AFTER yet another dinnertime of tears and tantrums, Grace Mortimer had reached breaking point.
The mum-of-one, 29, from Gloucester, struggled to get her two-year-old son Harry to eat anything but cheese on toast.
Sleepless nights were spent scouring the internet for advice – but she’d often come away feeling worse after seeing post after post from other parents sharing their toddler’s “fancy meals”.
Grace got to the point where she deleted Facebook as it made her feel like a failure.
She endured months of stress, but finally turned a corner after Harry hit three in March 2018, when she made one simple change to her approach to mealtimes.
After just one month, much to her relief, Grace saw improvements in Harry’s eating – and she’s now written a recipe guide to help other anxious parents.
ON PARENTING
She says: “I’d made expectations about how he should be when it came to food and I was frustrated.
“As a new parent, you’re barely getting any sleep but with Harry’s fussiness, I would have sleepless nights of either lying awake thinking or scrolling.
“I was constantly worried he wasn’t getting the right nutrients. There were times when I was beside myself, it was all I could think about, the stress was ridiculous.
“We were both left in tears most mealtimes, it was relentless.
“We muddled through it though – and looking back, I learnt so much!”
In his first year of eating Harry, now six, was quite adventurous.
But in January 2018, before turning two, his fussiness began to show.
Former saleswoman Grace says: “It happened overnight and he went from being excited with any food put in front of him to refusing everything.
“He’d throw it out of his hands and get really cross. Like adults, toddlers have days when they’re not hungry but it was happening too much.
“I was bewildered as I didn’t know what was causing it.”
Grace turned to her partner, who told her “it was just a phase”, but she found it hard to believe due to the stress of Harry’s constant refusal to vary his diet.
She would spend hours every week preparing elaborate meals such as healthy bean burgers and vegetable pasta dishes, but he would barely touch it and became restless.
Grace recalls: “My partner was really supportive, of course, but he’s more pragmatically inclined than me.
Harry went from being excited with any food put in front of him to refusing everything. He’d throw it out of his hands and get really cross
Grace Mortimer
“I found it hard because he wasn’t seeing the food Harry was wasting whilst he was at work.”
In 2018, with Harry only eating cheese on toast, Grace couldn’t handle seeing other parents posting about their toddler’s meals and she deleted her Facebook account.
Grace admits: “It was a simple fix because it didn’t make me feel good when someone would post the lovely varied food they were feeding their child.
“I felt that if I couldn’t see it, it wouldn’t affect me!”
In March 2018 Grace decided to strip things back by taking the pressure of the situation and letting Harry try things when he was ready.
When he showed no signs of wanting to eat what was in front of him, she’d put the food aside for later and read Harry a book or put him in the bath.
Grace says: “I had to remove the pressure from both of us because when I was stressing about his eating, it would affect him too.
“Letting him take a breather and then come back to it helped him understand that this was the food on offer and we’re not going to waste it.
“As soon as I relaxed, Harry did too and he started eating what I was giving him.
“The first real breakthrough was a cheese and bean patty that I made out of cupboard staples and he still loves them now!”
After a month of improvement, Grace began “disguising” food, such as grating carrot into a spag bol.
Again, with more perseverance, he’d eat it.
She says: “I kept introducing new things into his diet and kept trying because you’ve got to introduce as many flavours as you can when they’re young.
“A couple of months later I tried him with a curry thinking it would be too much of a step but he loved it.
“I kept a book of all the recipes that I’d tried to track our progress.”
By July 2019 Harry’s eating was worlds away from their past struggles – he was even eating olives, which remain a firm favourite to this day.
Grace says: “To think that his favourite food is olives is just amazing considering I couldn’t get him to eat anything non-beige.
“Most importantly, he’s a little boy who loves food – just as he should.”
During lockdown Grace thought about how she could document the progress and recipes she’d found most helpful in the hope of helping others.
In April 2020 she posted her first recipe, a curry, on her Instagram page, My First Meals – and within six weeks she had a following of 15,000.
“I thought, if I could just help one parent, it would be worth it but I never thought it would reach such an audience!” she says.
“I was getting messages from other parents – one of the first ones that I still remember was a mum saying she’d given her daughter a margarita fritter and she’d wolfed it down so fast that she wanted to cry with relief.
I thought, if I could just help one parent, it would be worth it but I never thought it would reach such an audience
Grace Mortimer
“I also see parents corresponding in the comments section which is the best – it’s like a community of real parents supporting each other.”
Grace ensures the content she shares is realistic and never uses filters.
She says: “I’m very real with my followers because social media can sometimes just be a highlight, not the full picture, which is what I found so tough back then.”
Grace now has over 160,000 followers and in August 2022, she released a recipe collection with Victory Leisure Homes A Recipe For A Summer To Remember.
Soon after she released her first book, My First Meals, which features all her easy, five-ingredient recipes.
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Grace says: “After nearly a year in the works, it was a real ‘pinch me moment’!
“To have a book full of recipes that mean so much to my family is just amazing – I hope it helps parents out there because a problem shared is a problem halved.”
