The past three and a half years have been an emotional journey with food. It is amazing how something you take for granted can take over your life in the blink of an eye. My "blink", was the birth of my first child. My beautiful baby was born healthy, engaging and wise beyond his newborn life.
As a Mom your first job after delivery is to snuggle, love and feed your newborn, but what happens when that newborn finds stress and pain from eating? Well...little did we know, that was the start of our 3 1/2 year struggle. Nursing was clearly not working for my baby as he would arch his back, scream and look at me as though I was trying to hurt him. Next step, bottle feeding. He couldn't have seemed less interested in eating, so we resorted to sleep feeding and dealt with the spit up or fussiness that would come to follow.
At 4 months old, he stopped eating all together! My child's doctor actually had the nerve to say it is normal and not to worry!!! I was flabbergasted, because for weeks all I could get him to eat was 1 bottle per day and he had to be asleep to eat it...the doctor said "it's normal for children to have periods where they don't eat as much"...really?!?! Eventually I was worn out because he was incredibly fussy, gassy, constipated, not eating but appearing hungry, not sleeping, and never wanting to be laid flat or put down. Finally, we got in to see another doctor in our HMO network, who "Googled" an answer! In front of us, the doctor actually brought Google on his computer and typed in the symptoms and said...well, looks like he has acid reflux. They began medicating him for acid reflux at 5 months old. It helped a little, but he was still drinking a milk based formula. I decided to continue my own research for answers, and found that dairy is incredibly difficult to process for babies so I switched him to a lactose free formula with rice starch added; mind you, my doctors never once discussed with me different formulas. Once we made the switch he began to feel and look much better.
We also had to introduce foods much earlier than I had desired due to his lack of calories from formula consumption. He loved food...at first.
But all good things come to an end and by 10 1/2 months he began to get very picky about his foods and stopped drinking formula all together. I approached the doctors again and they told me that there is no magic age to start regular whole milk, so why don't I give that a shot. I stuck with the lactose free and he seemed to be somewhat interested but continued to eat enough to subside hunger and then stop eating, and go play. He began developing eczema on his body with the more foods he ate, and then at 18 months his eyes began swelling shut when we would go outside on a high pollen day, and so I contacted the doctors again about my concern for allergies and they said he was too young to have developed them and it must have been a fluke. Over the next year and a half his food selection slowly dwindled down to yogurt, bread like items and crackers. His constipation increased and as his verbal skills developed to be able to tell me his tummy and throat hurt. He would only eat when he was starving, and would often gag or throw up his food. At daycare he would eat bites of what he saw his peers eating, but would only sometimes eat breakfast, he would snack on and off all day with only taking a few bites at a time, and take a couple bites of dinner. By September of 2011, I had spoken with the doctors more times than I could count. I had switched to several different doctors within the HMO network. His constipation was horrible and he would only have a bowel movement every 7 days (usually every Sunday when we were home because it was so painful and cause extreme anxiety).
The bowel movement was baseball size and rock hard, which caused lesions and bleeding. By day 5 of his constipation he would ball up, lay around on the couch all day and refuse to eat. Day 6 was crying and hiding under tables for hours, and day 7 was the worst, but eventually result in a bowel movement. The doctors told me "it's normal" and "give him Miralax"...he refused Miralax because of the texture (I disguised it in any kind of liquid you could think of), and he had refused it since the age of one when they began telling me to do this...I expressed this several times to the doctors and their response was to withhold any food until he took it...hmmm...withholding food from a child who could care less about food and I could barely get to eat...does that seem like a great solution? No! I would not do this, this seemed like a horrible idea! My frustration was mounting and desperation was kicking in. By some blessing, I ended up having a parent in my Kindergarten class that was a Naturopath and I discussed the issue with her. She suggested the removal of dairy, then gluten, and the addition of a daily high strength probiotic (HMF Powder by Genestra). , and of course the food preferences worsened down to only eating yogurt-like consistencies, crackers or white bread. In November 2011, I was fed up with our HMO and their lack of knowledge so I demanded a referral over to a specialty hospital designed for pediatrics. This got the ball rolling and eventually in January of 2012 we had our first appointment! The doctor listened to me, and all I wanted to do was cry, because I was finally finding people who cared about my child and wanting to help me. At my first visit the doctor ordered an allergy test, and guess what...we learned he was allergic to dairy, wheat/gluten, soy, peanut, and egg! I immediately removed all of his allergens from his diet and did a GI tract cleaning per doctors recommendation; the doctor felt his tummy and his whole large intestine was full of poop...on the 3rd day of cleaning he began eliminating white balls of chalk like substance, which turned out to be petrified poop (alarming for sure). I also took time off of work to stay home and care for him, and began the doctor recommended referral process for feeding therapy/sensory integration. What took us 3 1/2 years to get help with has snowballed into a solution within a month and a half...needless to say we have switched insurance companies! We have
As a Mom your first job after delivery is to snuggle, love and feed your newborn, but what happens when that newborn finds stress and pain from eating? Well...little did we know, that was the start of our 3 1/2 year struggle. Nursing was clearly not working for my baby as he would arch his back, scream and look at me as though I was trying to hurt him. Next step, bottle feeding. He couldn't have seemed less interested in eating, so we resorted to sleep feeding and dealt with the spit up or fussiness that would come to follow.
The bowel movement was baseball size and rock hard, which caused lesions and bleeding. By day 5 of his constipation he would ball up, lay around on the couch all day and refuse to eat. Day 6 was crying and hiding under tables for hours, and day 7 was the worst, but eventually result in a bowel movement. The doctors told me "it's normal" and "give him Miralax"...he refused Miralax because of the texture (I disguised it in any kind of liquid you could think of), and he had refused it since the age of one when they began telling me to do this...I expressed this several times to the doctors and their response was to withhold any food until he took it...hmmm...withholding food from a child who could care less about food and I could barely get to eat...does that seem like a great solution? No! I would not do this, this seemed like a horrible idea! My frustration was mounting and desperation was kicking in. By some blessing, I ended up having a parent in my Kindergarten class that was a Naturopath and I discussed the issue with her. She suggested the removal of dairy, then gluten, and the addition of a daily high strength probiotic (HMF Powder by Genestra). , and of course the food preferences worsened down to only eating yogurt-like consistencies, crackers or white bread. In November 2011, I was fed up with our HMO and their lack of knowledge so I demanded a referral over to a specialty hospital designed for pediatrics. This got the ball rolling and eventually in January of 2012 we had our first appointment! The doctor listened to me, and all I wanted to do was cry, because I was finally finding people who cared about my child and wanting to help me. At my first visit the doctor ordered an allergy test, and guess what...we learned he was allergic to dairy, wheat/gluten, soy, peanut, and egg! I immediately removed all of his allergens from his diet and did a GI tract cleaning per doctors recommendation; the doctor felt his tummy and his whole large intestine was full of poop...on the 3rd day of cleaning he began eliminating white balls of chalk like substance, which turned out to be petrified poop (alarming for sure). I also took time off of work to stay home and care for him, and began the doctor recommended referral process for feeding therapy/sensory integration. What took us 3 1/2 years to get help with has snowballed into a solution within a month and a half...needless to say we have switched insurance companies! We have
No comments:
Post a Comment