Feeding Taylor update

Feeding Taylor has been very frustrating these last couple of weeks. He refuses to eat anything from a spoon unless he has toys to play with, and even then it is still difficult. He eats some finger foods, but only the crunchy kinds, which do not have a lot of calories and are not very healthy. He occasionally eats foods that we load up with calories, like bread dipped in butter and fruits soaked in cream. Who does that??? Well, we do!!! We’ll worry about getting Taylor to eat healthy foods when he can afford to do it.

We used to take Taylor to our family doctor, but she was not very helpful. This is how our conversations went:
Me: I am very concerned about Taylor not gaining weight. What can I do to help him?
Dr X: You could try to feed him more formula.
Me: I’ve tried that, but if I try to get him to eat more than he wants, he just gets upset or throws up.
Dr X: You could try to feed him more often, like 6 to 7 times a day.
Me: I’ve tried that, too, but he doesn’t eat anymore that he normally would. He just eats smaller portions.
Dr X: Well let’s try that again and see how it goes.
(Me: So basically you are no idea what to do and you are setting me up for failure.)

Since then we have transferred Taylor to a pediatrician. He was so much more helpful from the first visit:
Me: I am very concerned about Taylor not gaining weight. What can I do to help him?
Dr Y: Have you tried to add calories to what you are already giving him? You could add a tablespoon of heavy cream in his formula or cook foods with lots of oil and butter. And if you are still concerned I could refer you to a feeding specialist.

So this week I took Taylor to a feeding specialist while Billy watched Logan.

During the evaluation, the therapist noticed that Taylor did a great job on:
- eating hard crunchy solids
- trying and eating a pancake (which he hasn’t done since)
- showed a good acceptance of the highchair and mealtime
- drank from the straw easily
- touched a variety of foods
In the next couple of weeks, she would like him to:
- eat larger amounts of food to help with growth
- eat more textures and purees without needing distractions
- accept purees off the spoon by leaning in
- become stronger at his mouth to increase his confidence with many food textures
So what I need to do is:
- offer hard meltables (crunchy foods) to target chewing and tongue strength
- offer him a spoon dipped in the puree for him to “play with”
- jazz up his foods with spices/seasonings or change the temperature

I believe there are two reasons for Taylor’s refusal to eat from a spoon, (1) he wants to be more independent and, (2) I sometimes encouraged him to eat more than he wanted.

So now he wants to be independent and feed himself, which is okay, but the only foods he will eat are crunchy and low in calories, which is not okay. I don’t think I’m a control-freak, but when it comes to feeding Taylor, I have had a really hard time letting go of my control over what and how much he eats during feedings. Hopefully by continuing to place foods high in calories on his tray, he will eventually touch them, play with them, bring them to his lips, and eat them.

I wish I could go back to when I first introduced solids. If I hadn’t encouraged him to eat just 5 more spoonfuls, maybe now he wouldn’t have such a dislike for anything coming from a spoon. If I hadn’t distracted him with toys so that he would eat, maybe now he would feel in control even when I’m the one holding the spoon to his mouth. All I can do now is try to reintroduce a new way to eat solids, where he decides whether he wants to eat and how much he wants to eat.

In the next few weeks, I hope that Taylor will be okay eating from a spoon again, with a sense of control over whether and how much he eats, and without a need to have toys as distractions. I also hope that he will be willing to try out new foods that will help him to gain the pounds that he needs to put on. And finally I hope that mealtimes will become more pleasurable for him and for me.

This little guys is so dang cute that he makes it all worth it!