At a loss...

Pam is back to her old tricks again. By old tricks, I mean not eating. We've been making a habit out of getting together the first Monday of every month for a little shopping date. It's the one time during the month that we will definitely get together, but we do try to get together more if the schedules allow for it.

For some reason Pam didn't cook before Abbey was born. She couldn't do her job (construction) for obvious reasons while pregnant, so she was a stay-at-home-wife for the better part of a year before Abbey was born. During that entire year she would go on and on about how she didn't have time to clean, didn't have time to cook, didn't have time to e-mail...the list goes on and on.

Now many times I had to struggle to be tactful with my responses being that I work a 40+ hour work week and still find time to clean, cook a complete dinner 5-6 days/week and keep in touch with friends. But over time I've come to realize that she doesn't cope with stress as well as the average person does, and that while I have learned to thrive (or at least survive) in stressful situations, she does not.

Her situation has steadily gotten worse now that she has the baby to take care of. I've been trying to help her by suggesting meal planning (don't know how I could survive without it), and sending her recipes that she can pop in the slow cooker, and some quick cook-it-in-30-minutes-recipes. Short of making food and shoving it in her freezer, I don't know how else to help her.

On Monday she confided that she hasn't cooked a meal in the three months since Abbey was born. She also confided that either she doesn't eat during the day, or she will have a bowl of Vector (meal replacement cereal) for dinner. I honestly don't know how she gets out of bed every morning. The public health nurse has told her that she needs to start eating more. The nurse suggested keeping some pre-cut fruits and vegetables in the fridge to snack on and keeping some convenience pre-cooked meals in the freezer to just pop in the oven. The only problem is that I don't think she will do this. The other problem is her husband is never home during the week (workaholic) and when he's home on the weekends he doesn't really cook.

I worry about the short term affects on her (and the baby) because she is not eating a balanced diet (0r at all) and the long term affects on Abbey having a mother who has such an unhealthy relationship with food.

The silver lining to all of this is that in spite of it all Abbey is a happy, alert, well nourished 13.7 lb baby girl. She is so cute, and now will smile and laugh when I visit her. Amazingly enough she hasn't played strange the times that I have seen her. Here is a picture of her that I took on Monday while we had stopped for a coffee:

(sorry it's a little blurry, I was testing out the camera on my blackberry)

We're planning to get together with Pam and her husband for our first couples "date" since Abbey was born on Saturday so hopefully I'll have some more news to share after the weekend.