How Did We Get Here?!

Brennen was born on January 25, 2006. He was (and is..) a beautiful, typical baby boy. Brennen had no difficulty taking a bottle and was a good little drinker! When he was about 6 months old, I began transitioning to baby pureed foods and some table foods. Brennen had little to no diffiulty with eating the smooth pureed baby foods.Since he wasn't having any difficulty with the baby foods, I decided to go ahead and try some table foods. I remember one of the first table foods I tried with Brennen was mashed potatoes. I placed a small amount of the potatoes on the spoon and fed them to him. He immediately gagged. I thought to myself, well he just must not be ready to handle table foods at this time....That was 3 years ago and I can tell you with sincere frustration we are still eating the same pureed foods that he was eating when he was a baby.

I take Brennen to a wonderful Pediatrician, but I don't think he took me very seriously at the beginning of all of this when I would try to explain to him that Brennen was not eating. I think he thought that I was just another overly concerned first-time mom who had a picky eater on her hands. Some of the frustrating advice I would receive sounded something like: "He'll eat when he's hungry!" or "Just put whatever you are having for supper in front of him and if he eats it fine, if not, he gets nothing until the next meal time." For your typical picky eater who just won't eat his/her vegetables for that day, I could see using those strategies. But Brennen was different. He wouldn't even eat a cookie if I put it in front of him, let alone broccoli!

The only solid foods I could get into Brennen was peanut butter and jelly sandwiches or toasted cheese. I would make both sandwiches on whole wheat bread and try to sneak some vegetables or protein in the toasted cheese. He would usually detect them and then not eat the rest of that meal. The thought that might be going through your mind is, maybe he's not eating due to a defiant behavior. Let me assure you, that I am a pretty structured person. I run my special education classroom that way and my home too. After being in the teaching profession for 10 years now, I have seen just about every type of behavior there is...I 'm not easily bamboozled!

My special ed background began to prove itself worthy, now for personal reasons. Brennen definitely has some hypersensitivity issues. I began thinking back to when Brennen was a baby and how he never put any toys or things in his mouth. (Baby proofing our house was pretty easy with him!) Brennen hates...and I mean hates...having his toenails trimmed. He isn't a fan of walking around barefoot (inside or outside). He is definitely a sock boy! Brennen is also not a fan of flying bugs, but is the first to pull an earth worm out of the ground! I think it is the sensation of the bugs flying around his ears (the sound the wings make), which I can't say I blame him...who likes that sound?!

But I digress...back to the sandwiches... As I was saying, he would eat sandwiches. We noticed that Brennen would never tell us he was hungry. He would seem as if his stomach was bothering him. This was difficult because with Brennen being so young, he was unable to tell us what he was feeling. Brennen also suffered from chronic constipation which didn't help his appetite either. Our Pediatrician referred us to a Pediatric Gastro-Enterologist at the Cleveland Clinic. She ran some bloodwork tests and from the tests we discovered that Brennen had Celiac Disease.

People with Celiac Disease are unable to digest the proteins found in wheat or gluten. Their bodies have an intolerance to these proteins. Brennen's diet can not contain anything with wheat, barley or rye (these are the main ingredients in products that would contain gluten).

The pieces of our little Brennen puzzle were finally being put together. No wonder he acted as though he wasn't hungry! His poor little stomach was irritated from all of the gluten that was in his diet. We began seeing a Pediatric Nutritionist who then referred us to a Feeding Therapy Program through the Cleveland Clinic. We have been receiving outpatient therapy but are discovering that because of Brennen's background with his hypersensitivities and his anxiety about eating food due in part to how food has made him feel for the past 3 years, he would best be treated in an 8-10 week day feeding program. Brennen and I will stay in Cleveland Monday-Friday and he will receive intense feeding therapy to overcome his sensitivities and anxieties over food. We will be able to return home on the weekends.

This will not be easy for Brennen (or the rest of our family) but we truly feel as though this therapy is an answer to so many prayers. Thank you for reading my post and following along with our journey.

I will be posting updates to my blog on Brennen's progress, his setbacks, the good, the bad and the ugly..it will all be here. I hope you will follow our journey and share it with someone who maybe going through the same things we are. Or maybe you are someone who has gone through this already and can shed some light as to how things went for you.

Here's to a big STEAK DINNER on the other side! (Hey, I can dream...right?!)