Finally something I can respond to with a little knowledge (not that
much, but still)...

My son Alexander is five and a half, and he had reflux as an infant. It
mostly went away after six months, but this year seems to be back. In a
conversation about spitting up, he said, "Oh, yeah, that happens all the
time, I just swallow it down." Talk about shock. He's always complained
now and then about stomach aches--more than most kids--and they got
really frequent when he started Kindergarten and was unhappy, stress I
guess. So, I guess reflux may have continued to be an issue for him
long after we thought.

Anyway, the great Mommy guilt comes in here. For years I just thought he
was an annoyingly picky eater, but I have since woken up to the fact
that he won't swallow anything with chunks. He lives on yogurt and pb&j,
plus milk, cheese, and whatever sugar he can get his little hands on! He
will ask for carrot sticks and dip and happily gobble them up, only tro
spit the chewed up carrots out half and hour later. He eats no meat or
veggies, spits out grape skins, etc. The list goes on. There are a fair
number of foods that he will happily put in his mouth but then won't
swallow (he says he's afraid they'll choke him, though this has not
happened). He has grown ok except for between his three and four year
check, when he lost weight (yikes!). I have him on whole milk still and
he frequently has Carnation Instant Breakfast in it to beef it up a
little.

We have a pedi GI doctor that we love (Ben, my younger, had reflux too,
though it seems resolved, who knows....) and we saw him last week. He
said it's possible that his reflux is causing esophogitis, and that we
could do a three month trial of prilosec to see if things got better. He
also said, and this is the track we're taking, that he may just have
learned eating habits back when reflux was more of a problem for him,
when it did hurt to swallow, and those habits can be very hard to break.
We decided that his eating habits are more behavioral. We are going to
see the feeding team at Mass General Hospital in January to work on
getting him to eat more foods. If they feel more testing is called for
we'll do it at that time

I feel very bad that I let him get so old without realizing that
something should be done to help him, but there it is--all we can do is
our best, I guess, and at least he's getting help now.

If you have any questions, please feel free to ask. I guess this is kind
of my introduction to the group--hello!

--
Sarah Hetherington
mailto:svh@...
Mother to Alexander, 7/24/94
and Benjamin, 9/21/97