Mom and I took Tinsley to the doctor today. She has not been sleeping too great, which we have attributed to teething. She is also quite congested when she wakes up. I am afraid she is going to have to deal with allergies, which is not surprising, but is quite disappointing. Our biggest concern, however, was Tinsley's eating, or should I say the lack thereof. I am sure that anyone that reads this blog and sees pictures of Tinsley would wonder why on earth we would be concerned that there is anything wrong with her. Tinsley is growing like a weed, but still refuses to eat any type of food other than the one type of baby food-apples, bananas and mixed cereal. She does not even eat that very well quite often. She is taking 5 bottles of breastmilk per day without issue. Each bottle is between 5-8 oz. She normally goes to sleep around 8:30 and sleeps until anytime between midnight and 2. She then wakes up, takes part of a bottle, goes back to sleep, wakes up again in another hour or so, takes the rest of the bottle, goes back to sleep and then normally wakes up for the day at around 5:30. She is an early riser just like her daddy! Any time that we try to give her any type of food which most kids her age are eating, she immediately begins gagging and will quite often throw up. We have tried EVERYTHING!!! Yesterday after another episode, we decided that enough was enough and made an appointment with Dr. Peck to see if we could figure out what was going on. They checked Tinsley's weight 20.5 lbs (90th percentile) and her height is 28 3/4 inches (90th percentile). Dr. Peck checked Tinsley thoroughly and we discussed everything that has been going on. She thinks that it's possible that Tinsley's restless sleeping habits could continue until around the age of 2 which is when babies normally quit teething. That was not exactly what I wanted to hear, but also not really surprising. We gave Tinsley a cheerio which is one of the things that she normally has trouble eating. Sure enough as soon as we gave it to her, she began gagging. She did not throw up because I removed it from her mouth immediately. Dr. Peck mentioned that when I tried to give Tinsley the cheerio, she pushed it away twice before finally taking it. She also noted that Tinsley is gagging immediately when she gets the piece of food in her mouth and not when she tries to swallow it. She thinks that Tinsley has a "taste and texture aversion". She is not concerned at all because the gagging is not when she attempts to swallow. She said the best thing to do would be to stop trying to get her to eat anything different for the next month. She thinks that by giving her the "month off", when we try to feed her again, she may be past the aversion to different things. She also said that when we do feed her the one type of baby food that she will eat, if she acts uninterested or does not want it, to not force the issue. Basically, she does not want us making an issue out of eating for Tinsley and she thinks that the issue will resolve itself. She assured us that Tinsley is still getting everything that she needs from the breastmilk and that she will begin eating different foods when she is hungry. She also assured me that Tinsley would not go to college drinking breastmilk and eating baby food. :-) We also all got our flu shots while at the doctor. Mom and I are done with ours for the year. Tinsley has to go back next month for her second one as they break it up into 2 separate shots for the little ones.
Here are a few pics of Tinsley having fun waiting to see Dr. Peck
We took some of the baby food that Tinsley will eat to show Dr. Peck. Of course Tinsley is not very interested in eating what is inside the package, but she LOVES chewing on what the food comes in!
She is also quite fond of my camera case :-)
I am surprised that they make us wait at all to see the doctor. I would think they would be concerned the place might be absolutely destroyed! To say that Tinsley loves tearing up the paper on the table in the doctor's office would definitely be an understatement!
