Tiny’s transformation with us has been pretty amazing. When she came to us she was literally starving to death. She wasn’t eating or drinking, and at almost 2 years old she weighed only 15 lbs. We now believe she’s a Little Person which accounts for how small her frame is, but she was still so painfully thin it hurt to look at her.
It’s not the first time we’ve had painfully thin kids come to us for a good fattening up. The twins PB&J gained three pounds with us in the first month or so. But they hadn’t been starving, just not getting quite enough. Jelly had been painful to look at – those skinny legs! – but nothing like Tiny.
Tiny was literally starving. We now know that kids who are not fed enough food and given the necessary types of stimulation can become anorexic. They will start to refuse food and often they need to be intubated. I was damned if I was going to let this kid go to the hospital and get a G tube. One way or another we were going to get her eating.
She came to us on a Friday afternoon and we spent so much time that weekend on the phone with her pediatrician trying to come up with ideas for how to get her to take in Pediasure. She had been prescribed it but was refusing it. We tried every kind of bottle and sippy cup in the house. We tried spooning it into her. We eventually discovered a medical syringe could be used to shoot small amounts of it into her mouth, and she would swallow it. Hallelujah!
So, every hour we were syringing small amounts of pediasure into her. We started to get wet diapers again which meant her dehydration level wasn’t so dire. She started to perk up a little. But she still clung to me and refused to be put down or go to Seth for several more days. I dozed while holding her for those first few days – it was the only way to get her to sleep.
On about day 4 we finally forced the issue and I left her with Seth to cry it out while I got some proper sleep. She howled and raged about it, but eventually realized he wasn’t a monster. When I woke up and came downstairs, the two of them were actually giggling together. Giggling! That was the first sign for us that maybe things might turn out ok after all.
We worked our way through the pediasure dosing gradually giving her more at each sitting and managing to go 2 hours between feedings, then 2 1/2, then 3, and all the way up to 4 hours between feedings. Her little tummy had started to expand and she rapidly gained 3 lbs off of Pediasure.
But she still wouldn’t really drink it on her own, and still wouldn’t eat real food. So how to tempt her?
Her medical records said that one time when she’d been hospitalized for failure to thrive she had initially refused hospital food, but began to eat when her Mama brought her Burmese food. Her Nurse Practitioner and I suspected that might be the key to getting her to eat – familiar food. So her NP talked to a friend who talked to another friend who runs a stall at a market selling Burmese food, and he donated us a massive Burmese meal, and her NP drove it out to our house. I’m still just flabbergasted that everyone involved would do that for her.
I wish I could show the video of her slurping the Burmese noodles that night. She ate a massive bowl of noodles, slucking them right down with apparent relish. Clearly there was something to this Burmese food thing. Seth and I tasted the food that had been brought and it was absolutely delicious – spicy and flavorful in ways US food just isn’t.
So I reached out to various friends for advice. I ordered cookbooks but they would take a number of days to be delivered. One friend sent me pages from her recipe book, Burma Superstar. So I got started with that right away.
Some of the ingredients – things like ginger root, fresh cilantro, shallots, limes, and coconut milk – I could get at the local Wegmans. But some of the items, like dried shrimp powder, were more of a challenge. There’s a massive Asian grocery store on Erie Boulevard, so I tackled that for the lemongrass and noodles and whole fish that the recipes called for. It’s an overwhelming place and I know I haven’t discovered all its gems yet.
Burmese cooking for Tiny is a labor of love. It’s so time and labor intensive it’s kind of amazing. But my god are the dishes delicious! Whole constellations of flavor explode in your mouth with each bite. Admittedly some of the recipes we haven’t really thought were worth the effort. The recipe we have for Mohinga – which is sort of the signature dish of Myanmar – we don’t really like and it takes literal hours to prepare. But other recipes, especially the curries, are to die for.
I don’t cook Burmese food for Tiny nearly often enough because it’s so labor intensive and I’m not someone who really likes cooking even though I’m good at it. But when I do make it she slurps the soups and noodles and downs the rice and meats and gets all wiggly and happy about it. It’s so lovely to watch!
These days Tiny is thriving. She’s off Pediasure entirely and eats well at every meal. She’s almost 20 lbs and has a little belly and back fat and chubby cheeks and looks like a toddler should aside from how short she is. She wears 18 month clothing at 2 1/2! There is clearly a genetic issue holding her back when it comes to height, and hopefully her geneticist can unravel her mysterious stature for us. But she now eats well, including all the usual American foods most toddlers eat. She loves spaghetti, is a major carnivore and likes almost any kind of meat, and loves noodle soups which are close to her heart.
And honestly, she’s the smartest, spunkiest, funniest kid we’ve had. She’s adored through and through.
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