I think my husband and I are the reason for our 18 month old delayed development issues

manpreet Best Answer 2 years ago

I am a first time parent to a beautiful bouncing baby boy 18 months old that is having a few delayed developmental problems (which I have seen many other parents having the same issues and are using the tips suggested to them). One of which is that he is absolutely refusing to eat solid foods of any kind. He still eats the level 2 pureed gerber foods and the nipples on his bottles are still the newborn nipples for slower flow. He gags on any thing solid or if his bottles formula comes out faster than a drip.

This started when he kept putting whatever he found around him, little specks of something, anything (dirt, paper, crumbs, thread, and the such) in his mouth when he started sitting up and crawling. He would gag on it and me being a first time mom I would freak out maybe a little too much, but his father would literally lose his mind too. But because of this we think this is the real reason he gags any kind of solid food I attempt to introduce to him. I have gotten a little better at how I react to him now, but his father thinks he is a perfect parent and knows everything cause he has already raised on child all by himself, and will still react to anything our son does (gagging for instance).

My husband wanted me to quit trying any solid foods at all of any kind and just put rice cereal in his food each sitting and that will apparently solve everything. It hasn't, so while my husband is at work, I have been trying everything from wafers, to yogurt melts, to even shortbread cookies and my son has been not eating them yet, but not gagging on them either. For 4 days straight I would hand him a small round shortbread cookie and showed him how he can nibble with his front teeth and suck on it to get it a little soggy and he started doing it. I would just leave him alone but really watching him out the corner of my eye, and he would actually start making maybe a tiny bite or two into the cookie then put it down for awhile and maybe pick it again later and lick it or just throw it to the dog, either way I feel I was starting to make real progress until I decide to hand him is daily cookie with daddy in the room....the boy takes a big bite of the cookie unlike he has ever done, immediately is gagging, harder than I have ever seen him gag, and then pukes thick mucusy stuff, and of course my husband is livid that I would even give him a cookie, but much less a big round hard one and then turn my back on him like I was trying to choke him on purpose, and yet another example of I have no clue what I'm doing cause I've never had kids before.

I feel that my son only did that gagging episode just because his father was there and he sees the attention he gets when he does that, or am I being a bad mother and trying to force something that I have no clue about? I should probably add that I am 37 years old, and my husband is 10 years older than me with a 21 year old son (who still lives at home with us).

manpreet 2 years ago