I Trick my Child: Getting the Food In
So we’ve been adjusting the last few days… adjusting to apartment living, being in a new place, wearing multiple layers of clothing. Our life right now is a huge adjustment, and that’s fine, except when it starts to affect Jackson’s eating. then it’s not fine.
And then I turn into a crazy monster of a mom because I realize that I had a child who was successfully consuming food, and now, because the universe has put us in a place of adjustment, my son is not eating. And yeah, there are always going to be “outside factors” that contribute to Jackson not wanting to eat some days. There will be times when he has a cold, he’s teething (which he is currently working on, those suckers!)… blah blah blah…
I don’t feel like I have the luxury of making excuses for Jackson to not eat. Reason being, that’s what Paul and I did for so long and what eventually landed us in the hospital twice with Jackson getting a feeding tube. We excused his not eating based on what was going on around us.
Well NOT THIS TIME my friends! I have found my method of getting around circumstance and getting my son to eat… and that is to trick him into it. Those of you who are reading this and thinking “Well yeah, why didn’t you try tricking him earlier?” HUSH! I got it now.
Case and point— Paul fed him a bottle this afternoon, and Jackson drained 7 ounces of the bottle. Killer! I asked him what he did and he had turned the nipple to a different setting so that Jackson can guzzle faster. We have learned that if Jackson doesn’t get basically his entire meal upon the initial latch onto his bottle, it’s a wasted meal and he rejects the bottle. So score one for Paul. He succeeded.
At the next feeding, I did the same, and Jackson took 6 ounces, which was another success. Then I sat him down at his highchair for his jar feeding. We’ve been giving him jar meals and specifically purchasing the meals that have the most calories to get some meat on his bones. (Yes I realize they probably have preservatives and all that junk that we don’t want our kids to eat. Whatever, he eats it.)
There’s a jar of cinnamon raisin granola that has been the bane of Jackson’s existence for a little while now. I love this jar because it has 110 calories that my skinny magoo needs. Jackson hates this jar because it tastes like vomit. And so as I sit Jackson down to battle the cinnamon raisin granola with him, it dawns on me that I need to continue with Paul’s thinking and trick our son once again. So I break out a jar of blueberry applesauce (his fave) and the battle ensues.
I open with a few bites of the blueberry applesauce, to whet the palate, then I go in for the kill. I then take a spoonful of the cinnamon raisin granola and DUNK the spoonful INTO the blueberry applesauce, thus providing a tasty treat for our magoo… and SUCCESS! Jackson has a meal full of calories, and I have a malicious smile on my face because deep down I know that I have tricked my child into eating. Chalk that up to a victory for today.
Nic is a 28 year old freelancing writer at home in Maryland, with her 15 month old son, Jackson (often referred to as “the magoo”), her 6 ft 6 Navy pilot husband, and their 85 lb Labrador retriever, Red. A proud writer, a passionate reader, a tattooed liberal, and non-sophisticated wino, Nic’s humorous, raw tales of motherhood can be found at My Bottle’s Up. A strong advocate for mom’s with children who battle feeding issues (due to her son’s breast milk allergy at birth), Nic’s website quickly became her lifeline as she battled the bottle to get her son to eat, thus spawning My Bottle’s Up! where Nic has been “proudly rejecting one bottle and embracing another since 2008.” Nic can also be found on Twitter and BlogHer at Home.
