If you’ve been following along on the blog (or Facebook or Twitter or our website), you now know about the Orphan Nutrition Project.  What you might not know is that the ONP is only half of SPOON’s mission.  The other half of SPOON’s mission is helping to educate parents and professionals about nutrition for adoptees.

At Bakha’s babyhouse, I was told that she was an excellent eater who would eat anything placed in front of her (except cabbage).  Because of that, I was taken aback our first night together in the hotel when she would not touch the food I gave her for dinner.  It was Kazakh food and should have been familiar, but it wasn’t.  Over the next three weeks while still in Kazakhstan, I managed to find a handful of foods she would eat.  And then we got home.  By the end of the first week, I managed to get her up to 5-10 foods she would eat.  As you can imagine, trying to nourish a malnourished child who won’t eat is a little bit stressful.  Luckily, due to my background as a speech-language pathologist, I had a clue about how to approach mealtimes and how to introduce new foods.  Bakha also was being seen by a wonderful developmental pediatrician who offered very appropriate advice.  But what about those parents who don’t know what to do?  There are virtually no resources available that specifically address nutrition of the adoptee.

Cindy was going through her own feeding challenges with Jadyn.  Whenever we got together, in addition to talking about orphan nutrition, we shared tips and tricks for feeding our kids.  Eventually, we started to compile all the information.  We now have an amazing amount of information, not only the information we compiled, but information from nutritionists, physicians, alternative healthcare practitioners, and therapists.  It is all being put together into our new Adoption Nutrition website.  The site will also have special features like “ask the expert” and nutrition profiles where parents can share their stories.  We hope to launch the site soon.  When we do, we’ll be sure to let you know.