Fat Camp and Skinny Camp

Most of the time I think it's humorous that Julia and I have opposite problems. I love to eat, and Julia hates to eat. Eh, I suppose we balance each other out in a yin and yang sort of way, but I end up focusing on how different we are. Could this really be my child?

I should have been sent to fat camp. Honestly, I feel like the poster child for fat camp due to binge eating, sneaking food, and horrible mood swings related to food. The only thing that saved me was that I haven't ever been terribly overweight. I'm overweight, definitely, but unless I'm surrounded by models, I don't think most people would say I'm "fat" on sight alone. I'm more on the higher side of normal, or "slightly chunky," or "curvy." The boobs help.

So I just got done raiding the brownies. Brownies are a no no in my gluten/soy/milk/peanut-free diet, and they're also pretty much a no no on Weight Watchers. Yet I still ate them. I enjoyed eating them when no one else was around (the rest of the house is asleep). It's like some extra special activity that I like to do all by myself because most people don't "get" why eating brownies at 1am is incredibly wonderful. If you have a similar (warped) relationship with food, you'll understand. If you don't, be glad you don't.

It goes without saying that I'm probably not sticking to my "not eat anything" diet or even my Weight Watchers diet very well. I have good days and bad days. I can't ever seem to get many good days in a row because I feel so darn deprived that I eat brownies at 1am like someone who needs to be enrolled at fat camp. I need to fix the protein problem. I eat a breakfast of produce, and then I take produce to work. I like apples and oranges as much as the next person, but just eating produce is really affecting my mood and cravings. I don't feel full and start lusting after manicotti and beef stew while at my desk. I hate beef, and I'm craving beef stew! That's a huge clue that I'm protein and iron deficient. I've got to pre-cook meat for work or even take cans of beans to work. Then I can have something filling and full of vitamins.

Switching gears to skinny camp. Miss J got her early intervention report today. Last week she was evaluated in 5 areas: cognitive, motor skills, social skills, adaptive skills, and speech. As we expected, she didn't do so well in adaptive skills, which includes feeding. She also didn't do that great in speech, although she wasn't technically far enough behind to qualify.

It's been a bumpy road with her feeding. We have struggled with this since she was born. I kept saying something was wrong although I couldn't pinpoint it other than she didn't eat much and didn't "enjoy" eating. It's a day to day struggle that most people can't identify with. Sure, kids don't like specific foods, but we struggle at every meal every day. It's exhausting. And the remedy for kids who don't eat is to feed them even more often. We typically have 4-5 bottle feedings a day (most of which are a fight) plus 6 solid feedings a day (most of which are a fight). About half of those feedings end up with 0 or 1 bite and/or liquid refusal. There's plenty of screaming on her part, and lots of frustration on our part. It comes down to the fact that we know she's underweight due to her poor food intake. There's nothing biologically wrong with her (that we know of, we've done a lot of tests but not all of them). When she was born, there was likely something biologically wrong with her that she outgrew, and now we have to undo the poor coping mechanisms and start from scratch. It's not like one day something's going to click, and she's going to magically start eating. It's going to take a lonnnnnng time.

So what's in store with Miss J? Weekly therapy starting on Monday. A therapist will be coming to our house to work with Miss J on feeding and speech since they're so related. We'll hopefully learn more tips to get her to eat.

It's encouraging to know she's finally getting help. It's been months and months of doctor appointments where we express frustration with her low weight, and we're told stupid (i.e., common sense but entirely impractical given the situation) things, like she needs to drink at least 27 ounces of formula and 2 jars of baby food in a day. If we could get her to take 27 ounces of formula and 2 jars of baby food, we wouldn't be here right now! We can only get her to take 14 ounces, and we only accomplish that by feeding her when she's asleep. YOU try to get 27 ounces into her and when you accomplish that, tell us what you did. Surprisingly no one ever took us up on it! :)

There's got to be some happy balance between our separate skinny and fat camp issues, and hopefully we can both work on finding it.