Anyone see a feeding therapist?

[Anonymous]

I posted this on the main parenting list a few days ago, but only really heard from one person. I know this probably doesn't rise to the level of 'special needs' but I'm hoping someone on this list has seen a feeding therapist, and give me some advice about how to get DS to eat solids. I tried putting a speck of puff on a spoon last night and depositing it on the side of his mouth. It promptly moved to the middle of his tongue, he gagged and vomited. What can a feeding therapist do for us?

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I think my DS is the last baby I know to refuse to eat anything that isn't 100% pureed. I've tried puffs, mushed banana, tofu, tiny grains of quinoa, etc. He has never put any food in his mouth by himself, and when I try he fusses, and then usually gags and vomits. Lately, I've learned to put the 1/4 puff in the side of his mouth, and at least he has figured out how to spit it out instead of the vomiting. Also, in the past month, he's learned to use one of those mesh feeders, which gives me hope that someday he will self-feed. I have a ped appt in January where I'll bring this up, but my guess is this list will have some good ideas. If your baby was resistant to eating firm solids, how did you introduce this and what steps did you take? He eats pureed foods just fine, so it's not a taste aversion. At what point should I really be worried about this? Thanks!

[Anonymous]

I know you want to hear that everything is going to be fine, and probably it will, and your baby (you don't say how old he is) is going to learn to eat just fine on his own. This may very well happen and it could just take a bit more time -- if your child is 6-7 months old and this is what you're dealing with, you might want to give it all a rest til 9-10 months and then try again.

On the other hand, your description of your child sounds exactly like mine was, and he ended up being diagnosed at 19 months with severe apraxia, which affected his ability to move his tongue around his mouth - the brain simply didn't send messages to the tongue the way it should have - and this naturally affected both speech and eating. Like your child, DS would throw up even a pinky-nail amount of banana; he would gag on a quarter of a cheerio. Some of this was reflux - he had severe reflux that went undiagnosed, as he did not seem to be in pain at all and was a very placic baby - and some of this was the tell-tale sign of apraxia - he could not manipulate the food with his tongue to move it around, soften it, "chew" it (even without teeth), etc. He did not develop a rotary chew. He had low muscle tone in his mouth and didn't have the proper sensory receptors working.

Again, you don't say how old your baby is, and in our case, "they" (meaning pediatrician) would not do anything until our son was 12 months. At that point, DS had no sounds, was still not eating anything solid (though he was "chewing" on one of those mesh feeders and was eating #2 purees), and would not stick his tongue out back at someone who stuck their tongue out to him. He was otherwise engaged, happy, placid, etc, but we were making no progress on feeding. Hopefully your son won't need this, but if your child is going on 12 months, i would request a feeding eval (we did ours at Children's) and have a good feeding team look and see what is going on. Our DS is now 6.5 yrs old and no longer has the verbal apraxia label. He does have other developmental delays and special needs, but he eats just fine (though in a picky way) and is entirely verbal (though he has a bit of an "accent" which speech therapy is working on). We did 2 years of feeding therapy and we're on our fifth year of speech therapy, as well as OT.

And now for you. Feeding issues are among the hardest things a mom can have to deal with. It's our primary job to feed our children, and if we can't get them to eat, we can sometimes (often, in my case) feel like failures. Please remember that there are lots of us out here who know that children do not always eat when they are hungry, that saying "well, have you tried pirate's booty?" is really unhelpful when you're telling someone that your child can't even eat a cheerio, and who know what it is like to have a child who seems much younger than he is because of how/what he eats. You will get through this, and some of that will be by figuring out what your child needs to make himself feel comfortable with eating (in a way that he is not probably even conscious of now). Good luck - and know some of us have been there/done that and are sending support.

[Anonymous]

thank you so much, PP! DS is 11.5mo, and sounds just like your child (which scares me, frankly). The tiniest speck of mushed banana causes him to gag and vomit. I keep thinking there's some trick I'm missing. And, yes, I keep hearing, well, have you tried the meltable sticks or a cheerio or a mum-mum? Trust me, I've tried everything! He will occasionally stick toys in his mouth, but nowhere near the frequency I see other kids do this - and I think he mostly licks the toys rather than really stuffs them in his mouth.

Interesting, too, that yours took the mesh feeder but still had problems. I was hoping this was a gateway method, but it sounds like not always.

BTW, he was also born tongue-tied (we had his frenulum cut in his first week) and I think has a high palate (DH has similar issues and needed a palate widener when he was a kid).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:And now for you. Feeding issues are among the hardest things a mom can have to deal with. It's our primary job to feed our children, and if we can't get them to eat, we can sometimes (often, in my case) feel like failures. Please remember that there are lots of us out here who know that children do not always eat when they are hungry, that saying "well, have you tried pirate's booty?" is really unhelpful when you're telling someone that your child can't even eat a cheerio, and who know what it is like to have a child who seems much younger than he is because of how/what he eats. You will get through this, and some of that will be by figuring out what your child needs to make himself feel comfortable with eating (in a way that he is not probably even conscious of now). Good luck - and know some of us have been there/done that and are sending support.

The PP gave you great advice. I just want to especially echo this last paragraph. What you're going through can be scary but you'll get through it and your DS will benefit greatly from your help. You definitely aren't alone on this forum and the responses you'll see in other threads will reflect the understanding this community has of your challenges and frustrations. Good luck!

[Anonymous]

Yes, via Early Intervention. My child was having problems chewing and swallowing effectively. She was pouching her food and she has a highly palate so the food was getting gunked up on the roof of her mouth. We saw the feeding specialist at about age 1.

[Anonymous]

Has your child seen an ENT to see if tonsils or adenoids are making it difficult to eat? My child is in the feeding clinic at Childrens, which is a behavioral clinic. They also want to have you see a gastroenterologist to make sure everything is OK on that score. A Speech therapist can help with feeding. We got a couple of consults from a SP and she said our child didn't have enough torso muscles to sit up and eat.

[Anonymous]

Just wanted to let you know we were in the same boat way back when. We got feeding therapy and it worked! I strongly suggest seeing a real feeding therapist (either OT or ST who SPECIALIZES in feeding issues) through Children's or Hopkins or another hospital that has a program. We found EI useless in this department, but perhaps experiences vary. I just felt with something as serious as feeding where a child can really choke, I wanted someone who was seasoned. With EI through the county I felt like my child was a guinea pig for a ST and OT who maybe attended a few lectures and studied a chapter on feeding issues. When we saw a true feeding therapist the improvements came more rapidly. Good luck!

[Anonymous]

Thanks, PP, for the advice on EI. We've started down that route already (though I wasn't sure that feeding even counted as an issue), but haven't actually seen anyone yet. I sort of hoped it would resolve itself before we needed to, but we're really making zero progress on this ourselves. I'll call my ped today and see if we can make an appt with Childrens. Thanks very much!

[Anonymous]

8:42 - who did you see exactly for your feeding issues?

[Anonymous]

My son is 5 and still has feeding issues. He has a bilateral cleft lip and palate (partially repaired) and is blind to boot. He only eats pureed food, and the only thing he eats with his fingers are gerber cheese curls.

Our EI OT Lynda Cross was fabulous at trying to get him to eat a little more. But we lost her when he turned 3 and went to school. We found DCPS wholly incapable of dealing with this issue. For a while we saw Beth Solomon a speech pathologist/feeding expert that specializes in cleft kids. We felt we made some small progress with her, more when we saw her twice a week. But she moved out further into Olney and we just couldn't get there. So I was going to look at Children's and Kennedy Krieger this week.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:And now for you. Feeding issues are among the hardest things a mom can have to deal with. It's our primary job to feed our children, and if we can't get them to eat, we can sometimes (often, in my case) feel like failures. Please remember that there are lots of us out here who know that children do not always eat when they are hungry, that saying "well, have you tried pirate's booty?" is really unhelpful when you're telling someone that your child can't even eat a cheerio, and who know what it is like to have a child who seems much younger than he is because of how/what he eats. You will get through this, and some of that will be by figuring out what your child needs to make himself feel comfortable with eating (in a way that he is not probably even conscious of now). Good luck - and know some of us have been there/done that and are sending support.

The PP gave you great advice. I just want to especially echo this last paragraph. What you're going through can be scary but you'll get through it and your DS will benefit greatly from your help. You definitely aren't alone on this forum and the responses you'll see in other threads will reflect the understanding this community has of your challenges and frustrations. Good luck!

I'm not the OP, but I just about started crying as I read this...my DS has some feeding/reflux/weight gain issues and I feel like a failure everytime we have a weight check, or someone comments on his size...and of course, none of my friends (who are supportive) have been through this which just accentuates the problem. And I literally had someone suggest Pirates Booty yesterday. I promptly bought some and watched DS spit it out! I'll try anything once. Luckily we started feeding therapy last month andit seems to be helping...but we aren't in D.C. thoughy so I dont have a recommendation- sorry, OP.

[Anonymous]

OP here - so sorry PPs to hear about your issues. I'm so thankful that my DS is healthy and doesn't have weight gain issues. Unfortunately, we're a bit stalled right now. IE tells me that I'm on the list for a feeding therapist, but there's a long wait list, and I made an appt with Childrens last week, but their first available is in February! Does anyone have a recommendation for a good private feeding therapist in NOVA? I discovered that my insurance doesn't pay for anything related to a "developmental" delay (only for physical issues), but I'm willing to pay out of pocket for a few sessions so I can at least learn how to help him make some progress until the county finds someone. Thanks!