Malak – 6.5 months

Malak (our first born) was born in spring 2022 at about 4 am in Cairo, Egypt. Malak was born at 40 weeks + 5 days, her weight was 2.735 kilos and length was 47.5 cm. It was a natural birth that was quite long, lasted 20 hours from the water breaking to birth. My contractions did not start and I had to be induced six hours later. The overall birth was not the best experience.

She was put on formula from the start as my breast milk had not come in yet – she was being fed every 3 hours on demand (as per Gina Ford and physician recommendation). She was then fed a mix of formula and breast milk for about 3 weeks until my milk supply ran out. From birth till today, Malak sleeps in her own bed in her own bedroom – her caretaker sleeps in the room with her. For the first 6 weeks, I introduced multiple different dummies but none of them stuck until I found one that she could suck on. We only give her a dummy around sleep time.

By 2.5 months, we had dropped both night feeds to allow her to sleep, she was feeding from 7 am to 11 pm every 4 hours (a total of 5 feeds daily). Shortly after, she started developing mild reflux where she would vomit (mostly after the morning feed) about every 2 to 3 days. The physician would recommend a medicine called “Motinorm” – 3 doses a day. (Motinorm Syrup helps treat indigestion, gastroesophageal reflux disease, nausea, and vomiting in children.) Malak has been on this medication ever since – however the dosage has been reduced to only twice daily – once before the morning feed and once before the bedtime feed. She still vomits very rarely – once in the last 14 days.

In terms of other medication, she is on D Drops daily and Infacol once daily before the bedtime feed to reduce gas discomfort as she sleeps. This has been implemented from birth.

In general, Malak was a good eater and a good sleeper (we didn’t even go through the 4-month regression). A happy baby overall but on a regular basis, she didn’t finish some of her feeds specifically the morning one. She is highly alert to her surroundings (visuals and sounds), curious, follows people’s voices while conversing, knows what she wants, is stubborn and yet easy going with strangers (she will not cry if someone she doesn’t know carries her) and yet only smiles to her father, caretaker and myself.

At 5.5 months, she was slowly introduced to solids upon physician recommendation (again following the Gina Ford method) and was quite content with the new routine at the beginning. About 10 days into it, she started being fussy during her feeds.

Around the same time my husband and I travelled to London. We sent Malak along with her caretaker to stay with her grandmother (my mother). As far as I was told, the routine was being followed and everything was going well. Upon landing back in Cairo on a few days later in the late evening, I had been informed that Malak got a low-grade fever and vomited twice after the bedtime feed. That night she refused to take any other feeds and didn’t sleep at all. That pattern has persisted ever since.

Today, she weighs 7.3 kilos and her height is 65 cm. Her physician is happy with her development. She has taken all the required vaccines which are: Polio, D.P.T, BCG, Hib Vaccine, Hepatitis Vaccine and Rota Virus Vaccine.

I am in need of help because feeding her solids is like going to battle 3 times daily and a healthy sleeping patterns needs to be developed. During her feeds, she gets extremely fussy, agitated, starts crying, closes her mouth, refuses to eat at all until we start tricking her by pretending, we’ll give her beaker filled with water and then put the spoon in her mouth. A couple of spoons into it, her gag reflex starts. I attempted to use silicone feeders which worked for a couple of days and then she started refusing them as well so I just went back to using a spoon. On a few occasions, I tried to give her a feed at 10.30 pm, she would take a maximum of 50/60 ml and it didn’t help the sleeping pattern. In regards to food types, she seems to prefer mixed vegetable purees to fruits or baby rice/oat cereals – even though I can’t be quite certain of this.

I wonder, can it be 6 months sleep regression? How do I make sure that it is? What do I do in order not to develop bad habits or associations? Are the sleeping and eating problems correlated?
I was a fussy eater growing up according to my mother, can that be hereditary?