I realized I haven't updated about Sophie lately & we have huge improvements that I need to share! It has been a month since we met with her new GI doctor & we have been following all of the dietician's recommendations with great success. She is still taking 3 medicines 3 times a day but they are working! We have slowly re-introduced food & we have her successfully eating 3 meals a day. Woo-hoo! The medicine really is helping to keep the food down. She still spits up occasionally, but it is not like the full force vomiting she used to do. She is eating 3 jars of baby food a day, which is a lot for her. It took us a while to get her to eat a whole jar. I have pushed her a little harder in food varieties since the allergist didn't think she had any & she has been exposed to food off & on for the past 7-8 months.
The original goal was to transition her from an infant formula to a toddler formula & that was a pretty easy transition. We had sampled several but decided to go with Pediasure Peptide. It's kind of like a vanilla milkshake so she loved it! The problem is that you can't buy unless you go through a DME company & they had to get insurance approval. We kept running out of samples & she didn't want the infant formula anymore. And we wasted 2 weeks trying to get the DME/doctor/insurance to approve everything, so I just started giving her whole milk. I had already exposed her to yogurt & she didn't have any problems, so I was hoping she didn't have the dairy allergy like Sadie had. Luckily she did not! The first day she kind of sipped it slowly but by the second day she was downing it. And I talked to her GI doctor & they said that since she is eating baby food now & keeping it down, she would be okay with whole milk instead of formula. Hip hip hooray! No more formula! Now I have to buy 4 gallons of milk a week to keep up with the demand of our house, but that is still WAY cheaper than formula. And convenient since I can get milk anywhere. I don't have to carry around formula anymore - yippee!
The only problem we are having is table food. I have tried exposing her to table food for the past week & it has been much more challenging. I am not sure if it's her age (she is almost 15 months & just now eating) or if we are having problems with textures &/or tongue? I first started with puffs & she had no idea what they were. She just played with them for about 10 minutes & could not figure out that she was supposed to eat them. That has happened a couple of times with other foods as well. She doesn't really like to pick anything up & she does a little better when I feed her it on a spoon. But she is really spitting everything out. And our first few attempts resulted in choking, gagging & spitting up. I am going to keep trying over the next few weeks to see if we can get her any better, but if we can't, I will probably have to follow up with her GI doctor.
Another disappointment is her sucking reflex. I was able to transition her from a bottle to a sippy cup when she turned one, but it is a soft, plastic nipple. Now that she has a full mouth of teeth, she knows she can chew on the nipple & push it around, which results in her making a mess :( I have tried a more mature sippy cup with a hard spout but it's like food - she doesn't have a clue what she is supposed to do. And I have no idea how to teach her. We didn't have any of these problems with Sadie, but again, I think it has something to do with her age. Most babies are exposed to a lot of these issues much younger but since we have had so many problems, it has caused her to be delayed.
I don't really have pictures of her eating because I am always feeding her. That's another problem - she is not eating as well for babysitters or Bryan, so I am having to feed her most of the time. Which is fine since everything is new right now. But I did have Bryan take a picture of us yesterday at lunch because she got her first bite of ice cream:
I figure it's just frozen whole milk, right? She loved it! And Sadie was excited too:
Sadie thinks it's so exciting that Sophie is eating & drinking just like her :) Poor Sadie didn't get to have ice cream until she well over 2 years old because of her dairy allergy. Now she thinks it is the best dessert ever:
It still amazes me how these 2 girls can be so different. Hopefully practice will make perfect in Sophie's case & she will be eating like a champ in no time :) As long as she takes her medicine!
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