Eat, Sleep and...

 Kai used to be the best sleeper. I could lay him down and he would wine for maybe 5 minutes at the most then fall asleep; sometimes there wasn't even a peep made.  Well slowly we got out of that habit and bit by bit we started to spoil Kai and now we find ourselves here today with him needing special cuddling, rocking and feeding to get him to go to bed.  He wakes up at least once every night and won't go back to sleep until he gets a bottle.  With many failed attempts at letting him cry it out because Ben and I are softies we gave up on it all together.  I am not getting a very good nights rest and it's starting to take its toll.  So tonight Ben and I are making a commitment to letting Kai cry it out.  For a very sad 25 minutes we listened to Kai cry before he finally fell asleep.  When I would go in to reassure him he would hold my arm as tight as he could as I start to walk away...talk about stab to the heart.  After he fell asleep I gave him 5 minutes and I went to go check on him.  He was laying on top of his tear soaked blankets, perpendicular to how I left him and on the complete opposite end of the crib.  They say it gets better after 3 days, we are crossing our fingers that it does.

Kai has always been a hard baby to feed and the challenge has only gotten worse with solids.  He took about a month before he would eat anything we offered him.  When he finally did try it he pulled funny faces with most foods but really enjoyed sweet potatoes and fruits.  He has slowly digressed and will now only eat fruit and even that can sometimes be a challenge.  He spits whenever he sees a spoon, or anything for that matter, coming towards his mouth.  If I can just get a taste of fruit on his lip he will go for more, but if it is anything else it is game over.  I have been doing a lot of research and read a few articles about Food Aversions.  It seems like he could have this.  They talk about these babies having a difficult time breast feeding and then vomiting and spitting with solids.  From what I have found it is best to offer him what he likes and then offer him something new, but letting him decide if he wants more, if he doesn't like it then you stop giving it to him.  Forcing them to eat will only create more anxiety and can result in not eating all together.  One study used young children around the age of 8-11 who had these food aversions and the children made goals to taste new foods.  They did so at their own pace and on their own time.  Their goal was to get to 50 bites over a period of a week and usually at that point they didn't mind the food anymore.  A lot of these infants end up needing to go to a speech pathologist or occupational therapist due to poor oral development.  So I decided to email my friend who is doing her clinicals right now as she is studying to become a speech pathologist.  She recommended introducing a new food to him for three days while also giving him something he likes and to make sure I don't let him snack throughout the day, but make sure that there are set meal times, and that is the only time he eats.
So today on top of letting him cry it out I began working on introducing a new food...well reintroducing it.  For dinner I gave him pears, one of his faves, and I offered him a few bites of squash throughout the meal.  He hated it and spit it out every time he tasted it, but I don't feel like I overdid it.  I will try this at every meal for the next three days and see if he begins to grow accustom to it.

If you managed to read through my entire post I am proud of you :)  I will give you an update in three days to see if their is any improvements in any of the above areas.

Kai is already not looking forward to the next few days ;)