A mum reduced to tears on a daily basis due to her ''fussy'' child's refusal of food has written a recipe guide for other parents - after learning to disguise vegetables and "take the pressure off them both". Grace Mortimer, 29, was left in despair when her two-year-old, Harry, ate only toast and cheese - nothing else.
The mum-of-one even deleted Facebook as she couldn't bear to see pictures of other kids having healthy meals. She would spend sleepless nights scouring the internet for advice but found articles "too distressing" and "felt a failure" after seeing other parents posting about their toddler's ''fancy'' meals.
In his first year of eating, Harry, now six, was quite adventurous but in January 2018, before turning two, his fussiness began to show. After many attempts to get her son to eat fruit and vegetables, Grace finally turned a corner when Harry was three, after she decided to simplify the cooking process and relax her approach to mealtimes.
Looking back on the terrible time she'd had, Grace, realised she was in a great place to help other parents with fussy eaters. The former saleswoman from Gloucester, said: "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. 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!" When Harry first became a fussy eater, aged two, Grace turned to her partner who reassured her ''it was just a phase''.
But Grace found it hard to believe due to the stress of Harry's constant refusal to vary his diet. Grace said: "My partner was really supportive, but he's more pragmatically inclined than me.
"He'd try and reassure me but I found it hard because he wasn't seeing the food Harry was wasting whilst he was at work. I had 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." In 2018, with Harry only eating cheese and toast, Grace couldn't handle seeing other parents posting about their toddler's meals and she deleted her Facebook.
Grace said: "Deleting 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. If felt that if I couldn't see it, it wouldn't affect me.
"Don't get me wrong, social media can be amazing, I've been able to build my business from it. But I make sure that the content I produce is realistic."
Grace would spend hours each week preparing food for the tot but he'd barely touch it and would become restless. She created elaborate meals such as healthy bean burgers and complicated vegetable pasta dishes - only to be met with distain from her tiny tot.
In March 2018 Grace decided that she had to strip things back by taking the pressure off the situation and letting her young son try things when he was ready. When Harry 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 said: "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 coming back to it, helped him understand that this was the food on offer and we're not going to waste it.''
After just one month, much to her relief, Grace saw improvements in Harry's eating. "As soon as I relaxed, Harry did too and he started eating what I was giving him,'' she explained.
"The first real breakthrough was a cheese and bean patty that I made out of cupboard staples and he still loves them now. Then I'd try disguising foods like grating carrot into a spag bol and again, with more perseverance, he'd eat it.
"I just 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 habit was world's away from their past struggles.
He was even eating olives, something that remains a firm favourite to this day. Grace said: "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 hopes to help others.
April 2020 Grace posted her first recipe, a curry, on her Instagram page. Six weeks later she had built a following of 15k.
The author said: "I thought, if I could just help one parent, it would be worth it but I never thought it would reach such an audience. 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 also see parents corresponding in the comments section which is the best. It's like a community of real parents supporting each other.
"I never use filters on my posts. I am 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."
With Grace's Instagram going from strength to strength, she has over 160k followers and in August 2022, she released a recipe collection with Victory Leisure Homes titled A Recipe For A Summer To Remember. Grace released her first book, My First Meals soon after, which features all of her easy, five-ingredient recipes.
Grace said: "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. Looking back I'm grateful for hardship because without it, I wouldn't be here.
"To any parents out there, just remember you're doing everything right. That is something I wish I had told myself more."
