Lately, I have been bitten by the "My son is not eating enough" bug. It seems, all I can think of is how to make him eat his food with no fuss. SIGH, the days of "no solids" were so much more easier. And to think that I had been looking forward to this time with the false expectation that solids will help him sleep better. What a fool! Alas, his sleep issues have only changed for worse, if that were possible. He now wakes up every hour in the night. Hurray!! And the moment he wakes up, he is on all fours and wants to get going. Where? The Lord knows and the funny thing is, he does not even has his eyes open!! The other day, we had a shock. I walk in the room to check if he is sleeping ok (an hour or so after he was put down to sleep) - lo and behold, the little monster has pulled himself up, holding the crib rails and was trying to touch the fan. We had to lower the crib soon after that. Oh well, but that is an old matter and hubby and I have given up any hopes of sleeping through the night in the near future. We have heard about CIO (cry it out) methods and how it helps kids sleep better. But neither of us has the heart for it. He will eventually get there, there is hope. RIGHT?
Anyways, coming to the topic of the post, feeding him is turning out to be quite a tedious exercise. I remember our pediatrician's advice before we started him on solids - "Don't force him to eat, try 2 or 3 times, if he does not show interest or fusses over it, stop feeding him then and try again later. Do not dance/sing to make him eat". How does one do this? We sincerely tried not to go against this advice for a while. But we gave up some time back. Who has the time and energy to try later? Right now, feeding him is usually accompanied by any kind of entertainment we can come up with. I have no problems with this, the only thing is, he seems to be entertained by each "item" for a few minutes, eats couple of spoons and is again bored. It is as if he expects us to come up with something new every minute. We cannot do this kind of a thing for every feeding for long, can we? I don't want to turn into the mom who runs with her kid up and down the elevator to get him to eat. When I did hear about her, I thought why would she do something like that? If the kid doesn't want to eat, then so be it! Starve him and he will come to you eventually. I know better now. I have decided that from now on, I will try really hard to follow the ped's advice. Oh God! give me enough patience and perseverance or better yet, bless Naman with a good appetite!
:)
ReplyDelete