Eat Asher Eat

As I have mentioned on this blog before, Asher is not a good eater.  He started out his life that way, and has just continued on for the last 6 1/2 months.  When he was born and taken to the NICU, he would have been able to leave after a few hours had he just eaten well - he took a long time to eat even a tiny amount of food, and even needed a NG tube once to get a feeding.  While we haven't had to resort to such extreme measures since then, it has always been a constant struggle to get him to eat a full meal.  He gets very distracted easily and will stop eating (and often not start again) if he is distracted - we actually try to feed him in complete silence just to avoid this!  He will often just let milk run out of his mouth while eating, because he would rather smile at us or just look around the room at what is going on.  He will also just flat out refuse to nurse or to take a bottle.  The doctor suggested that we start solids around 4 1/2 months, and Asher has been more interested in those (thank goodness!).  But, at this age, babies are still supposed to get most of their calories and nutrition from breastmilk or formula, so we have still been trying to get him to drink as much as he will.  It has been very frustrating for us, especially since we have the polar opposite in his twin brother, who eats so well and would eat all day long if we let him!  I guess this disparity in eating wouldn't bother us so much (after all, they are very different beings!) if Asher's weight didn't continue to fall further and further behind his brother's.  When they were born, the boys were 1/2 lb different - at their 6 mo checkup, they were over 1 1/2 lb different.  This in and of itself wouldn't bother me so much either, except that not only did the gap grow wider, but Asher's percentile dropped from the 5th (where he was since his 2 month checkup) to the 3rd.

So, although the boys' doctor was not very concerned (because he is still gaining weight and is developing normally), Eric and I were.  So, I asked for a referral to a dietician to get some fresh ideas for how we can help him catch up.  I took the boys to the appointment yesterday.  After I squeezed the huge double stroller into the dietician's tiny office, she took notes on my concerns and what he eats in a typical day.  She figured out how many calories a baby his age normally needs in a day (about 600), and then how much more he would need to eat in order to gain "catch up" weight (about 100 extra).  Based on that, she suggested we prepare concentrated formula, so that he would get 28 calories per ounce (as opposed to the 20 cal/oz in regular formula).  We had tried concentrated formula before, but not to that level.  She also suggested we add 2-3 tsp of butter or vegetable oil to his food per day.  I was very surprised to hear this suggestion!  But, she assured me it was safe and healthy, and that even babies need fats (particularly a baby like Asher)!  Lastly, she suggested we feed him more starchy vegetables (like white potatoes, sweet potatoes, squash, peas) as opposed to other fruits/veggies with fewer calories.  Also, adding in more avocados would be good since they are so high in fats.

So, we are going to try all of those suggestions, and we'll see how he fares at his 9 month checkup.  The dietician said this was a pretty aggressive plan, so it should work - he should gain 1 1/2 pounds per month.  If it doesn't work...well, we'll cross that bridge if we come to it!

As long as we can get more food into his mouth than on his bib, we should be in good shape...