solid food redux

I’m posting this attempt at a coherent summary of our problems feeding Evelyn so that I can direct the mommies and daddies I know to this. I need as much advice and help that I can get.

We were looking forward to the solid food phase with Evelyn, thinking that it might make things easier (she has always been a difficult eater). How wrong we were. I am going back to work in January and I initially thought that she could have solid food and milk from a cup during the day and that I could nurse her in the morning and evening. However based on our experiences giving solid food to her I have since partially weaned her to bottles (with a lot of work!) instead. One thing I would say is that the orthodontic bottle nipple is the only reason she will get any food during the day when I am gone. All the other bottles and nipples I had tried were a complete disaster and she refused to suck on them. Of course we are doing everything we can to make this as good as it possibly can – glass bottles (instead of polycarbonate), organic formula etc.

So anyway, here is the problem we are having with respect to solid food. We have been trying to give her food since she was 6 months old. My daughter is very strong willed and very clever. I think there are three main problems. One, she does not like the taste of food. Even the blandest foods mixed with milk or formula make her gag or shudder when she tastes them. I think she is gradually getting used to the taste of cereal but it is taking a long time. Two, she refuses to let me put anything in her mouth. Spoon, finger, any kind of utensil. She even started reacting that way to bottles again for a short while. By refuse I mean that she screams, turns away, arches backwards, fails her arms, hits the spoon etc. Sometimes I can sneak my finger into her mouth if I am washing her face since that’s a routine she is used to from birth. Three, she just doesn’t understand eating at all. She has no desire to put food in her mouth on her own, feel it, taste it, swallow it etc.
Here is what I have tried:
- different tastes of food: cereals, vegetables, fruit, tofu
- different textures: smooth, lumpy, mixed with milk, water, very dry etc
- different utensils: my finger, her fingers, different spoons, “lil dippers”, a mesh “teething bag” filled with tofu or cereal and even a basting brush (more on that below!)
- finger foods – small pieces of bread, grains of rice, small chunks of cooked vegetables, cheerios and cereal biscuits
- showing her pictures of babies eating and videos of babies eating with a spoon and their hands
- eating food in front of her (she has been sitting at the table with us since she was 3 1/2 months old)
- us eating her food with her utensils then giving her a chance to try
- putting a spoon of food up to a picture of a baby, then to her mouth
- offering her food from our plates
- singing her favourite songs, showing her her favourite books etc.
- rewarding her if she does end up with food in her mouth and especially if she swallows it
- she knows how to handle a spoon and put it in her mouth so I tried loading it with cereal first and handing it to her, but she has since learned to bang the spoon or turn it upside down to get rid of the food first, then put it in her mouth. In her mind spoons are toys, not a way to get food.

There is no history of food allergies in either of our families, so I don’t think she is “self-protecting”. So far she has reacted fine to
all the food she has sampled.

Mostly it has been a total disaster. I have tried to be very casual about it and mostly just let her look at and touch the food since everywhere I read it said not to force a baby to eat who doesn’t want to. “try again in a few days” is what is has been for 2 months so far with no progress. We just had her doctor’s appointment this past week and the doctor was very concerned that Evelyn wasn’t eating yet. She said that we had to “insist” and “teach her” how to eat (i.e. “force her??). I explained that we tried all these things and what her response to food was like. The doctor said that we just had to keep trying because otherwise she wouldn’t get enough protein and iron. We have redoubled our efforts and have tried all these different things again and again over the past few days. I think she might have eaten half a teaspoon today between two feeding sessions today and that is a big success for us. So there does seem to be some progress. We have found that the “basting brush” technique seems to work ok, since if we brush some cereal on her lips she kinds of sucks on them and takes the tiniest bit if cereal in. She also doesn’t react to it quite as strongly and since the bristles are soft silicone it kind of tickles. The hardest part is getting the food to her lips or mouth since she seems to hate that so much. It’s also extremely, extremely messy and time consuming.

Evelyn is very healthy, 50th percentile for everything, strong, developing at or ahead of the “schedule” and is very smart. She certainly isn’t wasting away or shutting down so I really don’t see why my doctor is so concerned.

So my question is – what should I do? I thought the main point of babies learning to eat during the first year was just to start enjoying food and learn to swallow and chew. Evelyn obviously does not follow the typical pattern of baby eaters. I want her to enjoy eating and my dream is that one day she will spontaneously eat on her own or even ask for food! But if it is true that she isn’t getting enough protein and iron from breastmilk and formula then should I try to give her a supplement or get food into her in any way possible? Should I resort to putting cereal in a bottle or putting cereal on a pacifier to make sure she is getting enough food? That seems extreme to me, but if she needs more protein and iron then I will do whatever is necessary to make sure she gets it. But I don’t think it will teach her to eat. She has to figure that out on her own.