My baby won't eat

[NoIDontWatchLoveIsland]

DD is 8m old (6.5m corrected). She was IUGR and is very very tiny.

She has no appetite. For milk or food. The doctors don't seem concerned because she's just about scraping along the 0.4% line, but it just can't be right that we have to spend all our time and energy desperately trying to coax milk or food into her. She will be hungry for a feed, drink 1.5 ounces then push the bottle away (she is on expressed milk). She picks enthusuastically at solids but swallows sod all, calorie wise. She will not take a spoon.

I'm just so tired of all the coaxing.

If we leave her to self regulate, she does not drink enough in a day and we have to wake her at night to give her more.

She has been like this for about 3 weeks and it's just getting worse. She used to eat a respectable amount for her size, without much trouble.

Any tips on either what could be wrong or shared experiences if you've had a child like this?

Oh and my DD was only 760 grams at birth and DS was 920 grams, they only got onto the centiles from 1.5 onwards 😊

@NoIDontWatchLoveIsland no I’m not veggie but was carrying and feeding twins so could well have been deficient

V interesting. Definitely going to get DD checked. I've just googled and being on proton pump inhibitors can interfere with vitamin absorption.

Navisprite

Sounds like they are doing really well now! Makes DD sound huge, she was 1.6kg at birth.

She doesn't really like us feeding her with solids - no purees etc.

She likes meat, especially sausages

I feel for you OP - I really struggled to wean my son - meals were a nightmare. After he was hospitalised with several viruses due to a low immune system a particular consultant suggested he be tested for a B12 deficiency. That came back positive and he had several intramuscular B12 injections. This then revealed he also had anaemia which was also successfully treated. As soon he began the treatments he began to thrive (and eat!) and is now a healthy 8 year old!

I don’t think my DD weaned onto food bar the odd taste of yoghurts, cereals, smoothies and such until 12+ months, she wasn’t ready so I kept going on the high calorie formula (I wasn’t able to BF sadly) until then, we spent a small fortune on finding her the right teat after she hit 6mo (corrected) though!

My HV laughed when I suggested she and DS were starting to teethe after I’d raised concerns that she’d gone off milk as well as any interest in solids. They never got rosy cheeks, minimal excess saliva (DD however was swallowing more and we noticed from her poops) no outright display of discomfort other than constant rooting. We had rounded teats and the effort she needed to latch to it plus the sucking motion made her cranky! Especially as she was on home oxygen as well and hated the tubes constantly getting in the way.

Due to their birth circumstances, both twins were on abidec vitamins and iron supplements already, so thankfully we didn’t need to stress too much about a deficiency somewhere affecting their appetites.

We were recommended MAM teats and thankfully they helped.

DD was also (and still is) obsessed with sausages, she’d probably eat them every meal if we allowed it .

I do hope your DD improves soon, it’s so stressful at the best of times when a baby loses appetite, but when it’s a smaller baby with little appetite to begin with it can be anxiety inducing! I remember the day I celebrated that my DD did 40mls for the first time in one sitting, it took a good 35 minutes but it was such a relief as she’d only get through 20mls max per sitting and it meant constant small feeds! Other Mums that I knew at the time thought I was a bit mental

Good luck NoIDontWatchLoveIsland

I had this with my DD, she both didn't feed as much or for as long as the guidelines say (we mix fed) and never put in the recommended amount of weight. I weighed her every single week. We ended up being refereed to a consultant, who basically said as long as everything else is fine and she's not loosing weight she's fine. I still weighed her every week to a year and gradually the weight gain increased as she got into solids. She's now a very healthy normal 5 year old. Her brothers have not been like this but I have also learnt to be more relaxed around it. DS2 wasn't weighed at all after we came out of midwife care.