Mealtime with Sterling has been a nightmare for us...He has been difficult with eating ever since he was born. He wasn't aloud to eat the first two days after he was born because he had a big surgery. After his surgery they wouldn't let me breast-feed him because they wanted to monitor how much food was going into him and how much was coming out. So they made me bottle feed him the next two weeks. Well, when I finally got around to breast-feeding him he wouldn't even try to give into it. It takes 4 muscles to feed from a bottle and 40 to breast-feed. You can understand why he has no interest after being fed from a bottle so long. I had several lactation consultants working with us trying millions of tricks and nothing would work. They usually just make you take out bottles completely and when they are hungry enough they will finally give in, but since Sterling was healing from a major surgery we couldn't try that approach. So after 3 months of constant trying, waking up and pumping breast-milk every 2 hours and pumping for 45 minutes and then trying to feed him for an hour, I thought I was going to go crazy with sleep depravation because I only slept 2-3 hours each day we decided to just bottle feed him totally (I still pumped 5 times a day when I was awake until he was 6 months). We thought he feeding issues would finally be over! WRONG!!!
Ever since he was born he has had really bad problems keeping his food down. Sometimes he would throw-up his whole bottle just minutes after we fed him and then we would have to feed him another whole bottle. Not just spit up like other babies, masses of vomit everywhere all the time. All the doctors told us by the time he was 6 months it would pass and to not worry. So Sterling is now 10 months old and still throwing u
p excessive amounts of food. I was mortified when we were is church and Sterling started making retching sounds (while everyone in the whole rooms looks back to see what it wrong) and then he proceeds to vomit all over the room. Not only did this happen once but twice and I was completely embarrassed and the whole room smelled like vomit including the vomit that often gets all over me. You think I would learn to bring a second change of clothes because I have to changed my clothes about twice everyday, but no I don't. I don't even bring a towel to clean up after his little throwing up escapades.
We have been trying to feed Sterling solids for about 5 months now which has been the worst part of this. He took to cereal really well minus all the vomiting that has accompanied it but that wasn't anything we weren't used to. The little monkey will NOT eat anything but cereal. I have spends hundreds and hundreds of dollars trying to find him something that he will eat. His pediatrician told us that it can take up to 40 tries of a food for some babies to eat it.
Believe me, I have tried giving him all fruits and vegetables and meats that many times and he still will not eat anything but cereal. I finally got his booked into a feeding evaluation for next week because at 12 months they are supposed to be eating pretty much everything that adults can eat and all Sterling can eat is cereal. Turns out, that Sterling isn't just a picky little baby or that I am doing something wrong. Believe me, I thought I was just doing something wrong and it was my fault. I have never been more frustrated than I have been the last few months. Mealtime usually consisted of trying to get him to eat things for about 45-60 minutes 3-4 times daily. Who has four hours to waste trying to feed their baby solids. Sterling was born with a Chiari 2 malformation. It can be linked to Spina Bifida. It is a condition where the medulla, forth ventricle and cerebellum is displaced into the cervical spinal canal. SOme people don't experience symptoms but the most common one being a sensitive gag reflux and food texture issues. Meaning that whenever they eat food they feel like they are going to throw up and some do even into adulthood because they cannot learn to control this. As well, they cannot eat some foods with certain textures that bother them. So....looks like we are in for the long haul with this one. Below is a picture of his malformation. The first one shows how parts of the brain are being pulled into his spinal canal and the second shows a normal one or what it looks like after surgery. Most people with has have to get several surgery's to take care of this because it can cause severe pain. Fingers crossed Sterling gets over this or no pain is involved because we already know he has tons of other surgeries waiting for him. I hate to think that we have to add another one to his already long list. Poor little guy...Doesn't seem very fair that one little guy has so much to go through so early in life and tons yet to come.
-Alauna
but they don't sell them anymore because they didn't enough sales to continue this item. We wanted to make it something that when he was a little older, he thought would be cool and fun to ride in. So we made him a little fire truck. I am still looking for a fire bell to put on the front and a steering wheel but it is pretty much done. We set him in it and he instantly knew that he had to turn the wheels to move. He can only turn himself into circles right now, but at least he is moving. He has really been wanting to get down and play and move lately but he wont cooperate with tummy time so he hasn't learned to army crawl. We are so proud of the little guy and it totally warms our hearts to see him learning to move himself in any way. Hopefully he will get the hang of this so he can get around quicker.. What a little trooper we have! Here is vid. of the little guy trying his truck out. 
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