At her 6 month appointment our pediatrician suggested that I stop nursing and ONLY offer the bottle. That way she learns she will ONLY get the bottle. I did not agree with this approach because knowing Adisyn she will NEVER accept the bottle from me. Then what do I do? In addition, the kids and I are still living at my mother-in-laws and we are all sharing room. With Adisyn’s multiple nighttime wake ups I do not want her crying and waking up the household while I’m off in the kitchen making a bottle.
I made an appointment with another pediatrician in the office who I like very much and she was also the on-call doctor who saw Adi after birth. She was wonderful and spent some time with me talking about Adisyn and shared some great ideas on ways to get her to eat. Since Adisyn is struggling to take in solids she feels it is even more important that I continue to breastfeed. She explained it is completely normal for Adisyn to choose who she will take a bottle from. All my sitter can do is offer the bottle or other feeding techniques to get BM and food in her. It’s Adisyn’s job to eat.
The doctor said that if Adisyn is still rejecting puree food after 3 ½ months then she will probably never eat them at this point. She suggested that we go straight to soft table foods. I went over my fear of Adisyn choking. I’ve recently read a story about a 3 year old dying from choking on a hotdog and my anxiety level is pretty high. The pediatrician really calmed my fear about choking. She told me as long as Adisyn is getting air (if she starts gagging) to let her be. Let her figure it out and intervening will only drag it on longer. She also went over what to do if she truly starts to choke and cannot breathe.
Our “homework” for the next two weeks is to offer the following foods, some in which she has had before:
~frozen puree (with BM) in mesh feeder
~watermelon or other solid fruits in mesh feeder
~shredded cheese
~soft mashed peas
~rice cakes
*water from sippy cup without valve
*With the valve she won’t learn cause and effect. Once she realizes something is coming out of it she may start drinking from it.
Yesterday had success! Adisyn had a Mum-Mum (rice cake), watermelon from the mesh feeder and some banana. I pulled some small pieces from a banana and she sucked it off my finger and was excited for more! I definitely feel this is the right approach for Adisyn and I’m very excited about it!
Here are a few pictures of her eating her rice cake. (Excuse the quality – they were taken from my phone)
NOM NOM
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