Allie has eaten 9 ounces in 19 hours. She continues to refuse the bottle and is just getting worse. I am so tempted to just demand that the doc put a feeding tube in so we don't have to deal with this stress of trying to feed her every day. It just took me 45 minutes to get one ounce down her.

I'm on the verge of a breakdown.

How do I teach her to recognize that she's hungry and needs to eat?

Maybe this needs to go into the bad day forum?

Christyn
:banghead:

I think you put this in the right forum, although I can move it if you want.

I would watch Allie for signs of dehydration. Is she having enough wet diapers? Is she coming down with something? What meds is she on? Is she due for an increase?

:hug: , it sucks when they won't eat.

:hug:

How do I teach her to recognize that she's hungry and needs to eat?


Wish I could help, but this was our exact same problem, too.

We always had to work VERY hard to get the ounces into Daniel, and generally his daily total was just short of our goal, but here and there we had days like yours -- it'd be 2 p.m., and he'd had only four ounces, and we'd be going crazy. If that went on for more than a day, we generally took him to urgent care for IV fluids. We eventually had home heath care teach us to place an NG tube and give us some supplies so Daniel didn't get to the point of dehydration. We still sweated over every single ounce, but at least we didn't have to worry he'd dehydrate.

Good luck. I hope she gets hungry soon!

Sorry to hear your having difficulties feeding your dd........We had the same problem when lizzy was about 2 months old........she barely would eat 12 oz a day........and that was with extreme force feeding........no i basically have to distract her with toys........or get her to fall asleep with her binky then hurry up and change it out for the bottle......sometimes i feed her on the floor and hang toys over head just out of reach so she is concentrating on something else......try some of those tricks .........usually things that light up work well........hope i was helpful.....goodluck

Boy I can remember trying so hard to get Sam to eat only to have it come right back up! It is so hard. What is your peds response to her decreased intake??? How is the weight gain??? If she shows any signs of dehydration(dry lips, no tears, dry diapers) she should be seen asap. Good Luck.

{{{HUGS}}} We went through several months doing that very thing. Its so frustrating. How old is she? Noah sort of shuts down on eating when his reflux is at its worst. He would sometimes wake up and not eat until afternoon, which always scared the heck out of me... Let us know how she is!

Allie has eaten 9 ounces in 19 hours. She continues to refuse the bottle and is just getting worse. I am so tempted to just demand that the doc put a feeding tube in so we don't have to deal with this stress of trying to feed her every day. It just took me 45 minutes to get one ounce down her.

I'm on the verge of a breakdown.

How do I teach her to recognize that she's hungry and needs to eat?

Maybe this needs to go into the bad day forum?

Christyn
:banghead:

:smt056 I understand how very frustrating it can be. We had a total solid averted child until he was 14 months of age and put on meds. Prior to that we did not know what we were dealing with and it would take me hours to get a lick of something into him. I wondered how he could NOT be hungry and fight me so very much no matter how I tried to get food into him. Truth is it took the right meds and in our case an OT and dietician to help us. At the age of 2 we are now with a feeding skills behaviour team to help us teach Iain what the hunger pains mean and how to eat regularly. It is an ongoing battle but MUCH better than where we were a year ago. Bear in mind we did not have help when we should have either.

How old is your wee one? And is she FTT? Iain was and that is oddly when we finally got the help although he was borderline for months prior.

What meds is she on? Dose? And how long on them? What has been tried in the past?

I am going to move this into the feeding forum as you can get some more responses there.

:hug:

Evan was like that too. Hours to get 2 oz. in. My first thought, Christyn, is DGE. Because his stomach wasn't emptying quickly enough, I sincerely believe that Evan didn't think that he was hungry and that he didn't feel it. He was diagnosed and medicated at 19 months. Five months later, he was able to drink 7-8 oz. at a time for the first time in his life. Co-incidence? I don't think so! I think it's the fact that his GERD and DGE meds. were finally in his system and working. It's certainly something that you might want to check into.