What age is appropriate to expect a child to 'eat up'?

[DreamyParentoid]

My DD is 1 year and 3 months. She used to be fairly experimental as an eater but now is eating very little at each meal. She is having about 4 bottles of 9oz of goats milk formula a day if you include a bottle before bed and a bottle that settles her again in the night. I am currently exploring giving her bits of tasty morsels after she has got down from the table and has gone off to play to try to increase the volume she eats. But generally her will is evolving and she is more likely to say no to things, even things that she has really liked last time she ate them.

Except always loves olives!

Any suggestions?

Is she having the milk before her meals?

It is quite a lot of milk for a baby her age. I would try to cut oir at least one bottle

By that age mine was actually on three proper meals a day and milk only on waking and after bath. And was night weaned. I actually think you sometimes have quite a small window of opportunity with food and that its best to ramp it up to family food.

my daughter was exactly the same, the health visitor recommended cutting back her milk to two a day so i compromised with three. she said a meal/snack that is dairy based such as cheese or yoghurt counts as good as formula.
i still sit with her and eat "meals" but also include a lot of snacks. i make her sit and eat rather than run around and eat, but not at the table for these so that there is novelty eg have a "picknick" sat together on the kitchen floor. i tend to give her a little something just before we set off somewhere as an energy boost, then carry snacks around with me all day.
toddlers burn energy so quickly but have such small tummies, and at the same time are experimenting with getting to say "No", so i'm trying not to worry. some days she eats loads at meals and other times hardly anything.
i also read that they like the same things all the time rather than constant change so i've stopped panicking and giving her a million things.
-breakfast is either a wheetabix of fresh porridge, she will eat half a plate and be full but i keep it and offer it an hour/two hours later and she finishes it quite happily.
-she loves frozen peas and sweetcorn, ricecakes, rasins and pitted prunes. i make flapjack-some days she devours it, others she ignores it. same with bannanas
-if she's had a bad day i give her a treat of mango lassiefrozen mango cubes blitzed with plain yoghurt, she loves it+is packed with energy and calories
-best snacks i've found are breadsticks, cubes of cheese, slices of peeled apple, dried mango. i always carry 2-3 of these around in a box.

hope that helps! if only to know you are not alone!! it is so annoying isn't it, when you know they used to eat it?!

Blimey thats a lot of fibre for a one year old waffling. Mine would have got completely bunged with that. Mind you in our family we are that way inclined. Sigh.

with her milk she now has one bottle before her day nap and one before bed, but each day she has some cheese or some yoghurt and breakfast is with her milk too if that makes sense? so maybe cut down her milk or try including it in her meals more?

haha!! if only, i am so sick of changing nappies

My 12 mo twins only have two cows milk feeds now, 5oz in the morning and 7oz at night. They eat like gannets the rest of the day - today they had readybrek, strawberries and bananas and some of my toast at breakfast, left over roast lamb, mash, carrots and cabbage for lunch (plus apple crumble and custard for pudding) and pasta with ratatoille at tea, and squeezed in some fruit, rice cakes and yoghurts at snacktimes.
28oz seems a lot of milk

Yes our sort of menu used to look a lot like ceevee's.

Is she cows milk intolerant? Why are you still giving formula?

Still she is into the fussy window of toddlerhood but like others I'm confused she's not eating bigger meals.

That is a HUGE amount of milk for a child that age!

Thats a LOT of milk - but my DD wasn't night weaned until 19months and sure as hell had 3 good feeds if not 4 a day at that age. I'd say you could try giving less milk inbetween meals - at the end of the day though she will eat when she is good and ready, DD didn't get eating till she was 14months and hasn't stopped since!

But she certainly wasn't eating the quantity of meals listed above until she was much much older, she now eats everything put in front of her except for broccoli and cabbage which she flicks off her plate with a sullen expression

That's a colossal amount of milk, I'm not surprised she's not hungry! She really doesn't need milk 'feeds' as such any more - she should be eating more or less what you eat - three meals plus a couple of snacks a day.

I would change the overnight bottle to water for a start, drop the daytime bottles too. You can keep the bedtime one if you think it'll ease the transition but you must brush her teeth after it. I'd suggest a Weetabix for breakfast or porridge, a small piece of toast for a snack, a sandwich for lunch before her nap, maybe half a banana as a snack mid afternoon and then some sort of pasta with protein for supper.

Thank you all very much! Sorry not to reply sooner :) My step son came to stay from Germany and borrowed my internet connection cable so I haven't been able to respond.

But in that time I have cut her down to two bottles a day, one of 6-7ml before her nap and one of 9ml before bedtime. I've cut out night time feeds and that is definitely making a big difference to how much she eats at breakfast and supper so that is fab.

Your advice has all been most helpful and now I think I just need to find more interesting foods. Thanks again.