Food texture aversion in reflux toddlers

[Swoop]

I'm just wondering if anyone has any experience with this and whether you've overcome it/how.

I'd be particularly interested in hearing from anyone who's done BLS and come up against this.

[MummaSue]

I wonder about this too Swoop, I don't have too much time to share just now, but will be back later

[Swoop]

We saw a respiratory specialist yesterday and he said it's really common when we described DD's eating habits. Just not sure how we get around it though!

[Sagres]

I didn't have a refluxy baby but I did have one that had aversions to different textures, or anything really in her mouth. We saw a speech pathologist and between us we found toys that helped her get used to the different textures and foods that she would accept, and slowly built up her food from there.

[mummato1]

I am very interested in finding out more too... we are finding DS (22 months) has a major aversion with textures of food.. he was never a refluxy baby though.

[Swoop]

That's interesting sagres - what sort of toys did you use?

I think it's often the case that babies with bad reflux get this, however I don't think it's restricted to those with reflux.

I've just been to the paed and he's referred us to the feeding clinic for this issue so it will be interesting to see what they come up with. Interestingly enough, he mentioned a speech therapist too, even though DD's speech is well ahead for her age. I'm just hoping they can get us in before we have to leave for the uk in mid-june.

[Sagres]

The main toy was called a chewy tube which is a rubber thing with lots of different bumps and textures that they chew on. We slowly introduced it, then slowly got it further into her mouth (to start with she wouldn't put anything in her mouth past her front teeth) then slowly applied more pressure to the gums and cheeks and tongue. We got that toy from the speechie, not sure how you get your hands on one otherwise but perhaps google it. Other than that we got anything long and thin and with different bumps and lumps on it, the things called something like training toothbrush or my first toothbrush were good.....kind of a double ended toothbrush with different shaped rubber 'heads' on each end that have little rubber ridges, or bumps, or bristles etc.

Of course this is what our speechie got for us for our DDs particular issue, different kids would have different things that would be most effective I would think.

Yeah the speech pathologist thing surprised me also, given that at the time DD was about 7-8 months old and speech wasn't really on the agenda at that stage. But as it is all mouth related, eating is part of their domain also.