That sounds so cold and clinical, doesn’t it? “Feeding update,” as if it’s simply medical news that I have to share. It’s not, of course, that simple. Feeding — eating — are complex activities, bound up as they are in shared history, memories, nurturing, and love. I literally tear up when I see another child my son’s age greedily stuffing Cheerios or strawberries in her mouth. I wince when my friends lovingly tell me that their child was a picky eater, too, and that Hunter will grow out of it. (If only he were just picky, I want to shout!)

He still refuses to eat. I have been taking him to occupational therapy at Children’s Healthcare (CHOA) and I have enrolled him in a state-run program called Georgia Babies Can’t Wait. (Ironically named because it takes months to get in the program.) While we haven’t had a therapy visit yet with GBCW, I am excited about starting with them because their therapists come to the home. I believe Hunter will respond much better in his natural environment. He freaks out when we step into the small, claustrophobic therapy rooms at CHOA. “Let’s go in this small room where he won’t feel so overwhelmed,” they tell me and I think, “so small he can’t get far enough away from YOU.” You see, he’s still going through that stranger anxiety phase.

In order to qualify for the GBCW program, a team of occupational and speech therapists came to the house last week (week before last? It’s all a blur) and evaluated him. He had to be moderately behind in two developmental categories or severely behind in one to qualify. As a mother, this was a gut-wrenching directive. I want him in the program, but I don’t want him developmentally behind on anything! In the end, he was perfectly normal with motor skills, speech, and all other categories except feeding, in which he did have a severe delay. He’s at 6 months on the chart (instead of 16 months). <sigh> So we qualify.

In the meantime, we took him to a pediatric G.I. to determine what’s going on with his reflux. It’s important to make sure there is no pain with eating, or no structural defects, so all we have left to work with is the behavioral issues. She ordered an upper G.I., which we had this morning. The radiologist said it looked normal. They were looking for narrowing in the esophagus or anything else that might be causing him to choke and gag when he tries table food.

So that’s where we are. He’s on the highest possible dose of Prevacid for his age/weight to control the reflux. His “insides” look fine. We have behavioral food exercises we work on in therapy and at home (called “snack therapy”). We are working on a progressive de-sensitization program. Right now, we put food on his tray and encourage him to play with it, touch it, but we never, ever, suggest he eat it. (Weeks ago, he was hysterical at the thought of even TOUCHING a pretzel. Now he will happily shove it in a cooked carrot and make a tower.) We are working up to getting him to kiss the food, then lick the food . . . beyond that, I cannot imagine.

When he’s 16 and eating me out of house and home, I will not complain. This I promise you!