Wait, you want what?!!

Something monumental happened today. Something I never thought I would ever hear in my entire life.

The Chubs ASKED for her bottle today before nap time. Yes, my daughter, you know the one that hates eating and for months loathed her bottle with a passion.

For the last few months I have been very careful with her bottle. We used to offer it to her all the time because she wouldn't eat more than an ounce at each feeding. We also administered medicine with it. Bad, bad things to do. The problem with constantly offering the bottle is that she never had a chance to want it. It was something she hated so much and it was being put in her face constantly. The problem with giving medicine from the bottle is that we HAD to make her take all of her medicine or else her reflux wouldn't be controlled which would cause further issues so we had to continually shove the bottle in her mouth until she took all of it. This always ended in tears on both of our parts. At the time she wouldn't open her mouth for a dropper or anything for that matter. Finally I decided (once we found out her reflux was being controlled by her medication) that we would only offer the bottle every 3-4 hours and no more medicine given by bottle (unless it's hidden in her milk and we know she'll drink all of it). Things improved drastically after that.

Lately Lexi has been in a lot of discomfort. She got her second top tooth along with another tooth on the bottom at the same time. She is now getting tooth 6 and 7, so she has been a teething mess. Because of this, the spoon has been her nemesis. It's clear that she is hungry when I try to feed her solids but it hurts too much so she refuses and simply licks her lips.

Before nap time today I was changing her and she kept opening her mouth wide and saying "baba" which is what we always refer to her bottle as when we offer it to her. She babbles all the time so I didn't think much of it at first. But she continued to repeat this over and over again and open her mouth wide like she was hungry. I continued to shrug it off, but after I had put her down I started wondering... what if she really was asking for her bottle? I don't want to ignore that or brush it aside. I want to encourage her to ask for food. Something I never thought I would ever witness her doing. So I made a few oz of formula and brought it up to her. She drank it down immediately. She clearly wanted her bottle.

I cannot believe that MY child is finally showing some interest in eating. She has never been one to be comforted by food. She's never been one to be excited by food or to even really anticipate food. But if this is the beginning of an interest and eagerness to eat, I am going to do cartwheels and stand on my head because only in my wildest dreams would I have imagined this could happen.