Meal Time Is Now A Very Special Time

I am asking for grace to be given to me from you all before hand, OK? And I do not know who has the time in a day to read this lengthy post or to write one this long! Geez:)

SInce day one I have always been freaked out about Griffin's weight, weight gain, physical growth, all of it! For these reasons....

He was born weighing 5 pounds 2 ounces. He had to have major stomach surgery the very next day. He couldn't eat after this surgery for over a week. Once he did start eating it was from a feeding tube going in his nostril down to his tummy starting at 1 cc of breastmilk every hour. As he tolerated his feedings, meaning at the end of every hour when they checked his residual( the amount of milk in his tummy) by using a syringe and pulling everything out of his tummy into it ( and then they pushed it all back in) if this was half or less than half of the amount given at the previous feeding then he was considered "tolerating" his feedings and with enough toleration the doctors would slowly increase the amount of breatmilk given through his feeding tube every hour. So it went 1 cc to 2 cc all the way up to 60 cc given every 3 hours. I remeber when we took him home from the hospital after being there for 6 weeks, I sat in the back with Griffin and I was a wreck, he was soo small I was for sure sitting in the car seat would make him stop breathing! He came home on a feeding tube, I had to learn how to insert it because you had to change it every few days or sometimes Griffin would pull it out:) And then, sigh, after about 2 weeks of being home, Me and Matt decided to take out the feeding tube because now every 3 hours he was eating WAY over 60 cc, it was more like 120 to 150 cc! WOO, you go boy. But all of the docters were still very concerned about his weight gain and growth because he had a heart defect that should inhibit his growth . His heart was not very efficiient and had to work very hard to oxyengate him, so must babies with his heart defect were blue in coloring, frail, limp, and had a very hard time growing and gaining weight. Soo oOoo to this Mamma to hear all that paired in the same sentence as my boy, I was FREAKED out. Man did I push the food. I always got him to eat a ton. And everytime we went to visit his doctors they always told us that what his medical sheet described was never the boy they saw. He never was blue in coloring, never frail or limp, and did really well with weight gain and growth considering his heart. At 6 months he wieghed 15.5 pounds and in November right before his heart surgery he weighed 17.5 pounds. I was proud. At around one years old we started to try and get him to eat baby food 3 times a day. He did not like eating baby food, at all. He had and still has a huge love affair with his bottle. So this freaked out Momma who was determined to get him to eat, figured out that if I turned on Baby Signing Time, another one of his huge love affairs, then he would eat almost anything I gave him and tons of it!

So that is what we have been doing for about 6 months. 3 to 5 times a day I put his high chair in front of our TV with his show on and feed him. I know it sounds horrible. I really do not like TV and when I do, I like it in small doses. So I started to dread feeding time. And I musn't forget to mention that getting him to eat at a restuarant or on the go was impossible. SOOOooo

ooo.....This past couple of weeks I had a premonition that I needed to change things. I was tired of tricking him to eat. I wanted to let him come to terms with food and eating on his own. I wanted him to want his baby food like he wants his bottle. I wanted to feed him with him wanting it like I give him a bottle when he wants it.

I also realized (and this sounds very simple and I can not believe I did not think of this to begin with) that he never really saw me or matt eat. There was never any "meal-time lingo" to be heard either. He never saw me sit down at the table with food. He ate separately and then I ate separately. C'mon Melanie what person would enjoy eating that way all of the time, all alone. I started to think about it from his perspective. He had no idea what eating really meant or was. All he knew was that several times a day I strapped him into a chair and started putting things in his mouth. I always focused so much since day one on feeding him that I never even thought that if I feed me he might like it more. Soooo oooo...

Here we are turning a new leaf. I am no longer freaked out about his growth. He has normal check ups and if something is wrong the doctor will help me figure out what to do, but until then, I am no longer freaked. I feed him when I feed me. We sit down together at the kitchen table with no TV on ( occasionally a record might be playing and a candle may be lit). We talk about our meal. What kind of food we are having. Why we eat. What eating does for us. How goood it tastes. And we laugh and play games. And just interact the whole time, while we eat. AND....dah dah dah...HE EATS! All on his own, on his own accord, for his own reasons, because he WANTS to, and I no longer push him. When he is finished he is finished. And he has as many bottles as he wants.

Meal time is now a very special time.