Won't eat foods with lumps?

If your child will not eat foods with lumps, I really hope this will help you!

This is my story of the lengths we have gone to try and get our son to eat lumps.

When James was around 7 months I tried feeding him foods that I had made, one of which was a beef casserole. When I fed it to him he would gag until he was sick. I thought the problem was my blender not being able to puree properly, so out I went and bought a food processor.. to no avail, still the same reactions to foods I made with it. It is so hard not to show emotion when your child looks like they are choking, as this upset me so much I eventually I gave up feeding James foods I made with meat and fed him Gerber stage 2 foods which are smooth purees. Any finger foods given to James at this age landed on the floor.

Around the 11 month stage I started offering the Gerber stage 3 foods as they are much larger portions, but unfortunately they had lumps in them. The gagging started again, as did the vomiting. My husband and I had differing views on this situation, his attitude was when he is hungry he will eat just leave the food for later, I really felt uncomfortable at leaving James hungry. I decided a trip to the Drs was in order as I was concerned about his eating and his weight, he had fallen from the 25th percentile to the 8th! We ended up with two appointments with different Drs, a referral to the nutritionist and eventually resulted in a referral for a swallow test.

The swallow test

James had the swallow test on Monday, and it is a fairly straightforward. We had to ensure he was fairly hungry at the time of the appointment and we had to bring his normal feeding equipment and a range of foods he likes eating, foods with lumps that he has problems with and milk and water.

The swallow test had to be done in the presence of a pediatrician, a speech therapist and an x-ray technician.  A selection of each of his foods were taken and mixed with barium and James was sat in a baby chair next to the x-ray machine whilst I fed him. Two televisions were set up next to us and we were able to see that he was chewing his foods normally and swallowing well. This was great news and such a relief to us! However, it does mean that it is purely behavioural, and as the nurse told us, this means it can be harder to break!

The procedure was fine, James was not bothered by it at all and the nurses were fantastic. The only side effect they say it has is that the barium may cause constipation.

Perseverence is key!

So far we have had two months of consistently offering foods with lumps to James and although we have a long way to go, we have seen great improvements. I have developed a system of feeding a 'lumpy' meal at lunchtime one day and then the next day I give a smoother food. We have gone from James refusing to open his mouth after the first mouthful, to being sick to eating the whole jar!! From about a week before his first birthday he started eating Gerber graduate veggie puffs and we have since increased this to some other foods. On Sunday he had half a cheese scone which is a huge step for him!!

If you are concerned about your child, do see a Dr for peace of mind. However, do not be afraid to persevere with foods and lumps as eventually you will see improvements. Every child is different and this is just another stage in their development which some take longer than others to grasp On the plus side, until recently I never had to worry about James picking things up and putting them in his mouth as i knew he wouldn't do it!

Good luck!