, and every few days or so I would patiently offer up a spoonful of Farex. Perhaps if I’d tried it myself I might have realised how unlikely Talia was to ever show any interest in it. Her expressions of disgust said it all.

I lovingly cooked up pear, sweet potato and pumpkin, pureed it and froze it into ice cubes. I could sneak a smidgeon past her lips – but no more and no further. I expanded the repertoire to include apple, carrot and potato, and suddenly she would eat a cube, and I would think “yes, we are making progress”… but then she would reject the exact same fruit or vegetable the following day.

Somewhere around 6 months corrected (9 months actual) Talia started to accept about 1-2 cubes per day. I had a hit with pumpkin and avocado, figured out how to put peas and corn through the sieve and was starting to feel I was making progress, although it was hardly going to put any weight on her compared to the formula, and her tongue reflex was still strong, so I was spooning in food then having it pushed straight back out again, even when she seemed to enjoy the flavour.

Then, at almost 7 months, something clicked for Talia. Maybe it was when I started to blend more flavours, maybe it was the introduction of roast chicken or maybe it was just the way the planets were aligned, but suddenly she wanted MORE FOOD and she wanted it NOW.

In the last week, Talia has eaten 3 or 4 meals a day, including at least 2 with meat and veg. (She seems to prefer this to fruit, either mashed with milk, with farex or with yoghurt). She demands to be fed, and leans forward with mouth open to take the next spoonful. It goes in and it stays in – and the proof is in the pudding, so to speak. I had her weighed on Monday and she’d put on 405g in 2 weeks. Not bad for a baby who regularly put on only 30g/week on breastmilk.

I feel as if a difficult chapter of Talia’s journey – the section where I worried myself to the point of depression about her lack of weight gain – is finally over. At the same time, our breastfeeding routine has dropped down to one feed per day, first thing in the morning. Its days are numbered, and I feel a tinge of sadness that this part of our relationship will soon be over, but I am happier to let it go knowing that Talia is making progress in other areas.