Eating and gaining weight

one of the most common questions i hear when meeting new families is "does your child eat orally or are they tube fed?" well, akaiya is an oral eater. when she was first born she had a very weak suck and was not able to take much from a bottle so a ng tube was placed. after about a week her suck improved so the tube was removed. towards the end of her hospital stay akaiya had an incident with a possible bowl obstruction that caused them to switch to iv feeds only. when that was resolved we had to replace the ng tube because she had lost the small amount of progress she had gained with bottle feeding. when she came home she still had the ng tube placed. three days after we came home akaiya pulled the tube out and we never bothered getting it replaced. in the beginning akaiya needed to be fed every 3 hours. it took her around an hour to drink 2 oz of formula. we kept this routine up until she was 4 months old...it was exhausting! at 4 months old the doctor told us to let the poor girl get some sleep at night! so we fed her every three hours during the day and just when she woke up at night - much better! we were also told to try and start introducing baby foods. the doctor realized that this was earlier than usually recommended, but he figured she would take awhile to start eating and he thought the headstart would be beneficial to her. we started very slowly...less than a tablespoon of cereal mixed with her formula. it took a couple of months to get her willing to eat the cereal and thats when we started adding fruit to it. she seemed to like it better with the fruit so we started to increase the amount. by about 9 months we were trying to stick to a routine of cereal with fruit in the morning, meat with vegetable & fruit for lunch, and cereal with fruit for dinner - along with her bottles. here is an example of what kaiya was eating when she was about 1.5:
breakfast
1/4 cup oatmeal
1 jar stage 2 fruit
6 - 8 oz Alimentum formula
lunch
1 jar stage 2 meal
1 jar stage 2 fruit
6 oz Alimentum formula
dinner
1/4 cup oatmeal
1 jar stage 2 fruit
6 - 8 oz Alimentum formula
snacks
4 - 8 oz Alimentum formula
few bites of yogurt

like all kids akaiya had days where she didn't want anything, and she had days that she ate a whole lot - which made weight gain a real big issue in our house. as soon as i find the old records i plan on posting a graph that shows her weight over the years. i'll put down what i can remember off the top of my head right now:
birth - 5 lbs 1 oz, went down to 4 lbs 8 oz and then up to 5 lbs 7 oz when we left the hospital
2 mos - 7 lbs
1 year - 13 lbs
2 years - 19 lbs
3.5 years - 24 lbs, but then went back down to 19 lbs when she got RSV
4 years - 24 lbs
5 years - 25 lbs
6 years - 28 lbs

we've used various different products over the years to try and increase akaiya's weight - benecalorie, duocal, oil, doubling up on formula, and adding cream and cheese and other fatty foods to her meals. i used to really stress out about how small she was, but now i just realize that this is how she is, and as long as i'm doing my best to make sure she has adequate nutrition - she's going to be fine.

these days akaiya is eating pureed table foods. we are working towards getting her to eat more solid foods - it is a very slow process... she has the ability to chew and move the food around to the right place, she just doesn't have the desire to work that hard when she's eating. akaiya doesn't really have a "set" menu that she eats everyday like she did when she was younger but i will try to give an example of what she eats now.
breakfast
scrambled eggs, french toast, oatmeal, cream of wheat, pancakes - we usually try to give her fruit with all of her meals so she would have any one of those items and some kind of fruit.
lunch
chicken noodle/vegetable, spaghetti & meatballs, chili, the list is endless, pretty much anything - yesterday she ate mashed potatoes, turkey, gravy and applesauce
dinner
again we just puree whatever we are having for dinner or sometimes she gets oatmeal and fruit or yogurt

what she eats really depends on how willing of an eater she is that day. if she's eating really well i'll try new foods and textures with her. if not, then we stick to old favorites to make sure she's getting the most calories possible. akaiya doesn't really like to drink and she's very picky about what she is willing to drink. we usually try to keep a cup of juice around and offer it to her as much as possible. we also make sure that she's getting lots of high water foods (like all the fruit) so we can try to compensate for her lack of drinking.