Pica

Little Bug has been eaten foreign objects from the time he could roll over. When he was really tiny, he would roll over and pick carpet fuzz off the carpet and eat it. When he could crawl, all bets were off. Anything- and I do mean anything became fair game for eating. Here is just a sampling of some of the bizarre crap our wonderful Little Bug has eaten:

Carpet Fuzz
Grass
Flowers
The pins from a screen door- which he disassembled while Nick was peeing
Paper- towels, TP, notebook, etc.
Sylica Gel
Packing Peanuts
Wheels- off of trains, cars, etc.
Legos
Pieces of my table- we have bite marks to prove it.

No we aren’t bad parents. We don’t abandon him for hours and not watch him. It is a compulsion. He literally cannot stop himself. He can tell me that the pictures I took of his birthday at the zoo should not be eaten, but when I let him look at them, he immediately puts them in his mouth.

Anything and everything is an option for consumption. He has eaten salt, dog food, laminating paper, stickers, tattoos, parts of toys, sticks, leaves, etc. than I can remember.

We are and have been worried about the potential for bowels obstructions and lead poisoning. He plays with lots of toys from goodwill, which ofcourse means toys made who knows when by what standards and where. He loves Thomas the Tank engine, which means he eats a lot of paint of the engines.

His doctor wants to rule out a zinc or iron deficiency as well as anemia, but believes that he has Pica and has diagnosed him as such.

What we do about this, we are a bit lost. We watch him like hawk because in this way he like every 9 month old- if it’s in my hand, it goes in my mouth. We don’t leave things out. He can’t be left alone at all because he eats things. He tries to eat things when we’re there. (We jokingly call it stealing) When there aren’t small things to steal and eat, he goes after big things- like the furniture. No lie, we have several bites out of our table and anyone who has been over has seen it. We have tried the OT solutions- providing a chewie, trying to make sure that he is modulated by given him a more robust sensory diet, providing food choices that are very resistant (carrots, celery, red vines, etc.). It doesn’t matter. He finds a way to eat this stuff.

For example, when I do laundry, he has to come too for obvious reasons. Unfortunately, he has figured out that he can bite the wall in the laundry room as well as the insulation around the door when he can’t get a hold of things like grass, dryer lint, or dryer sheets to try to eat while I am busy. (By the way, I know I make it sound like he plans this and I *know* he doesn’t because regardless of the reaction, he still does it.)

We should find out about his blood work on Monday.