DD3 (18m today) still eating hardly anything

[duchesse]

I honestly have no idea what sustains her. I can't believe the 3-4 breast feeds a day can possibly be enough to keep going and growing but she is very active and healthy and just hardly eats a thing. The only way I can get any breakfast into her is by plonking her in front of Timmy Time- she'll absent-mindedly open her mouth for more porridge whilst watching.

The rest of the time, we all sit down, she stands up in her high chair and tries to get straight down again.

If she's strapped in she does what I call a "Daisy Hill puppy farm" after that time that Snoopy was going to be sent back to the breeder for obedience classes and is wearing a collar and lead for the first time- screaming and writhing until she's all tied up in them. She can wriggle out of any straps (putting her in a supermarket trolley is a flipping nightmare).

Sample diet (yesterday):

Breakfast: About ten small teaspoonsful of porridge (made with water as milk makes her eczema far worse) with banana.

No snack

Lunch: we had oxtail, she tried the oxtail and rejected it and had about 3 teaspoons of milled lamb, rice and vegetables.

No snack

Supper: was going to eat nothing, usual struggling, until I slipped a spoonful of the rest of the lunch past her lips and suddenly she's eating- ate about 12 teaspoonsful of lamb rice and veg and about 5 teaspoons of apple crumble.

All the teaspoons are small and level by the way.

• 3-4 breast feeds

Some days she eats less than this, sometimes will only try a tiny amount of something before rejecting it completely. I cannot believe that she could possibly survive on this little. Even my mother, queen nazi of children will eat what they're given, has started saying that I should just give her what she'll eat (that would be biscuits and yoghurt- which makes her eczema worse).

I'm not panic-stricken about it (yet) because I can see that she is healthy and growing, but I do wonder if she will ever start to eat...

Maybe she doesn't like the high chair? Could she have a booster seat to feel more like her siblings?

We thought that, compo. It's a Tripp trapp and we've made it as close to what her siblings sit on as possible by taking the baby bit off and pushing it up to the table. We have benches rather than chairs so it's not very practical for her to sit on those as
a) she is tiny and can't see the table and b) she wriggles so much she needs a hand on her at all times or she falls off. We've tried feeding her sitting on our lap (not my preferred option but almost worth it if she eats more), standing up in her towery thing in the kitchen (she quite likes that for a while). Might try putting her towery thing at the dining table...

Have you tried cutting out one feed to see if that increases her appetite? I've found that when I went back to work and stopped giving milk in the day, he ate more solids. He also goes through phases where he eats loads then other days hardly anything. We don't give big meals - maybe two tablespoons worth - as don't want to overwhelm him. He also likes to nab our food when we eat together.

How is she with finger foods if she is so resistant to being fed?

I think I'd cut out BFing during the day to try and up her appetite, it might be taking the edge off her hunger. I'd also just put food and cutlery in front of her, sit and eat and see what she does, then clear it away if she doesn't eat anything, make it less of a battle?

That always worked with my other children giraffe, even the other bad eater. This one will just not eat and can sometimes eat pretty much nothing for three days, after which she is visibly thinner and paler. She has few stores as it is. She doesn't seem all that hungry, but if I manage to get a few morsels into her mouth, it's as though she realises that's what she needed and can sometimes be persuaded to eat more. Other days there's nothing doing. She's usually fairly cranky at what you might call mealtimes though. It's as though she doesn't associate the discomfort of hunger with the need to eat...

At the moment she's having a monster feed at 5:30am, then another one mid-morning (although not always), then another mid-afternoon, and another after "supper". The only one I know she's really feeding at is the first thing in the morning one- she's just snacking for the others.

hi, just wanted too add that my 19 mo old twin boys are going through a phase of eating very little some days.

As an example (on a typical day): maybe 6 to 8 or so teaspoons of cereal/porridge and 2 or 3 small cubes of fruit at breakfast.

About 7 to 10 small spoons at lunchtime, eg, a couple of carrot rings, a few peas, maybe one tiny mouthful of broccoli, one mouthful of something like potato or rice and one mouthful of meat.

A quarter of a slice of toast or bread at teatime with a few spoons of baked beans or scrambled eggs. Followed by Half a pot of yogurt or fruit puree.

Snacks on fruit/crackers mid morning and mid afternoon but very little.

Drinks about 6oz of formula milk first thing in morning and 9oz last thing at night but not always finished.

It really doesnt seem to add up to much at all, even when i offer treats like biscuits/ milky way/ choc buttons etc its not all eaten. They just dont seem to have an appetite most days although even few days or so they do eat better as if they are making up for it. I do worry because they are small although they have always followed their curve on percentile chart. One is on 25th percentile, the other only just hanging onto the 2nd percentile. GP and Health Visitor both say i have nothing to worry about.

Could anybody else with 18 - 19 DC give any comparisons?

i meant to write cows milk btw not formula!

i am NOT an expert on eating problems

but i'm a little confused as to why people would suggest to cut back on bf ( which has lots of calories) to get the child to eat more food ( which has less calories)

" In the second year (12-23 months), 448 mL of breastmilk provides:
o 29% of energy requirements
o 43% of protein requirements
o 36% of calcium requirements
o 75% of vitamin A requirements
o 76% of folate requirements
o 94% of vitamin B12 requirements
o 60% of vitamin C requirements
-- Dewey 2001"

from kellymom

Sounds like she ate a good amount for breakfast and dinner, just not for lunch. Remember we only have stomachs as big as a clenched fist (ideally, if you consistently overeat, it'll get bigger), so you can imagine for a toddler, thats a very small portion of food at any one time.

Have you tried giving some fruit or like veggie sticks as snacks inbetween meals to top up energy levels and keep the bowels regular? Or cubes of cheese/ham for fat and protein (though my DD hated cheese at this age, only just started to come round to it). Maybe a soft-boiled egg with soldiers for breakfast, more fun to eat and nutritious than porridge with water. I don't give my DD of 2.5 cows milk since she turned 2 (as a drink), I think cows milk has alot to answer for tbh.

I like the sound of the meals you're giving, the fatty meat will keep her going whilst providing protein to help her grow, much better than lean meat like chicken breast or white fish.

My dd hardly ate anything and was a skinny little thing for years and years (leggings looked like trousers and I had to fold over and sew the waistbands). She started eating a decent amount around the age of 8 and put on a bit of weight. Last summer (aged 11) she started eating a fair bit more and now she's actually got a bit of a tummy on her so I actually have to watch what she eats now (not a diet but just making sure she doesn't eat too many sweet snacks). Never thought I'd hear myself saying that about her!!!!

longtime, my DD1 was like that- hardly ate a thing till she was 11 and suddenly whooshed up. She's never been anything other than a skinny bean though. DD2 on the other hand has always eaten like a horse and was always tiny, until she turned 11 and started eating like two horses- she's now quite sturdy-looking at 13 and I look at her and worry slightly as well.

Kristina, I'm not planning on cutting back her feeds as it's the only thing that she really enjoys eating and to my mind by far the best nutrition she could have. I reckon according to your table (thank you btw) that she's still having the best part of a litre a day incidentally, so she's probably getting pretty much everything she needs! It's not really very surprising I suppose that she doesn't eat much.

Rev- I try to get calories into her as much as possible- hence the fatty meat and frequent avocado. The lack of dairy in her diet is a problem as it also removes a lot of fat. I have to add lots of olive oil to her vegetables (she quite likes sweet potato) to bump up her fat intake. Snacks are a bit of a non-starter I'm afraid as she's never hungry enough for them.

mums- that sounds quite reassuring! We weighed her yesterday and she's 8.5kg, which puts her somewhere between the 2nd and 9th centiles, where she's been since about 4 months old.

Sounds like my DD - hated dairy, BF, hardly ate solids but never did, however she always hated mush and only ate finger food. I had terrible morning sickness with my second pregnancy and I slowly cut down the BF when she was nearly 2 for my sake more than hers. After a couple of weeks of no BF she starting eating and didn't stop. I don't think she ever got used to eating food and just wanted the boob. It may be a developmental thing or it may be the BFing.

Eating solids is important for speech development though and I do wonder if DD was slow at starting to speak due to BFing. Although when she did just before she was 2 she spoke full sentences - who knows.

Second child self weaned before he was one and I did the same