It's been a long road ... travelling from there to here

Like a lot of parents - feeding our growing smurf has had a lot of ups and downs or more accurately ins and outs.  

B suffered badly with reflux from when he was born, and not the silent kind, but rather the explosive, emptying his stomach all over us in one go kind.  He didn't have failure to thrive, in fact he packed on the weight easily, so we were told it was not an issue.  The fact was he put on weight because he breastfed almost all the time, and he wanted to feed all the time because his throat hurt from the acid. 

After struggling for 6 weeks, we had his checkup and spoke to the Dr in the UK who said we could try infant gaviscon - which you had to give him at the start of the feed via a bottle.  It would not stop the vomiting but it would stop the pain.  We went off feeling happier - until we discovered he would not take a bottle, it was boob or nothing.  We ended up having to use a syringe - messy but it worked.  We still had mass vomiting, but less crying.  This was workable up until he reached 6 months and he had a huge growth spurt.  Now I could not take him out anywhere, because 9/10 I was going to be covered in vomit.  I lost count of the number of times I would abandon shopping carts in the store because I could see that he was going to empty himself over me.  We were now in the US so we went to his Paediatrician and explained the issue, and luckily she listened and provided us with medication, the downside was we would need to gradually wean him off of it.  This helped huge amounts, the being sick was only occasional and I could go out again.

Weaning was an issue - B liked a limited amount of food and only wanted boob, but we worked at it.  Fruit and veg was ok but don't try and get him to eat protein - and if he didn't like something everything came back up. We spoke with his Dr at check ups and she was ok with us staying on his meds up to 18 months, we worked on everything and weaned him off at 14, vomiting picked up a bit but we could manage.  The eating of protein didn't and it seemed to be a texture thing.  At 19 months we stopped with the breastfeeding and we were fully weaned.  

Persistence, a lot of tears on all parts and a lot of searching on the internet gave us some tricks - certain shaped foods could help him get used to food in his mouth and decrease the sensitivity of his gag reflex and the realisation that well seasoned, well flavoured food would work better than bland helped too. We made it through, he always put on a good amount of weight, he didn't eat too much junk and he developed well, but meal times were hard work.

B is now 2.5 - we still have our issues and the ever present vomit reflex is hard to deal with, especially as he can seemingly do it at will.  He has quite a wide range of tastes and you can usually talk him into trying most things,  he will have your hand off to get bacon or coconut shrimp, but he will quite happily give you his veggies.

It feels like it has been a long road already but please know  if you are struggling with a difficult or fussy eater, please know you are not alone.  Talk to people, look things up and get help, eventually things will get better but it is ok to want or need help.