Mia
having toast with jelly. She liked the
taste, but not the stickiness.
When we got Mia, she had lost an estimated 2 lbs. That’s a
little over 10% of her body weight. We don’t know if she was weighed
incorrectly for the initial weight we received on her (19.5 lbs.), or if she
did in fact lose this weight. When she was weighed in China at her medical exam
with us there with her, she weighed 17.6 lbs. That’s about a 2 lb. difference
after 5 days of heavy eating. My post on July 3 shows that she had already lost
some at that point, weighing (18.7). We believe
she was transferred to stay at the orphanage on July 10, which could have caused her
weight to drop more with grieving the loss of her foster family. We will never
know for sure, but she is gaining steadily now. Her 18 months size cloths are
still big around the waist though.
Also, as I had posted before, she came to us with food
issues. She wouldn’t dare put food in her mouth. She would want to hold food in
both hands and have you feed her. She would literally put a piece of food into
our hands for us to feed her, rather than putting it into her own mouth. She
started feeding herself some while we were still in China. She also didn’t want
one tiny morsel of food wasted. If something was dropped, she would fuss for
us to pick it up. Now, lots of food is dropped in the floor at our house, and
it doesn’t seem to bother her.
Mia also couldn’t get enough to eat in those first couple
weeks and was frantic when she saw food. She would eat as long as food was in front of her. When she was hungry, she got very
upset. We had to make sure we had food ready for her when it was her regular
time to eat, or we would have one upset baby. This could have come from the short
stay at the orphanage, but looking back at the report we have on her from August
10, 2011, it said that “When she saw her foster mother making milk for her, she
would shout with wawawa sounds constantly. She has a quick temper, when eating,
if you do not give something to eat, she will protest. “So, this tells us that
these issues started before the orphanage. This too has gotten better, as she now starts playing with her food when she is full or she wants to get down from the table.
The formula that was given to us in China by the orphanage director was a DHA formula with prebiotics., which I believe is
typically more expensive than regular formula. We were told that this was the formula that Mia was used to getting. She didn’t seem used to it at
all and would hardly take any. We were told she was still on a bottle, but when
we mentioned this to our guide, she told us that she was spoon fed her formula.
This would take forever, I would think, and could be part of the reason for the
weight loss if she wasn’t getting much table food along with it. Anyway, we
tried the spoon feeding a couple times, and she wasn’t too interested. We then
put it in the Nuk sippy cup, and she started drinking a little more, though only
about 2 oz. over the course of the day. She seemed to prefer drinking water. We
tried to make sure she was getting balanced meals with the table food she was
eating.
Mia has now gained back those 2 lbs. She weighed 19 lbs.
9 oz. at her last doctor’ visit. She likes a wide variety of food, and she wants
to feed herself all the time now. This
gets messy when she wants to feed herself soup or cereal. Her favorite foods
are noodles, rice, fried eggs, bananas, ice cream and Cheerios, but there are many things
she likes. She will try just about anything new that’s put in front of her. She
still gets very upset when she is hungry, but overall the food issues have
greatly improved over the last month since we received her, and I believe will
completely disappear as she gets a little older. I do think that she now knows
she will always have something to eat, and she won’t have to go hungry ever
again.
Lori
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