Rory's Feeding Clinic Appointment

It went well. We met with the psychologist and the co-ordinator. We talked for about an hour about her eating issues, and he is confident that her reflux is to blame. Eating has never been a positive experience for her because of the discomfort she feels. This is why she "loses" foods, because she will eat them, feel discomfort, and choose not to eat them anymore. He said we are going to have to make feeding as pleasurable as possible, singing, patty-cake, bubbles as rewards for eating, and to basically ignore her negative behaviours. Apparently, all the coaxing I have been doing has been reinforcing her non-eating. Asking her to take bites and doing airplanes etc is positive attention from me, which in turn, reinforces her not to eat. I mean, I'm not totally convinced, but will try the new approach without coaxing.

She weighed 18lbs 3 oz, which although small for 15 months, is actually an okay weight because she is so short. She is within normal limits for ideal body mass. He also said he feels her issues are more behavioural, rather than her having swallowing issues. I'm in agreement that reflux has caused some of these behaviours, but not sold that she doesn't have other things going on.

Because of the "tongue thrust" that we are concerned about, they scheduled a feeding evaluation for Monday, June 16 at lunchtime. This way they can see what I'm talking about and determine if it is a selective thing based on her tastes or if she will need to work with a speech language pathologist on some of her eating "mechanisms".

They said we are not overfeeding her formula, that she should still be getting hungry, so that is good. I was nervous about cutting that back, so now we don't have to. I really feel like we only scratched the surface today. Based on what happens at her feeding evaluation, they will better determine our plan of action for following her. We may just implement some changes at home based on the fact that she is not malnourished. The main thing is that they are going to follow her, so that I won't feel so alone in my frustration.

They said the gagging and self-gagging is because of the discomfort of reflux. It is her way of telling us she is refluxing. He said she definitely needs to remain on medication until she outgrows it.

I asked about a feeding plan, to try to get her to eat more calorie dense foods, and if I should be trying to get her to eat baby food, or table/finger foods, and he said we'll wait until they evaluate her and discuss that then. I'd love to see her eat some homemade, healthy baby food instead of canned soup and bologna.

All in all, I don't feel confident that they've seen the whole picture. Once she is scoped and we know the medication is actually doing it's job, and that these issues ARE behavioural due to discomfort, I think I will be more confident in their assessment. They said it will be a slow progress and she will still have good and bad days because of the reflux, but if we can reprogram ourselves to look forward to and enjoy mealtime, things should start to improve.
Here's hoping....will keep everyone updated.