Michelle Smiles

Teaching my children to question authority, except mine.

Gag a-go-go

June9

I’m a pretty laid back momma.  But now and then something comes up and I wonder if maybe I should be worried.  So I ask all of you.

At Tessa’s 9 month pediatrician appointment, he encouraged us to keep working on solids and baby food.  I shared that she didn’t like the Stage 2 foods that had texture.  He suggested we work at small items of table food because sometimes the mixed textures (smooth with tiny pieces) of baby food is weird for babies.  I’ve spent 6 weeks trying.  I give her a couple of gerber puffs everyday.  I’ve tried tiny pieces of cereal, pasta, rice, bread, banana, potato, even bland hummus.  I get the same result every single time.  She spits it back out.  I put it back in her mouth.  She spits it out.  I put it back in.  Lather, rinse, repeat.  If I tuck it back in her cheek so that she can’t spit it out easily, she gags and then throws up the entire contents of her stomach.  A single piece of rice caused a very large puddle of vomit on the floor of a mexican restaurant on Saturday.

Tessa is 10.5 months old.  She tolerates no food that isn’t thoroughly pureed.  Do I worry?  Do I keep trying?  Do I just buy a magic bullet and plan on pureeing her food well into college?  Oh wise internets, please tell me.

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A couple of photos…they aren’t great but I’ve been limping along with a broken camera.  I can’t see what I am taking photos of and I can’t change the settings.  Considering that, they aren’t so bad.

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posted under parenting
24 Comments to

“Gag a-go-go”

  1. On June 9th, 2009 at 10:52 am Burgh Baby Says:

    We fought and fought and fought with Alexis because she would not, under any circumstances, eat baby food. A little bit of sweet potatoes, but other than that? FORGET IT. Any attempts to break the law of no baby foods were met with violent opposition. Then one day I handed her some pizza crust. The toothless little monster gnawed and gnawed and gnawed, happy as a kid can be. A week later, she was eating nothing but table food. She wasn’t picky, she just didn’t like the choices she was being given. Here’s to hoping Tessa just hasn’t found what she wants just yet. If all else fails, you can always buy her one of those hand puree things and she can mush up her own food for the rest of her life. 😉

  2. On June 9th, 2009 at 11:07 am Bobbi Says:

    I really don’t know a lot of babies who like baby food. Reese wasn’t that big on them either. Texture was an issue for him as well. She will eat when she is ready. Reese LOVED to chew on the end of three day old baguette. (don’t ask, and yes, eventually we had to dig it out of his mouth, but it kept him entertained for some time!!) I would just give it a go and she will move on when she is ready. If she is happy w/stage 1 stick to it. Eventually she will move on, or learn to use a food grinder by herself!! Kids are really strange w/texture. Example, we peeled the skin off of chicken nuggets and hot dogs with Cassie until she was old enough to do it herself. Can’t remember when she stopped, but eventually she ate them the normal way. But, she was well over three!!

    GOOD LUCK

  3. On June 9th, 2009 at 11:23 am Michelle Says:

    She does like baby food – just nothing w/ any chunks or texture. Stage 2 fruits and veggies are fine…but table food or syage 2 w/ a little texture results in the gag/vomit reflex. Perhaps pizza crust or bread crust is the way to go lol

  4. On June 9th, 2009 at 11:25 am laura k. Says:

    kaenen wouldn’t touch any table food either until he was almost a year old. we did the same thing – try and try and try and he would just not even open up his mouth. one nite a buffalo wild wings he grabbed one of my french fries adn that’s all it took! i thought it was a texture thing as well, but he kaenen just did everything when HE was ready, not me. hang in there!

  5. On June 9th, 2009 at 12:05 pm Dawn Says:

    Hi Michelle!! Long time Lurker…(lol) I wouldnt worry or really press the issue. Your the momma and you know best!! Your with her everyday… just go with what you think or feel:)

    Your situatioin reminds me alot of us with my middle daughter Ashley. I thought we would be stuck on stage one food forever. She just had a really strong gag reflex. I can’t tell you how many times we wore what she had eaten because we tried that little bite of food!!! We eventually made it to stage 2 food around a 13mthsr or so. Just dont get discouraged if you make it to stage 2 and then have to go back to puree for awhile!! We did… but she eventually went back and now she is a healthy three year old who still is very “picky” with textures and gags really easy if things arent cut up just right, but all and all she can eat normal food ….Hand in there:)

  6. On June 9th, 2009 at 12:20 pm Julie P Says:

    Maybe its silly but have you tried Cheerios? Ally did not eat anything but formula until about 9 months and she was not a fan of baby food at all, stage 1 or 2. My ped said the same thing “some kids don’t like baby food” so we just kept trying and trying to get her to eat small pieces of table food and our OT reccomended cheerios. Finally at about 10 months she started to eat a few at a time. I still remember feeling so excited when I came home and Becky told me that Ally ate 3 cheerios!
    Ally never did the gag thing – just refused to eat stuff, and she still does. So maybe this isn’t a huge help, but at least you know you’re not alone with difficult eater!

  7. On June 9th, 2009 at 1:06 pm Becky Says:

    Tabitha was the same way, would eat the pureed baby foods just fine, loved her vegetables, but would not eat the table food vegetables at all—gagged many times on sweet potatoes from the table (loved them from a baby food jar) and peas. She didn’t come home until she was 11 months old. The pediatrician said to not worry about it, she’ll eat table food when she’s ready. She was right. She is still picky about the textures of some foods but will eat table food no problem.

  8. On June 9th, 2009 at 1:11 pm Dana Says:

    Serena was already eating food with texture when we met but I remember my mom telling me I only ate foods I could eat myself. She called them finger foods. Since kids this age put everything in their mouths I’d put her in the high chair at a time that is not a meal time. Put the finger foods on the tray before you put her in. Maybe she’ll just pick them up and play. Eventually it will end up in her mouth and then she’ll think it was her idea. Let me know if this works for ya. Lots of luck. She WILL eat when she’s ready. I wouldn’t worry.

  9. On June 9th, 2009 at 1:48 pm Steph Says:

    My oldest daughter had this issue as a baby. She had reflux and then when starting solid foods had the same problem. We ended up having to take her to a speech therapist as a baby (this seemed SO bizarre to me at the time) to help her with swallowing. It was partially b/c of a sensitive gag reflex plus a little sensory stuff in the mouth probably related to the gag reflex from the reflux. (reflex/reflux – this sentence was brutal!)

    What it turned out to be is that she could not tolerate different textures at different times. So Stage 3 baby food was never possible for her. She had to stay with pureed things in the baby food department. So her 1st meal might be applesauce. Then the next “meal” an hour later could be cheerios. But not applesauce and cheerios at the same meal. Then lunch could be pureed stuff, then snack could be something crunchy. But it took us a bit to get even to that point.

    There is also a little finger puppet kind of thing that had soft bristles that we had to used to ‘brush’ the inside of her mouth to desensitize her to the textures. It never helped that much – but if it makes you feel better she outgrew it by the time she was 2. She’s 9 now, and interestingly still eats everything from one food group before moving on to the next during a meal (will eat all the salad, then will eat all the mashed potatoes, then the meat, etc.)

  10. On June 9th, 2009 at 1:59 pm Irismama Says:

    That sounds awesome…”very large puddle of vomit” in the mexican restaurant. That’s baby book material! My daughter did not have this problem but I did see today’s Little Stomaks article talks about introducing solid foods. This site has good info. on eating and nutrition.

    http://www.littlestomaks.com/2009/06/ask-the-expert-weaning-and-solid-foods/

    Good luck with Tessa. Hope she learns to swallow texture some day soon.

  11. On June 9th, 2009 at 2:23 pm elle Says:

    I can’t speak to being a parent of a baby, but I know a thing or two about kids and food. Seeing as I wore a large majority of it for about 2 years.

    1) keep trying. It may get frustrating, but keep trying. She may not be ready, but it doesn’t hurt to try. Just don’t do the put it in her mouth thus resulting in throwing up thing. That’s counter productive. If she spits it out fine.

    2) try pureeing real food. Not the jarred baby food stuff. As she gets more accustomed to real food tastes you can puree it a little less each time. This same theory worked with Oleg. Where he came from most of his food was very mushy. He did eat bread and the like, but the flavors were totally wrong for him when he came to the US. The common denominator was mashed potatoes. I would make vats of mashed potatoes and use a Pampered Chef like food chopper to chop up a little bit of what we were eating and then mixed that into the mashed potatoes. I totally accredit that to his eating such a wide variety of food today.

  12. On June 9th, 2009 at 4:45 pm mama k Says:

    Honestly, I have friends who’s babies didn’t eat much of anything until closer to 1yo. They keep offering, but the kids aren’t interested. (They are of the exclusively breastfeeding, crunchy crowd.) None of them seemed concerned and their kiddos are just fine. So it doesn’t sound that weird to me. From everything I’ve read breastmilk or formula should be the main source of calories for the first year. Solids are more for practice than calories at this age.
    As long as she is gaining an appropriate amount of weight and meeting her developmental milestones, I wouldn’t be too worried.

  13. On June 9th, 2009 at 7:50 pm Shannon Says:

    My co-workers son will be a year this week and if allowed, he would take his bottle every 2 hours, but wants nothing to do with food. If given any food, he throws it on the floor and calls the dogs over to eat.

    My son is 7 months old and the way he eats I decided I wouldn’t be able to afford baby food, so I’ve been mashing/cutting up whatever we eat for him and it’s going great. In fact, at a buffet he ate so much last night I was afraid we would be wearing it. Instead he blessed daddy with six poopy diapers today, haha.

  14. On June 9th, 2009 at 9:04 pm Kerry Says:

    My now 100 pound seven year old was like that. He hated baby food. Would not eat it. Would gag the second it entered his mouth. I started buying (I think they are called Little Graduates) and he sorda started to eat. We called it the Kenz diet because he would chew the food and get every morsel of taste (juice) out of it but would then spit out the actual solid portion of the food. This was still progress over the zero tolerence of baby food. Eventually he began to eat what we ate and is now a great eater and very healthy looking. (Before he was two he looked way too skinny, we could see his ribs – I look back at pictures of him from those days and he truly looks sick) But I wanted to encourage you that we not only overcame that obstacle, but he is now the tallest, heaviest (but not overweight) child in his class.

  15. On June 9th, 2009 at 11:54 pm Rhonda Says:

    WE too had issues with feeding with our youngest daughter, Emily. She has done everything WHEN she wants to. She would probably have eaten the pureed baby food and bottles well into college had we let her. She still really likes her “ilk” (milk) and we just skipped the baby food with chunks. It just wasn’t worth the fight and she wasn’t wasting away. She has stayed around the 25% on the graphs so we just kept offering soft easy people food. And YES, we wasted food around here as we kept trying different things. She’d suck on a grilled cheese, eat a bite or two of soft cheese (colby, harvarti and etc.), take a couple bites of egg (yes, I know, don’t expose them but did that with all four and they turned out fine!), gave her very watered cream of wheat and gradually would thicken more and more. I’d give her the sugary marshmallows out of those Lucky Charms but she could suck on them and they’d melt and it was all about just introducing “texture” for her to get used to something besides pureed food. Hope that helps and please email if I can help in any way. Hang in there. I think Em finally started full fledge pasta and etc. right around 17 or 18 months! She still won’t even consider the use of the potty, sighhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

  16. On June 10th, 2009 at 6:52 am Ruthie Says:

    Hey, Michelle! Sounds like you may or may not have something to worry about! What a help I am! Hold on, keep reading! Joshua came home when he was 14 mo. old…still on a bottle and stage 2 baby food. From what I gather, the foster mom was frustrated with trying to get him to eat reg. food as well. He didn’t eat “real” food until about 5 months ago (around 2 yrs., 2 mo of age). He has some speech issues too…not related to the language. I think he’d have had these problems in Guatemala as well. So what helped? All states have a program for children ages birth to 3 yr. of age that is FREE! In SC, it’s called BabyNet. Josh got all evaluations free and receives speech and OT once a week for free. All you have to do is request it! Call the pediatrician’s office and ask them what the name of the early intervention program for TN is called and how to reach them.

    Now, all that being said, some are going to say “give it time.” I do agree to some extent. Having worked in spec. ed for 11 years, I can’t tell you how valuable early intervention is!

    By the way, the boy eats now! Pizza, burgers, rice, chicken, beans, grapes, etc, etc!

  17. On June 10th, 2009 at 9:04 am carla Says:

    I have ZERO insights or help and if I had thoughts I probably not share 🙂 as all our experiences are so unique and if youre me youd FREAKIN PANIC when it most likely didnt apply to you.

    E? wasnt into solids at all and I forced the issue (cross reference under boredom and chosen childrens house and too much time on my hands) for a few weeks and she gave in.

    WHO THE HECK KNOWS if I did the right or wrong thing?!

  18. On June 10th, 2009 at 9:27 am melany Says:

    Try Papa Johns breadsticks. Griff used to love those in his 9 – 12 months range. He’d just grab hold and gnaw away. Maybe it would get her used to non-puree’d food without something small enough to gag on?

  19. On June 10th, 2009 at 12:02 pm Tonya Says:

    Emily was like that. I gave her little pcs of melons, strawberries, grapes…real sweet, juicy things with texture.. Stuff she didnt want to spit out because it was sooo good! LOL It seemed to help get us over that.

  20. On June 10th, 2009 at 12:41 pm Sonia in MO (FTC) Says:

    I was pretty lucky – my kid pretty much ate everything put in front of her (and still does) but when she was that age she was pretty much done with baby foods and went right to table foods. I did puree all of her foods at first though so it was easier for her to swallow and get used to… maybe just throw some green beans or something in the food processor until it’s very smooth, and gradually work up to adding more texture? And applesauce is one baby food that starts out very smooth at stage 1 then goes to adding a bit more texture when you get to stage 2 or 3… maybe mix some stage 2 into her stage 1, gradually adding more until she gets used to it? Also, when Hannah was teething, my lifesaver was a frozen bagel – it was hard enough that she couldn’t tear big chunks off and choke, but very cold and easy to gnaw on. Maybe just toss one on her high chair tray and see what she does with it? She might start gnawing if she thinks it’s her own idea 🙂

    You’ve gotten some great suggestions here – and I think Tessa looks perfect so you are definately doing everything right 🙂 She may just be one of those babies who wants to do everything in HER own time!!!

  21. On June 10th, 2009 at 1:57 pm Kim Says:

    Have you tried giving her pureed table food (aka whatever the family’s having for dinner)? I only did baby foods long enough to check for allergies and then switched to grinding up whatever we were having. That way there’s more flavor and just a little texture. I added just a little bit of water to it when needed to make it smoother. Good luck.

  22. On June 12th, 2009 at 6:32 pm oh amanda Says:

    Jessie at Vanderbilt Wife sent me this post b/c I am dealing w/the exact same thing. My son, Asa is 8mo and he will NOT eat food. I tried purees at about 6.5-7mo and NOTHING. It got so bad he would cry every time I’d put him in the high chair. Just this week I’ve finally decided to give him some table food—a raw carrot, some bananas, avocado, etc. But he’s the same as yours—he gags and throws up at least once per meal.

    I’m experimenting w/size…like “french fry” size for him to hold verus tiny little pea-sized food. But nothing seems to matter. His favorite so far is a raw carrot. But I think he’s just teething on it…

    Now I’m off to read the comments…

  23. On June 12th, 2009 at 8:43 pm Melissa K. Says:

    We didn’t even attempt to start solids with Ryleigh until she was 9 months. At 9 months, she finally looked a bit interested in what was on our plates at dinnertime, so I slopped a spoonful on her tray and she picked it up and fed it to herself. She ate like a champ from that day on, and the best part was I never had to spoon feed her because she always wanted to feed herself. Now at 3 yrs old, she’s the best eating, least picky toddler I know.

    Do a little google search on the terms “child-led solids” or “delayed solids” and you’ll probably find some useful info that will ease your anxiety.

    Hope that helps you feel better.

  24. On July 5th, 2009 at 11:38 am le Says:

    I have an autistic little 3 and a half year old. We also believe his mother did drugs and drank thru the pregnancy.She has adhd and probably fas too. He has a severe gag reflex, OCD, FAS effects, cognitive delays, anxiety up the wasoo, sensory integration disorder big time. He will not eat anything without gaging, he only drinks pediasure from a bottle but most the time throws it up too. He vomits daily.He will only drink from this one bottle and nipple. They think he doesnt have the connection to the brain telling him hes hungry or thirsty. I have to sit and rub his head and sing for an hour for him to even drink any ounces from the bottle of the pediasure.He was failure to thrive when he came to me at 8mths. He now is a chubby 40lb little monkey that vomits every day. I have spent and am still doing it , all day trying to get the pediasure into him. He has had every test possible and there is nothing wrong with him. Its all in his head. He will sometimes drink a couple of oz of juice and the odd yogurt. Thats it, he actually runs away if you offer him food. Or cries like we are killing him. Its extremely frustrating and the therapist& dr.s just say keep on doing what your doing. Well thats a heck of alot to ask. I have no life , He has to be on a strict schedule , if he doesnt sleep he vomits even more. Oh and sleep is a whole other story. Hes stayed wide awake for over 72 hours and thats with melatonin. Nobody knows what to do, they only offer a feeding tube as a resolution. He will never eat again if we do that. Hes so happy if we dont make him drink or offer him food.Its just a total bother for him to be around food or his bottle. Any ideas??? The proffesionals dont have any.