Figuring Out the Food

I think I mentioned the whole Hayden not eating thing. Well, we've been trying to incorporate food for a while now, with mixed results. She really, really likes holding food and touching food and mushing food now, but the eating is still not all that great. We've been working on cheese lately, and that's the best we've done so far. If I feed her little bits of cheese, she'll eat them, but the self feeding is still a struggle.

Yesterday, I decided to just take little bits of cheese and put them on her tray, with the thinking that if she decided not to eat them, she'd just go cheese-less. She was very excited to have cheese on the tray, but she got frustrated when I didn't feed it to her. She looked at it, wailed, held her hands up to me, held cheese out to me, but she wouldn't eat. She kept reaching for the big slice of cheese on the counter instead. Finally, I fed her a little bit of cheese and she pushed it out of her mouth. I tried again, and she pushed it out again, reaching for the big slice on the counter. I figured, "what the hell" and gave her the big piece.

She took a bite out of it, chewed and swallowed, just like a big girl. Then she looked at me and smiled, as if to say, "see, mom, this is what I've been trying to tell you." I realized then what part of the problem has been. We got into a bad catch 22 where the more she gagged, the smaller I cut her food, but because she's only functioning with five teeth, she couldn't get a good chew on the little bits, so she had to swallow them whole, like pills. Thus, the gagging. Bigger pieces allow her to gum the food and then she's able to get it soft enough to swallow.

So, slowly but surely, mommy is learning. Hayden is doing her best to teach me, but "no" "uh oh" and "bye bye" only get a kid so far.