Cries at meal times 9mo

[murphy36]

Every solid meal DS cries and struggles until I get one spoon in his mouth. Then he eats.

It's been like this for maybe a month and I'm starting to worry. At first I thought it was teething, but any other teething symptoms he had have stopped, but he still cries when given solids.

I'm worried we continued with lumps or something when it hurt him and now he hates eating because of negative association.

If he is so little I would start again with the food. Sit him in his high chair with you when you're eating. Give him bits off your plate he might manage onto his tray so he can help himself - or a spoon loaded with something if you'd rather. Don't put anything in his mouth yourself. Chat to him about nothing and try to make meal times pleasant - just don't worry if he doesn't eat anything as long as he's having enough milk.

You could have him checked out if you're worried he's actually injured but the only thing you can do is relax because he'll pick up on your tension if you stress and then it's all over!

Good luck.

I think you're right about not getting stressed about it

I wish I knew the answer, because we have something similar with 8mo DS, except he's usually too upset to accept a mouthful of food on a spoon, but finger food on the tray calms him enough so that after he has mashed it about a bit eaten it, he'll happily take some food on a spoon.

I have two theories, which unfortunately are diametrically opposed.

The first is similar to yours and would involve backing off on solids a bit.

The other is that he wants the food, but is impatient. The reasoning come his bottle behaviour. When it's time for a bottle, he's happy enough right up to when he sees it. Then he gets unhappy while we get him sitting on our lap and put on the bib, but is totally happy once the bottle gets into his mouth. Our theory is that once he sees the bottle, he wants it now.

So, we think it could be similar with the high chair. He knows it means food, so maybe he's just impatient.

Unfortunately, we haven't figured out which it is. It's too bad, because meal times were fun for the first month or so.

For us, it seems it was tooth pain that had tainted meal times. He's paused teething and a week or so he's now happy to be fed and is very hungry again

How about you give him something he can pick up and eat himself?

Carrot sticks/crisps by organix used to be popular with my DD. or soft pears.

murphy, I'm glad to hear it, and it gives me some hope that things will get better again soon for us, too