Learning as I go

Eating. *sigh* It's like one amazing step forward and two giant stumbles back. 

This morning I tried a soy smoothie for Miss Belle. My whole goal is to get her off formula in the next few months if I can. I just have to work at maintaining her weight. Usually for breakfast Lily has a combination or medicines + juice and then 30 minutes later has 8oz of soy formula. 

This morning we did our usual medicine cocktail+juice and then I mixed a whole container of peach soy yogurt (100 calories!) with soy milk, shook it up and handed it to her. One of my fears was that the taste would be too off and my other fear was that it would be too thick to get through the sippy spout. But, no worries! She sucked it down in no time and even paused to eat two cheerios! I think shaking the cup made the yogurt and milk mix enough that they weren't too thick. I'm going to add some apple puree or some other fruits to it in the future to get more calories and stuff as much nutrients in it as I can.

So, overall...Big hit!

Then came lunch. Yes, lunch had been the best part of my day. Watching my little food refuser stuff food happily in her mouth was such a big accomplishment!

And then, all of a sudden it was like we hit a wall. Maybe it's teething. Who knows. All I know is that she is now still stuffing food into her mouth but unwilling to swallow it. She just sits there with these chipmunk cheeks full of food! I've tried offering her a toy cup of water and that didn't help. 

Today I had a little temper tantrum and after shamelessly yelling at my daughter with her mouth full of food (that SHE put there!) I just threw my hands up, got her a little bit more milk and handed it to her. I was not going to risk my fingers again trying to dig out her food. That girl can seriously cause some harm with those chompers! 

I tried to reasonably explain that she can drink the milk and it will help her move food around and get her to swallow. And what do you know? It worked. So now I'm thinking, maybe I can measure out her usual 9oz of soy milk beforehand and just offer her 2oz at a time between mouthfuls. Otherwise she'll just drink it all (like today.) 

Lily didn't want anything else after that but I offered her some sweet potato fries I was eating for lunch and then shrugged my shoulders and handed her a crust of my grilled cheese. And another surprise? She sat there chewing on it! She held the crust, put it up to her lips and chewed (cautiously, at first) on it and even got a lot into her mouth! I was very impressed and kept thinking, Am I not letting her have enough freedom with food? I don't know about that. But I think we may try peanut butter and jelly tomorrow and see what results that gets us. The soft bread might be an obstacle. I'll probably go heavy on the jelly and light on the PB to keep things easier. We'll see.

Anyway, with the grilled cheese bits held in her mouth I just went ahead and "rewarded" her with a bit more water. Which helped everything go down. Overall she had quite a bit to drink but she also skipped her usual water between breakfast and lunch so I guess it kind of evened out? 

Everyday is an adventure with this eating/not eating challenge. It certainly keeps me on my toes. I do hate when I lose my cool though. It's hard to be mad at her when she doesn't even know what she's doing wrong. It's worse because I don't know why she can't swallow or why it's so hard for her to chew or why she only wants to eat at lunch. I wish someone had some answers for us.