Birthday cake and not wanting to make a thing of it

What I found hardest was the smell of cooking during the first two months. I was making food I could not be in the room with.

Somebody in this circle said that children notice how you talk about food more than what you eat, and I have thought about that constantly since.

I batch cook on a Sunday and it has been the single most useful habit. On the days I have nothing, there is something.

What I have been careful about is not making my eating a topic at the table. My children do not need a running commentary on any of this.

I cook one meal and eat a smaller portion of it, and I stopped making myself something separate at about month three because it was unsustainable.

The evening meal was the hard one. Everybody else hungry at six and me not hungry until nine, and it took a year to find a workable shape.

Bookmarking this. Thank you.

Something I got right was not changing anything about what my children eat. This is mine and it does not need to become theirs.

My eldest asked me directly what I was doing and I gave a short, honest, boring answer, and it has never come up again.

I read this twice. The second time was for the last paragraph.

Cooking for a household while my own appetite had gone somewhere else was the practical problem nobody had prepared me for.

My experience is that the logistics settled at about six months and everything since has been ordinary parenting, which is difficult enough on its own.

What I got wrong was trying to keep everything exactly as it was during the hardest fortnight. Something had to give and it should not have been me.

Reading Pip, I recognised more of that than I expected to.

Something practical: my medication lives somewhere the children cannot reach and everybody in the house knows where and why.

I have deliberately kept family meals unchanged. Same food, same time, same table, and my portion is my business.