Early feeding issues resurfacing with solids? Update, Post 6

[Mosaic]

Background: DD2 was tongue-tied at birth. She was clipped by 2 weeks of age, but she needed months of therapy to increase suck strength, retrain tongue movement patterns, and reduce her middle tongue hypersensitivity. We did our best, but I went back to work at 11 weeks and obviously the therapy fell by the wayside as she went to daycare full-time. I think she's a pretty good nurser now, but she's at/below the 5% weight for height and still nurses every 2-3 hours, so she's not going to win any breastfeeding contests.

DD2 is now 8.5 months old, has 7 teeth, and is not into solids AT ALL (unless it's paper or plastic). Most of the time she refuses to open her mouth, or if something makes it in there, she jerks her head back and closes her eyes like we'd given her a lemon to suck on. We tried watery rice cereal twice, and she hated it and couldn't sleep those nights. We tried thicker rice cereal once, and she loved it but vomited it all up 3 hours later in a scary, gaggy way. We tried avocado, banana, and applesauce and get the sour-lemon face.

So, is this normal 8mo disinterest, or is this related to her previous issues? The therapist warned us that we may have trouble with solids, and encouraged us to bring her in if she gagged consistently. I don't think she's getting anything in to actually gag on it, but her tongue does actively push the spoon out if I manage to get it past her lips. She likes to sit at the table and seems interested the first time a spoon comes at her (though never opens wide), but as soon as anything goes in her mouth she's done with it and cries, so we quit. But she also HATED her early therapy, and it made a huge difference and saved our nursing relationship, so I don't know if I should keep working with her on this or give it a break. For the record, I'm not worried about calories but I am worried about oral aversions and hypersensitivities and want to establish a healthy relationship with food.

Thoughts?

[Knitting Mama]

Have you tried letting her self feed something like avocado or soft carrot or another soft food, a la BLW? My Cecilia will not be spoon fed, thank you very much, but she will self feed (albeit tiny amounts). But mostly, at this age, I wouldn't worry. It's not like she needs solids this early, they are just for exploring and learning about how eating works, not for nutrition.

[Mosaic]

We did try with both avocado and banana, whole and semi-mushed; and she liked to play with the texture but none went into her mouth. Surprising since she is a finger-sucker any other time of the day. We only tried a few times, though... is that something we should do daily to see if she gets the hang of it?

[Knitting Mama]

That might work. Make sure you aim to do it when you're eating too so that you're modeling to her what to do with it. I really wouldn't sweat it yet, though. I remember reading that a baby could viably thrive on just breastmilk until 2 years of age, after which they need more nutrients than breastmilk alone can offer. And a lot of kids don't really get into solids until well after 8 months, some even over a year.

[Quinalla]

I would keep offering, especially things she can self feed, but I would bring her back to the therapist personally in case it is related to the earlier issue. I'm guessing it is better to catch something like that sooner rather than later!

[Mosaic]

Update:

DD is now 9.5 months old, and we still haven't made any progress in the area of solid foods. After talking to the therapist on the phone, we went back in this morning for a feeding evaluation. Turns out that DD does have some issues: poor tongue groove, hypersensitivity of the middle tongue, and no food transfer skills. Her chewing skills are good and her swallowing is fine, but she doesn't move food to the back of her mouth, instead trying to suck it like a bottle/nipple or just raspberry-spit it out, cry, etc. She 1) retracts her tongue when the spoon enters the mouth (if we can even get it in there), 2) can't get the food off the spoon, and 3) spits it out and complains if any gets on her tongue.

So, yes, these are a continuation of the issues we had when she was born. We're back on a therapy schedule and hope to see some improvement soon. I'm also hopeful this makes nursing more comfortable, too, since the backslide could be what's causing the recent increased nursing discomfort (I had been blaming her 8 teeth)!

[Llyra]

Good luck, for sure. My DD1 had a range of oral issues, starting with the inability to latch and transfer milk effectively. She was tongue-tied (as am I, I found out later), and had some serious oral aversion things going on. She had the heck of a time learning to eat solids. It then progressed to the need for speech therapy. We worked with a great OT, and ST, for a long time. Anyway, she's six now. She's still an extremely picky eater. She's fussy about the texture of food. But she's functioning normally otherwise, and her speech is great. For a long time, I worried about her a LOT. But we got through it.

FWIW, the first food we ever got her to accept willingly was not something wet or mushy or soft at all. It was extremely dry toast. For some reason, she found that a lot easier to deal with, and it let her get used to having something in her mouth, which made it that much easier for her to progress to other foods.