When Food is a Problem

When I was in college, an older couple invited me and a classmate to dinner for a project we were working on. I don't remember the details of the project, but I remember the dinner:

Grilled steak kabobs with onions, peppers, and mushrooms. I choked the meal down and politely nodded in agreement as my classmate raved over how wonderful it tasted. When I got back to my dorm, my roommate was bewildered that I would feel ill after a meal that sounded so amazing. I was trying hard to get over the texture of grilled onions, peppers, and mushrooms in my mouth. I felt silly trying to explain it.

Before we left Illinois, I went to a dinner for my MOPS group. Someone brought a pan of pasta from a local restaurant because it was the "BEST stuff ever." I tried it, but I could barely swallow the combination of chicken, garlic, and onion. It was awful.

I remember gagging on spaghetti and other Italian dishes regularly as a child. I have had nightmares about onions. I wish I was making that up, because seriously. Who has onion nightmares? I vividly remember the time I (around 7 years old) took a big bite of mashed potatoes, only to gag so hard I threw up. I wasn't expecting them to be full of potato peels and taste strongly of garlic.

When Andrew started to refuse food a couple years ago, I was ok with it. We'd made a big move, his world had changed, and I completely understood food texture issues. When he gagged to the point of throwing up, I got it. Except that he kept regressing, eating less and less, refusing foods that had once been acceptable, stressing me the heck out. And I was already stressed at the time. I hated moving. I know my child picked up on it. Did my stress cause his eating to worsen? 

I don't know. He was a better eater once, but never a great one. He was occasionally gagging on food before he started refusing so much of it. And the fact that his peers seem to go for treats so easily (ice cream, donuts, popcorn, chips, etc) and he has never done that...I don't know. Then there's family history. Me. My father-in-law is very picky. I'm told my maternal grandfather was very picky. Maybe it all condensed into my child. 

We've been in feeding therapy for nearly a year. It is, by nature, a slow therapy. We're exploring sensory processing disorder and hoping for answers on that soon. It would help explain his problems sleeping and a few other issues (and maybe help with food!). In the meantime, I am a mom who never in a million years imagined that extreme picky eating would be our biggest struggle yet in raising a child. Here's to figuring it all out and praying for improvements.