(Warning: There is poop talk ahead)
I have a picky eater. And not your run-of-the-mill, going-through-a-phase picky eater. A bona fide had-feeding-therapy-and-spent-a-weekend-in-the-hospital picky eater.
Yep. My youngest, who is now 6, spent a long weekend in the hospital when he was 2 years old because he was constipated. For a month. (I'll save you the graphic details of what that horrible month entailed. You're welcome.) His diet was the main contributor to this and we spent the next year on Miralax, Fiber One, in and out of many doctor's offices, and even saw a feeding therapist.
It's been a constant struggle and meal times are dreaded in my household. As he's gotten older, it's improved a bit and we have introduced a few fruits and veggies into his diet. Quite honestly, I thought we were doing OK. I was wrong.
Over the past few weeks my little guy has been getting terrible stomachaches right after he starts eating. We ignored it (as all good parents would do, right?) until finally he went to the nurse's office one too many times at school. I called the doctor and got him an appointment right away expecting news of some sort of food allergy. Nope. Our pediatrician diagnosed him with constipation. I almost fainted. No. Not this. Again.
Turns out his diet isn't doing anything to help the poop situation. But here's the thing: he does poop but apparently he's not getting it all out, so when he starts to eat, he gets backed up causing the pain (and my nightmare flashbacks to four years ago).
Our pediatrician is amazing and has been with us through this whole journey so having her tell my son he's constipated and needs to eat better was like music to my ears. Of course we've told him that a million times, but he doesn't listen to us. Having a doctor tell him he better start eating better or he's going to end up in the hospital again... well, that did the trick. (Sort of wish we could have had this talk a few years ago but better late than never, right?)
Her other suggestion, and sort of the point of this whole article, was to keep a food journal. Basically a special notebook with a special pen where we'd write down each new food he tries and rate it with a smiley face scale ranging from really happy face, to medium face, to yuck face. He eats the food and rates it.
We left the doctor's office and ran to Target so he could pick out his special notebook and pen. And, over the past week of doing this, we've tried six new foods and he actually likes looking back through his notebook to see what he thought of them. I love this! The other night I said he had to go back through his notebook and pick either carrots or celery (both new foods) and decide which one he wanted with dinner. He looked, decided carrots were a little better, and he ate them. He ate carrots. This is HUGE!
So far this is working for us and I wanted to share the idea in case any of you also have a picky eater. I've also discovered some free apps that do a similar thing as the notebook. Kids Food Adventure and Easy Eater 2 are two to check out.
