One-year-old and Solids...

[esianoyam3]

It's been a while since I've posted anything. We've been extremely busy with building a house, and I've been in the process of starting a home based portrait business... Sorry. I'll try to start posting again! :)

Anyway, DD turns 1 year old on October 20th. After only having her 2 bottom teeth since 6 months of age, she's finally starting to get her 4 top teeth.

She has a major gag reflex... She can't do stage 3 foods, because the combination of liquid/solid food makes her throw up everything she's eaten...

She loves cheerios. She loves bread and crackers. She pretty much loves everything that she can suck to death. :) However, I can NOT get her to eat anything truly solid. I've tried very soft carrots cut into small pieces... I've tried really soft cooked noodles. Mashed potatoes make her gag... Everything I give her, she sticks out her tongue and tries to scrape the food off...

Any suggestions on how to get her to take to real solids? I don't want her to be eating stage 2 foods for the rest of her life! :) TIA!!

[Raidra]

Have you tried giving her pieces of fruit? Colwyn loves peaches, bananas, and any kind of melon. He also likes baked apples.

My only advice is to keep offering it to her, the same way you offer a new flavor repeatedly even if the baby doesn't like it at first.

Sorry. :)

[jubilee]

Wow, she does have a major gag reflex! Have you tried the Baby Safe Feeder? Perhaps the straining it does will give her the food without the texture... I've never tried one so I don't know for sure. It sure sounds like a challenge!

[momtoB]

Hi,
Actually it sounds like your dd eats better than my ds, who is 17-1/2 months old now (although he was 12 weeks early so his "adjusted age" by his due date is 15mos). We have been dealing with eating issues his whole life. First getting him to take a bottle, then trying to get him to breastfeed (never really did), then trying to get him to take regular baby food, which he was taking rather well up until his first teeth came in at 11 months old. When that happened, he started gagging on everything and stopped eating solids altogether - back to square one!

It has been so frustrating to say the least. I finally sought help from a pediatric speech therapist and we developed a "plan". One of the things she told me to do was get some NUK brushes for ds to use while he was eating. They're usually with the the toothbrushes in the baby aisle however the only store I have found anything like them (in my area) is at Babies R Us (their store brand). I found a pkg of 2 toothbrushes, 1 gum massager (like a toothbrush but instead of bristles, the head has little rubber bumps on one side and is flat on the other) and the "texture" brush that is very similar to a NUK brush which has a round head with rubber nubs all around it. All this description is just in case you can't find the actual NUK brand brushes like me! You can see the NUK brushes at http://www.beyondplay.com/ITEMS/T485.HTM so you know just what I'm talking about.

She also recommended I try BIG foods that are too big for ds to choke on like a large peeled carrot, large apple, frozen bagel. Problem with that is my ds managed to bite of a very small peice (the size of a pea) and would throw up anyway, but it sounds like your dd isn't quite as sensitive. My ds loves to try things but once the food is in the middle of his mouth he will gag on it.

Something else she has told me about that - if you can teach your dd to put the food along the sides of the mouth instead of in the middle she will be less likely to gag. I have tried demontrating to my ds (over-exagerating) and I have tried putting things in his mouth for him, which hasn't worked too well I might add! :( I'm open to suggestions from others on a better way to teach this 'skill'.

We also try to make his feeding times before he gets his next bottle (yes he's still on the bottle - another battle altogether!) so there is less in his tummy to throw up.

I hope some of this helps. Try not to worry too much at this point. It sounds like she's making progress and I think you wold probably be shocked to find out how common this actually is. I have found a lot of people online that have similar problems to my ds. At least I don't feel so alone now!

Cheryl
ds-4/21/03