Hallie's Eating Update

So it's been an adventurous six or so weeks around here. Taking care of Hallie full time (since I am on leave and we're still without child care, I've been the one who has been doing this most of the time) has been good for her eating in some interesting and significant ways. I've been a tad bit hesitant to post about this for fear of jinxing things (in the past, every time I mentioned that she was okay with something or another, this ended up being followed by a pretty bad bout of vomiting and a total reversal in trends). But we're now far enough into this process to note some advances publicly to the blogosphere.

OK--so here's what has been going on. Late this fall, we began to express concern to our pediatrician that Hallie's eating habits, which consisted largely of us feeding her purees and little in the way of table foods--just french fries and potato sticks, were becoming a problem. It's hard to conceive of sending your child to preschool, for example, when she cannot feed herself and when her entire diet consists of goat milk, goat cheese, goat yogurt, potatoes, pears, prunes, and apples. So we decided to try to allow her to graze a bit and eat some more age appropriate foods and a broader variety of them. Our pediatrician empowered our now former nanny to take charge of introducing Hallie to some new foods. We were given veto power over stuff (something that did cause some tensions, but in the end, we're the parents and that is our prerogative) but the nanny was going to do the food trials in case there was something we moms were doing that was provoking Hallie to vomit or refuse food.

Not much happened in the way of progress. We discovered that Hallie really doesn't do well with berries (they appear to disagree with her tummy and lead to increased reflux) and that she is okay with pureed sweet potatoes and carrots (at least in rotation in her diet) but not much else. Our old nanny was feeding Hallie stage 2 and 3 baby foods and not much else. The rationale here was that this would rule out 'mechanical' (as in, she choked on something or had a problem with texture) vomiting, but did not advance her eating skills to anything beginning to approach age appropriate. We wrangled a bit with the nanny about macrobiotic diets and the introduction of green superfoods (she implied that this was the answer to Hallie's problems; we thought that this wouldn't work too well for a kid whose only protein source was goat derived and who could not tolerate soy well). But we got nowhere fast in a hurry.

Early this winter, we met our super fabulous feeding therapist, Barbara. Barbara watched Hallie eat hard (mozzarella) goat cheese and apple and pear slices and quickly ascertained that, while Hallie is a very slow eater, there was nothing wrong with her chewing or swallowing. The kid lateralizes very well and knows how to move food around in her mouth with her tongue and while her swallow is a 'hard' one, she manages to do it quite well. She just needs some extra time with things and Barbara hoped that, with practice, things would improve. This was good to hear because it gave us the go-ahead to play around with food textures.

At about the same time, largely because of our little three-year-old neighbor, Adam, Hallie began to take increased interest in new foods. At Christmas dinner at Adam's house (also residence to his mom and dad, Barbara and Chris, and older brothers Benjamin and Conor), Hallie expressed fascination with Wheat Thins (as she pointed out, they are 'squares' -- which she pronounces 'fares') and ate a few happily and with no discernible negative impact on her system. That was when we began to suspect that she was okay with wheat and that the patch test done by her allergist last year was either a false positive (it was borderline, but the allergist had us pull wheat) or that she had outgrown her sensitivity to wheat. Either way, getting wheat back into her diet was HUGE. It opens up a whole array of erstwhile forbidden foods.

Here Hallie is mostly playing with a piece of pita bread (which she calls "pizza"):

 

It turns out that, for whatever reason, Hallie is not a huge fan of baked goods. This is very sad. There is nothing better than fresh-baked bread in my book. But she has at least tried mouse-like bites of toast, has gnawed on a bagel, has eaten a few animal crackers here and there (I highly recommend the vanilla flavor by Barbara's Bakery...they are a major step above your traditional animal cracker), and has even eaten a few Newman's Oreos (she likes the cream but doesn't seem fond of the chocolate cookie. I'll try to get a hold of the vanilla version if they make them to see if those are more to her taste). But the key here is that she is not sensitive to wheat. And this meant that I was free to try fish sticks.

Fish sticks, perhaps because they are fried (I bake them in canola oil) and salty (Hallie loves salt and in this way really takes after Sharon) are more to Hallie's taste. While she's no championship level fish stick eater, she has managed to eat one or two of these at dinner (we buy the Mrs. Paul's version since they don't contain egg or dairy; a lot of other brands have one or the other listed on their ingredient panels). She prefers her french fries, so we have to bribe her with fries to finish her fish sticks, but the point remains that she earned herself another age appropriate finger food.

After we determined that she was not having any negative response to fish sticks, I decided to try salmon. This was a big hit (I drizzled baked salmon with olive oil and salt) and she managed to eat about a half ounce or so at a sitting. Can you say Omega 3 fatty acids? Next up was smoked trout---a major winner where Hallie was concerned. I am guessing the salty smoky flavor really appealed to her on this one. Smoked salmon, for various reasons, was not so much of a hit. Perhaps the chewy texture got in the way for her. But no big deal--we have fish. Which also means we had a second major protein.

Next up was chicken. I found a brand of chicken nuggets that were both safe (no egg, soy, or dairy) and kid-friendly (reconstituted nuggets as opposed to chunks of chicken breast). Hallie managed to eat a whole nugget once but was none too impressed with these (perhaps not salty enough?) I tried to get her to dip the nugget in honey mustard but she was having nothing of this (she is not a big fan of dipping and doesn't like to mix things with things--I think this is all behavioral and perhaps even typical toddler shenanigans). But she did not have an adverse reaction to the chicken, either. Which allowed me to try something else:

Chicken hot dogs. Hallie loves the idea of hot dogs. After all, the Pigeon of Mo Willems fame, finds one and thinks that they are "Yummy, yummy, yummy." While she liked the taste of beef hotdogs when we tried these way back when, they clearly did not agree with her system. But now that we had chicken, I thought we could give this one another whirl. And so I bought us some Empire Kosher Chicken Hot Dogs (because they are kosher, there is no chance in the world that there is cross contamination with milk products). And they were a winner. Or should I say weiner?



Anyway, she loves these and can get through about a third to half a hot dog, cut up in chunks, in one sitting. This may not sound like a lot to the average person, or even average toddler, but for us, this is HUGE.

Just to make sure I was counterbalancing our foray into kashrut (Jewish dietary laws) with something a bit more treyf (non kosher, in Yiddish), I decided we'd try bacon next.



And this, too, was a huge hit. Indeed, bacon may even be Hallie's favorite food right now (perhaps even surpassing french fries and Lays potato chips). She can eat about a slice at one sitting (again, chunked up and stripped of those fatty bits that never quite cook up to crispiness).

So we have a full line up of protein right now: goat milk, goat cheese, goat yogurt, fish of various sorts, chicken hot dogs, and bacon. We can broaden things from here as Hallie's tastes mature (perhaps). Chicken lunch meat was okay but she wasn't thrilled with it. Ham might be an easier sell. I bet she'd like salami or bologna but I need to find an all-pork brand (or a safe chicken brand; I'm fairly certain Empire makes a kosher chicken bologna).

Bread and pasta not being well-loved items, but Hallie will eat small handfuls of honey-sweetened puffed wheat. And perhaps we'll try oats again, which will open up an array of cereals.

We're not giving up on bread, though. I did find a 100% canola oil margarine and slathered that on a half a toasted bagel and Hallie did seem to like it a bit:

 

Veggies are still an issue. She does small amounts of sweet potato puree but is not all that interested in the sweet potato fries I made her. I might try a commercial brand of these if I can find ones that are not coated in rice flour (we're trying to do one thing at a time to make sure that we know what is going on with Hallie digestively). Hallie does, however, like asparagus. She stole one off of Sharon's plate and ate most of it. Subsequently, she's eaten a few more but tends to rip them into tiny strips (they are very fun to peel and appeal to Hallie, who is a major peeler of crayons). Hallie also seems to like romaine lettuce (but it, too, is more of a plaything than a food to her). I'm not sure what we'll try next in terms of veggies. Maybe beets are a good candidate. Or fried eggplant or fried zucchini.

 

Still, all in all, we've tripled the variety of food Hallie is eating and we've now gone over to a system where she eats table foods (we have to dole out a few chunks at a time or she gets overwhelmed) for the first half of each meal and purees for the second half. Meals are still long, drawn-out processes that take an hour to complete and we need to coax, prod, beg, and bribe Hallie to eat and drink most things. But she's doing it and we're mostly making progress. We have had some regression and some behavioral outbursts; trust me, the only thing more infuriating than Hallie throwing all of her food and banging on the tray of her high chair while declaiming "no throwing" is when she repeatedly spits out every bite that she takes and self-induces bouts of vomiting. But we're trying behavioral techniques (in other words, we're ignoring this behavior) when it happens and most meals this week have been relatively smooth going. Hopefully at some point she'll decide that she likes something well enough to eat it on her own and without positive reinforcement, but we try to remember, when we get dejected about how much time we spend feeding Hallie and how much effort we still have to put into this endeavor, that we are worlds away from where we were even six to eight weeks ago.

We are somewhat concerned about Hallie's weight right now, but, again, we need to remind ourselves that she had a bit of weight to spare and that our goal is to get her eating more and better in the long run and that we might have to tolerate a weight plateau or even loss in order to achieve this goal.

Meanwhile, we've also managed to keep the vomiting in check. January was a stellar month -- she had 26 vomit free days. February was not quite as good -- only 7 days without spewing -- but we did have a lot going on including a cold, a suspected ear infection and a major surgery. March has been pretty good so far, with 8 out of 12 completed days being vomit free. So, compared to where we were this time last year, we're doing great with 41 days (out of 71) of vomit-free existence under our belts; we were at 20 on March 13, 2008, so we've more than doubled our record!

Anyway, so that's where we are on the eating front. If anyone has any suggestions about foods we might try, please let us know!