Ex 29-weeker feeding issues. Any suggestions?
Our son was born at 29+3 and spent about 60 days in the NICU. He has been growing pretty well and is only slightly behind his adjusted age milestones. Currently he is 13 months (about 10.5ish months adjusted) One thing we are struggling really hard with though is feeding. He is very sensitive to textures and it’s preventing him from eating more than a teaspoon of food at a time (if that). It’s taking 30 minutes or more to even have him eat that much and we’ve been trying now for almost 6 months with no improvement. We are working with a speech therapist and she recently put in a referral for a dietitian due to his stalling. He is curious about food. If I offer him a smear of sauce or something smooth on my finger, he is happy to lick it off and keep having little tastes. But all hell breaks loose if we try to actually feed him. He wants to feed himself. He’ll grab the spoons from us, refuse to give them back without a fight (and then a meltdown), or throw them on the floor. He will bite his lip to prevent us from putting more purée in his mouth and hold any food he does have in his mouth until he gags and throws up. Dipping teething biscuits in purées or food doesn’t help (he just holds them) dipping toys doesn’t help (he throws them), giving him his own spoon only works for a minute or two until he wants the one I’m holding too. We’ve been offering him variety of options in addition to typical purées. I blended up some chili I made and he happily had a little bit of that until he didn’t like it anymore. I put potato salad through my ricer and he was eager for that until he wasn’t. Cottage cheese and scrambled eggs that we put into those little mesh bags for him to suck on were a hit, but again in very small quantities. He’ll suck on steamed broccoli, strawberries, bananas, and avocados if it’s in the mesh feeder bag thing, but won’t actually eat much. He does fine with his bottle but I’m worried by how much of a fight introducing solids has been. Has anyone else experienced this? What worked for you? Thanks so much for your help! via /r/NICUParents https://ift.tt/R5UKzE7