A Leap of Faith

I have often spoke about g & s and how dissimilar they are. One big difference is their eating habits, specifically s' lack of desire for food. For those who know g, that couldn't be further from her reality. g has always had a healthy desire for food. She was always easy to feed. s is almost the exact opposite. She is pretty finicky with food, liking one thing today and hating it tomorrow. So making her something to eat is hit or miss. Well, mostly miss. I can't help but be anxious about this though. She is a shrimp. She is barely 18 lbs which put her in the 0-25 percentile. I can't measure her height because she moves around so much. I just know that based on the hand-me-down clothing that she is wearing, she is a lot shorter than her sister when she was the same age.

I know that I can't expect that she would have the exact same appetite as her sister but I would like to see a desire for food. It is sometimes there. This weekend was a good appetite weekend. She ate and ate. However that was the end of that. She is done with food and today, she even refused to drink milk which she never had before.

The books and all these baby guides for picky eaters have all advised the same thing...that if the child refuses to eat, she is probably not hungry and that parents should just trust that she will know when she wants to eat. Parents should also trust that she will eat. That's the leap of faith that I am grappling with, trusting that she will eat when she wants to and not wrangle with her.

I will let go but it is difficult. She is so close to falling off the charts already. What my salvation has been is the pediatrician does not seem worried. No one else seems overly concerned but me. This is a comfort in a way. That her gains in weight seems to be sufficient that it is not a major cause of concern. Her seeming lack of an appetite more a worry for me than a medical problem.

Sigh....and the adventure continues.