Okay. So I called and got an appointment for Morella's follow up Barium swallow study. Apparently it's a popular time to get follow ups (it's what she said) and so her appointment is December 3rd. She'll be over a year at that point. She said it was six weeks out. That sounds like nothing compared to saying Morella will be a year old.
Sigh.
Anyway. She gave me a regime for Morella to follow because she isn't eating much. I know it's probably what most of you already do...but my feeling is that it happened naturally for everyone else. Maybe it didn't, but you know that's how I feel. I never read about other folks struggles to get their kids to eat. Please, share with me this struggles.
From now on I have to offer Morella food for 20 minutes and follow up with a bottle.
Breakfast - Food, for 20 min. Followed by bottle.
Snack 1 - Snack with sippy cup.
Lunch - Food for 20 min. Followed by bottle.
Snack 2 - Snack with sippy cup
Dinner - Food, for 20 min. Followed by bottle.
What do I do for bedtime? Sippy or bottle? Crap.
I just go so anxious about this because Morella is already 5-7% on the weight percentile. On the other hand, she won't gain much if she only drinks milk, I will never get to stop to pumping, and she will continue to not eat. This just goes beyond what the books say -- which was to offer her food (about an hour?) after she has a bottle...right? Didn't I read that?
For the record I do offer her food before a bottle for lunch -- but then the doctor said she it's a learned thing and it's going to take more than that because some babies need a little extra help in this.
Why can't Morella NOT have feeding issues? I kind of wish I could send her off to Feeding Camp and have someone else get this routine started. I feel like a lot of frustration and crying is going to happen on both our ends.
Three bottles? THREE? Is that enough? She said she was getting too much milk and too often and therefore wasn't hungry. How thick does the sippy cup liquid have to be? Are we talking sippy cup milk or juice? What do people do?
*hyperventilates*
What if she doesn't eat?! What if I end up starving her to death? She gets dehydrated? What if... gah!
posted by hadjare @ 12:37 PM
3 Comments:
I read bottle/milk *after* offering food, at least while baby is learning to like solids. The exception would be in the morning or after a long nap when the baby is frantically hungry and thirsty and won't take kindly to messing with solids. Then it's okay to take the edge off with a few nips of milk.
I'd stay with the bottle at bedtime until she's really comfortable with a sippy.
We only gave Ruth juice when she was first learning to use a sippy (she liked the sweetness, so it encouraged her to sip) -- or when we knew she'd be fussy and would take more kindly to a sippy full of juice than whole milk. We always kept the juice intake to under 4 oz/day, and we only offered it in a half-juice/half-water blend.
Now she gets juice very rarely. She drinks whole milk just fine. It's better for her because of the high fats and low sugar content.
Morella likes your milk, so might as well leave juice out of the sippy training as much as you can. It couldn't hurt to let her try it so you can offer it in emergencies, though.
The doctor's schedule sounds reasonable. 20 minutes seems a little long, but make yourself comfortable with a meal of your own and a magazine while Morella putters with her food. It may inspire her if she sees you sitting down and eating.
If you're looking for happy baby fingerfoods to try, I recommend grape chunks, banana chunks, string cheese chunks, Kix cereal, Cheerios. If you'll be feeding her purees, the stronger stuff (green beans, meats) can be mixed with plain yogurt to be more palatable. But there are plenty of more pleasant purees she may enjoy early in the game. Think sweet: sweet potatoes, applesauce, pears, strawberry banana stuff. She shouldn't live on sweet stuff, but it will help her learn to enjoy eating things other than bottle milk.
Good luck!
SECP
SECP -- Thanks for all the advice and encouragement. It turns out that 20 minutes isn't actually that long (well it seemed that long this morning because she was unwilling to try her breakfast bar .. at all). I am not sure what to do about the purees because we kind of gave up on them months ago. She doesn't like spoon feeding, and will pretty much only eat if she can feed herself. So we embraced baby led weaning. ;)
Do they get better at eating banana chunks? I have been leaving a little skin on it so that she has a "handle" And yesterday took several bites from it. I like the string cheese idea, she loves string cheese. I have to make a trip to the grocery store today to get easier breakfast options. RIght now all of our instant oatmeal has cinnamon or maple in it and she just doens't seem to like those. The orginal pediatrician had once recommened cream of fruit type oatmeals, so I guess we are going to try that. I can imagine the mess. EMBRACE the mess.
Where do you get your full body suit bibs?
The bibs are from Kushies:
http://www.kushiesonline.com/Bibs-s/12.htm
Our first two were from my old college roommate, who said, "this looks like a boring gift, but you'll see."
We ordered our next four from the Kushies site.
They're almost a perfect bib concept, but they're a challenge to keep clean and fresh. I wash them in the sink with a drop of dish detergent then let them dry for several hours or overnight. I launder them on warm with Ruth's clothes when I remember, then hang to dry. You could probably put them in with cloth diaper loads, though I'm not sure how they'd stand up to hot water.
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