It will be ok!

[Anonymous]

Hi! I am the mom of Teddy a 28 month old angel, born at 32 weeks in 2004. He is my world! Teddy suffered from silent reflux and feeding issues for 12 months with very little releif from doctors. This board and our own research was what really got answers for us and Teddy.

Teddy was born prematurely and started showing signs of silent and sometimes not so slient reflux at his due date and that is when he started resisting bottles. He was still pretty small so we could get him to take them but we were then barfed on immediately. The feeding aversion got much much worse and there were many tears and many days when we thought we would not make it. We tried zantac, prevacid, neocate, maalox, several pediatric GIs. I pumped breastmilk for 9 months and tried many elimination diets. At 9 months we discovered Teddy’s tongue was tied. I had mentioned it to peds before and it was dismissed. We had it clipped and saw very little improvement in his bottle feeding. So we continued feeding Teddy only when he was asleep. Solid foods brought more resistence from Teddy. He fought and fought. We were thinking that solids would be the answer but everything got worse. We had him allergy tested and he tested allergic to many things including rice!!! No wonder those elimiation diets did not work for us . I stopped pumping and threw out many many ounces of frozen breastmilk. Teddy started in nutramagin but we were still fighting an uphill battle and only feeding him successfully when asleep. We took him to the Children’s Hospital feeding clinic here in Richmond VA. It was very ironic since I am a speech therapist who used to work with children with feeding issues at the same hospital. I was clueless with my own child. They used a behavioral approach to feeding and it was very regimented. It did not work for Teddy. They have had great success with many children but not mine. It was getting worse. We began to realize that we doubted that the reflux was still an issue anymore but we were dealing with the leftover feeding aversion. We got a book named ” My child won’t eat” and later read another one “Child of mine: Feeding with good sense and love”. Both books talked about a child centered approach to feeding and following the childs lead. We taught Teddy the signs for more and all done and began to listen to him when he said all done. He started to eat yogurt from a spoon. It took him 2 days to eat 1 yobaby container. But we continued to listen to Teddy and he was soon gobbling it up by 13 months he would eat a yogurt for breakfast and several other fruits uncluding papaya (still a favorite). He is now a great eater but there are days when he wants nothing and days when he eats everything!!!

When we were in our darkest days with Teddy I came to this board everyday and found support and advice and I remember thinking that I would post a success story one day to give someone hope. What worked for us may not work for you but you will come out the other side with a happy child. Teddy is the light of my life (along with his baby sister born 6/14/06 reflux free but not liking solids:) and the days of feeding him asleep are a distant memory.

Please hang in there and hug your babies!

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the story Sarah. Just wondering how you made the switch from sleep feeding to awake feeding. We still sleep feed Hailey bottles b/c her feeding aversion is awful even at 20 months. I have the book child of mine, which I love and used for my older one, but found that for Hailey the approach just doesn’t work… I can be responsible for the who, when, and where of feeding, but if I leave the what and how much to her, then she’ll never eat. In the end, I know that forcing a child to eat is futile, which is why we still sleep feed. Any tips would be appreciated. How old was Teddy when you did the VA program.

[Anonymous]

Teddy was 10 months when we entered him in the feeding program here in Virginia. Kids come from all over the country to this program and seem to have wonderful success but not Teddy we did it for only 2 months before we took him out. We stopped sleep feeding at 12 months when everything seemed to turn around for Teddy. We stopped feeding him and we just left bottles around the house and he drank them mostly when we were not looking when he found them. We did notice that he was very inconsistent with how much he drank day to day but we tried not to worry about it. He is still small and was in the 5th percentile at his 2 year check up but his doctor is not worried.

Everything continued to improve for Teddy as his language and communication improved. We figured he was trying to tell us something all those months when we were trying to force him.

How is Hailey’s growth? Have you ever just let her do her own thing for a whole day? What happens? Have you looked into any feeding programs? Feeding therapy?

i am not sure if I was any help but feel free to ask me any questions!

[Anonymous]

Thanks Sarah. Hailey has been on hypercaloric feeds for many months now, and thankfully her growth has been stable around the 40th percentile. But that’s due to a lot of perceverance on our part. She’s never shown hunger, even as an infant, would go for half a day or more without anything, and then when you’d try to feed her she’d still fight. We did feeding therapy but were d/c with appropriate skills, but an apparently low appetite. We haven’t been able to stop the sleep feeding, because I did try once for a few weeks (we watered down the bottles) and she lost more than 2 pounds and still didn’t pick up with her eating or drinking. I’m looking into other options but it’s a struggle.

When you stopped the sleep feeding, what did you do when he woke to be fed at night? Did you water down the bottle or just cut it out cold turkey?

Thanks for the info.

[Anonymous]

Feeding Teddy in the middle of the night was never a problem but he stopped waking to be fed at night around the same time everything seemed to click for him (12months). Teddy has just started to show hunger but he misreads his body a lot. He will get very cranky and not want to eat but once he does he starts to behave better instantly!

Even with hypercaloric feeds for a year Teddy still barely got on the growth charts so at least she is growing well.

I am sorry Hailey is having such a hard time still. What other options have you looked into?

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