When you’ve got a child who won’t eat, everyone is full of advice and admonitions that it’s all normal. Which it is, in 99% of cases. Toddlers are insane creatures who want to live on tina wafers and air, with the occasional cracker or chicken nugget thrown in.
But Evelyn’s issues aren’t like that.
After a huge amount of success with our new therapies, we were working on getting her to eat enough at each meal. Slowly, the amounts were increasing from one teaspoon through to 100g, through to 150g, four times a day. Sure, mealtimes required more planning, a certain amount of structure and we had things we did that worked – but she was eating. Albeit, only smooth purees, but who cares? Anything can be blended.
But a week ago, Evelyn had a pain reaction during swallowing. All our work making food a safe fun thing, and our high chair a safe place went out the window. Evelyn doesn’t trust food. All my promises of “this won’t hurt” doesn’t mean a thing when neither of us believe it.
We don’t know why sometimes swallowing hurts. If we knew, maybe we could fix it.
So. Evelyn hasn’t been eating anything. Our medical team know about it, and they’re as upset at the big refusals as I am. Or maybe not as much as I am, because they don’t live with her. But they know, and they’re working on a plan.
It’s hard to not worry about her, and harder still not to obsess over everything she puts in her mouth.
Spoon food makes her gag violently at the moment, and spit it out frantically.
It’s hard, and I don’t know where we go from here. Current advice is to not push food, not to make a big deal out of it, and hopefully she’ll cut out the spoon refusal within the next week or so.
Until then, she’s eaten half a mouthful of watermelon today, and chewed on a variety of things that she didn’t deign to swallow.
How dare we expect her to nourish herself.
Sigh.
What a bugger 🙁
Ignore the following if you are not interested in advice (I know it gets irritating when everyone else is an expert), but will she lick things off her fingers? Like yoghurt, etc?
I really hope you can get back to where you were.
Does Evelyn still drink? You could whip up a variety of nutritious shakes maybe? Make them more liquid than thick. I hope this is resolved soonish and easily, pain on swallowing is a problem I’ve never heard about, (although I’ve had the odd panadol lodged in the throat when swallowing one too quickly and that’s painful), but I wouldn’t have thought it would happen with purees.
I really wish Eve and Q could have a competition. Or Eve would think eating a competition with Q. We’re absolutely swimming right along now. And I feel guilty when I want to message you about Q’s latest food conquest. How about I tell you we regained rolling onto her side today?
I wish I had a magic wand. But if I did, it’s likely the Interwebz would be contagious to balance things out now, wouldn’t it?
I will happily celebrate ALL Q’s food conquests and everything else with you. Don’t feel guilty at all!
We’re working on smoothies at the moment. She seems to like the novelty of a straw. She’s not taking much at a time, but calorie boosting a smoothie is easier than calorie boosting a sandwich.
I was thinking about shakes when river mentioned them, given that Eve likes ice cream. Straws are good! Riley drank out of a straw for 3 weeks when he busted up his mouth over his 9th birthday. Rootbeer floats instead of cake!
Q has decided that she doesn’t much care for her proteins, now that she’s getting fruits and veg. So, I hid her beef in her prunes today. 🙂 Also, prunes are our friend now that she’s not getting the Cellcept to keep things, um, loose, if you know what I mean.
Tomorrow, we try peas.
You have my sympathy. I had a small child who refused to eat after becoming ill with a virus. Don’t worry they told me,no child will willingly starve themselves. Ahem. She did not eat and seemed to fade away right in front of our eyes. She became a stick figure and I honestly thought we would lose her. I bribed her with anything she would put in her mouth. It took months and tons of hospital strength sustagen type stuff,bananas and ice cream.
Massive hugs
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