Has anyone's LO been "diagnosed" with a sensitive gag reflex? When I google it seems fairly common, but my Ped who's been in practice for 30yrs. Doesn't seem co corned about it. Here's the backstory, DS is now 14.5 months and is just now being able to handle non puréed foods. He's literally been on stage 2 food for the past 7months. Anytime I would give him anything with the slightest bit of texture he would gag repeatedly and occasional throw up. Finally about 2 weeks ago his gagging started to lessen significantly, and since then we've been introducing more and more texture. The problem now is that he knows that he has to work at eating textured food, instead of just instantly swallowing it, and so he throws a fit and refuses to eat untill I cave and give him the purée he prefers. I've held out before and it was 3pm before he ate anything that entire day. He screamed and cried because he was obviously hungry but would not open his mouth for anything, until he saw the container that he knows the food he likes is in. Obviously I've already screwed up by caving, but baby screaming makes me crazy! Literally like I want to peel my skin off, takes me back to his newborn days where he screamed 12 hours a day. I'm at a total loss here, and nobody I know has dealt with this so I have nobody to get advice from. Please help!
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I forgot to add the DS is a baby would doesn't put things in his mouth, so for him there is no correlation between seting food in front of him and him picking it up and putting it in his mouth. He will literally just sit there and stare at it and never touch it.
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I think I would bring it up to his pediatrician again. Did he have reflux as a baby? My friend's son had pretty bad reflux as an infant and then struggled to eat solids. He ended up in feeding therapy. A couple months of that really helped him and he's a normal eater now at 4.
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You've also posted about a concern with speech, right? I would absolutely have it looked at, there is so much that could be at play, and wouldn't you want to know, rather than speculate?
FWIW my son has been in speech therapy since he was 3. We just recently discovered a lingual issue that has been hindering his progress and also affects his food choices. Don't be like me and wait.
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LO has a sesnsitive gag reflex but not to the same degree. I posted about it too: http://boards.hellobee.com/topic/gag-reflex-in-12m-toddler#post-2697580
The biggest thing that has helped has been eating with him / in front of him. He is starting to be curious about our foods and tries to eat it too, so he's been getting new textures and tastes too.
Also, we tried mixing textures/flavors... examples:
1) He loves melted cheese but didn't like veggies, so we smothered the veggies in cheese and he liked that and slowly we lessened the amount of cheese.
2) He loves baby oatmeal so we started dipping cut fruit in oatmeal... it makes it messy, but he liked it! Then we lessened the oatmeal. -
@Mrs. Pickle: he did have reflux really bad until about 6 months old, and I have heard that contributes to it.
@looch: I did have a consult just for the food issues, he took a look in his mouth to make sure that there was no obstruction issues.
@DesertDreams88: he is vey curious about food, the other day he ate some of my lunch which was turkey salad. Then the other night he had lasagna. So it has improved significantly.Honestly I was hoping someone had gone through the same thing and could just help me with a time line of when their LO was eating fully on a normal scale. Or even just some commiseration I'm not too concerned about his speech because he's only 14.5 and currently working on his walking. It just makes me curious because based off of articles I've read babies are born with the gag reflex in the front of thier mouths, and by putting toys and other textured objects in their mouths, that's what switches the reflex around. So really I'm wondering if there is a correlation Between the fact that DS doesn't put things in his mouth and the fact that he's had such a hard road with solids.
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@Jackiedavis87: have you read this?
http://www.hellobee.com/2016/04/04/struggling-to-eat/Also, does LO tolerate a toothbrush in his mouth? My LO LOVES "brushing" his own teeth with a standard and an electric toothbrush. He does it with DH or I when we do ours. The blog I included mentions this and says "[teeth-brushing] would get the senses and muscles ready in his mouth for different textured foods."
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@DesertDreams88: I just read it! Thank you.!that was also what the ped had suggested as well, and that's what we were doing to get him to where he is now. The problem now is that he can eat the solid foods without choking or throwing up, he just doesn't want to. He knows that the purees don't take any chewing or work to eat, so he just holds out until I cave and feed him the purée.
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