We are so accustomed to thinking that the child with skunks is the healthy child, so accustomed to that the one who eats without complaining is the child who eats well, that when we meet a child who eats little parents (some) and the environment is It worries, because the child eats little, is bad dining, and something must be done to eat well.
Since most children eat what they need, and no more, many health professionals (and many people, who also know it), we say that calm down, you will eat, that it is normal that you do not eat much, that you have started with complementary feeding recently (if we talk about babies) and that no animal dies if it has food in front. Well, not die, but there are times when it can be dangerous to stay with him and he will eat and there are times when you have to worry, and I say it from my own experience.
And at six months, they start eating
I was one of those who said it: "calm down, you will eat", "do not starve, do not worry", and said it because I believed it, and because it is true, Children, sooner or later, end up eating. The problem is that some children, for some reason I still don't understand, take longer to eat than others, and some take much longer.
At six months, after six months of exclusive breastfeeding, or failing that, six months of exclusive breastfeeding, children begin to eat what we begin to offer them. Some start with crushed food, others more daring throw themselves at the Baby Led Weaning and others eat what they all put in their mouths, that is, the old one.
The fact of starting at six months is because over that age the children begin to be prepared to eat (they remain seated, coordinate the gesture of taking things and putting them in their mouths and are very curious to do so), and partly because about At that age some children begin to need other things besides milk, and I speak especially of babies whose cord was cut prematurely at birth, that is, right after birth. We have talked about it several times, the cut of the cord should take about 2-3 minutes so that during that time it continues beating and there is the passage of more blood from the placenta to the baby, thus increasing iron stores.
Children who do not eat neither one nor the other
When Aran turned six months old (Aran is my middle child, who was born prematurely at 34 weeks gestation), or a little more, we started putting food in front of him so he could take it and eat it. Something was eating, but quite little in general. Days and weeks passed, and hey, I was curious, because he took it and put it in his mouth but, or choked, or sucked a little and then spit it out. We decided to try the traditional method (or at least the one used since the blender exists), based on crushed. Let's see if that at least swallowed something. Nothing, neither crushed, nor with this or that ingredient, nor in pieces, nor here, nor p'allá.
He had his theory, which never told him that no, and look, while we tried we repeated the mantra "will eat, calm, it will be premature and it costs a little more ... no mammal is starving, ... ". And so the weeks and months passed. A few days he ate a little, others hardly anything, then it seemed that he already ate, but a few days passed and he stopped doing it again, and hey, we saw him active, happy, happy. A laughing boy, okay, who arrived a year and a half and still had not just let go, but otherwise a normal and ordinary child, in our eyes.
In the blacksmith's house ...
Yes, that I am a pediatric nurse and that I should have seen it, but look, I had heard so much of what I will already eat, so sanote I saw it, and it seemed so normal that I was a little slow in psychomotor development, having been premature , that I gave him as much time as that, a year and a half, precisely because, as I say, he ate a little more and more. However, by then, seeing that I did not walk began to worry me, and seeing that I ate something, but that something was still very little, made me decide that so far, that I wanted to do an analysis to see how it was iron.
Anemia no, the following
And what I feared most happened, that Aran I had an anemia that was worthwhile, secondary to the intake deficit of iron-rich foods. That is, if you do not put iron in the body, you do not have enough iron, and that is called anemia. If we do not eat it, we add that it is premature (there is a higher risk of anemia) and that the cord was cut as soon as it came out, of course, few numbers had to be released.
And the pediatrician?
The pediatrician in the reviews never told us anything, because as we were not worried we never told him. If we had said in his day "hey, he eats very little, but very little," he could have told us that "he will eat, calmly," as many say (and I said), or he could have sought a solution, or inquired more, but I say, as we saw something normal because we never did anything about it, until finally we worried, as I say, about a year and a half.
So, seeing the analytics, he prescribed us an iron supplement which made him soon start walking and improving his abilities, and even eat a little more (or so it seemed to us).
Let's see, do you eat or not eat?
Since then I don't trust anymore. Many classmates still leave some room for children, because they will eat, let's give them time, but I don't trust them anymore. At nine months parents come with their babies to do a review and then I ask them what they eat and how much. Most eat relatively well, that is, some eat a lot and others eat little but they swallow what they put in their mouths, being more and more.
Only a few babies arrive at that age without hardly trying to bite, and this is where I already intervene offering advice to offer them food in another way (many mothers are getting used to crushing and the child does not want to see it, or vice versa) and I urge you to, if the thing does not improve in a few weeks, ask for time with the pediatrician to comment.
The logical thing, in case you reach those heights without trying just a bite (I speak literally) is to do blood tests and see how everything is, and especially iron. I know that it is not the best solution, because the ideal is that the child simply eats, but in the meantime it is a fix: The pediatrician prescribes iron, the child leaves the anemia behind, and wait for him to eat.
I say, it is unusual, I have encountered very few babies who really reject virtually any food, but when there are we must look at them with more care. It is true, they will eat, and no, they will not die (not while they have the breast, for example, or artificial milk), but the health of a baby does not have to go through "not to die", but to grow and develop in a normal way.
