18mo 'fussy' eating - is this normal?

[BrightFish]

I know that toddlers can be a bit fussy in their eating habits and decide to restrict their food intake but DD eats very few foods apart from fruit. She eats almost no protein at all. She often just pushes her finger into food then refuses it. Recently she has started retching to the point of being sick just touching or looking at cheese. Does this sound familiar? I don't know of any other toddlers whose diet is so restricted and wonder whether I should be worried, especially about the retching/vomiting bit...

While being fussy can be normal vomiting isn't although my dd does retch if we give her fish pie.

I think its safe to say that she does like cheese so I'd offer her just what you are eating and if you are eating something cheesy, its fine to give her something different.

Some things that helped us were:

Giving small portions, they can always ask for more
Get with them and keep it light and chatty
Don't comment on what they are or aren't eating
Don't give an alternative, hard I know but if she is hungry she will eat

You might also like the book My Child Won't Eat by Carlos Gonzalez.

Ds went through this. He has eaten home made food since day dot and ate anything. Then all of a sudden, all he wanted was shreddies, croissants or cheese! It lasted about 2 weeks, but as long as he was eating something I wasn't too worried. Then he went back to normal. He's 2 next month, and has his favourite things, but eats most things tbh.
He never wretched though so can't comment on that.

Thank you both for your replies, especially the book recommendation and suggestions Jilted. I find it a struggle to keep things light and chatty when she refuses food, because from eating almost everything before her first birthday, now she's down to just six foods and I'm getting more and more concerned. Probably my tense expression is putting her off even more!

And I totally failed at letting her go hungry, she was heartbroken when I tried telling her it was what's on the table or nothing. I wondered if she's a little young for that approach at the moment.

Try to look on it as not being strict, simply trust her to eat when she is hungry. If she is refusing a meal she's just not hungry enough to eat it

Keep a food diary too. It will help you relax when one meal is hardly eaten as you will see what she has eaten over the week.

Its also normal for toddlers and children to eat hardly anything on sone days and never stop on others.