15 month old hardly eating anything.

[Softlysoftlycatchymonkey]

Dd has gone back to hardly eating any solids and is starting to wake up in the night for a feed

She will eat fruit till it's coming out of her ears, but normal food she has gone right off. It's slightly gone worse since she was Ill a few weeks ago.

She is still having formula

When she turned one I was all set to take her bottle and dummy but dp and my dgm convinced me to let her keep it. So were practically back to all milk now.

Today for breakfast I gave her fruit toast and banana and a cup of full fat milk. She actually drank the milk, licked the butter if the toast and left it with the banna.

I have her full fat milk in a bottle to have her nap with.

She has left the sausage and mash I made her for lunch . I made pancakes and eggs but she just licked the butter off. She won't eat veg.

She has eaten a hand full of strawberrys. I know she is holding out for her formula.

She is in bed by half six with a bottle of formula while I read. She will be starving early hours.

Any advice?

My DS was the same - started at 10 months after a hideous bout of croup.

He wasn't the sort of child you could leave hungry at night by refusing him a bottle - plus we didn't want to leave him hungry!

We tried lots of things but most successful was slowly watering down the bottle by reducing the amount of formula that went in (and eventually topping up cows milk with water).

Not an overnight difference but within a week his eating was better as we were breaking the cycle - he wasn't getting most of his calories from a nighttime feed so he was forced to branch out during the day.

He's nearly 3 and not the most adventurous eater in the world but at least eats fairly reliably and healthily.

Agree on starting to water down the night time bottles. Could you drop the formula completely and offer cows milk instead?

She only needs 300 ml a day so could you cut out the nap bottle? You might need to find another way to get her asleep

Tomorrow could you include the milk in her breakfast? Something like ready brek with strawberries and water to drink?

What time does she wake and what times are you offering food?

Thanks guys. She normall wakes at 6:30 has formula bottle , toast and banana. Lately though she has dropped the banana and toast. While she was Ill she was having a another bottle then going for a nap for around two hours and the waking up - maybe having a sandwich then bottle then bed. But she can live on sandwiches !

I'm going to start mixing the formula with cows milk.

She gets offered food all day but refuses it. If I don't look at her she will have a pick.

I know she is filling up on formula but this makes me thing there's a little bit of a control issue starting about eating too.

You need to stop offering food all day. Just offer at meal times which will preferably be a decent length of time after her last bottle of milk. If she's having milk between meals there's no need to offer snacks too.

Consider mixing night time bottles with extra water and reducing the overall amount offered so her body stops expecting a meal at night.

If she wants to live on sandwiches that's fine. There are toddlers with much worse diets.

Try to be very relaxed about food. Never pick it up and offer to put it in her mouth, praise her for eating or try to persuade her to eat. Reverse psychology is a much better approach. If she won't eat at a mealtime just let her get down.

Is she completely better? If you're not sure it might be worth getting her ears and throat checked.

Assuming she's ok, I'd offer her a beaker of milk and her breakfast when she wakes up in the morning. If you have a DH maybe he could give her breakfast so you could catch up on your lost sleep and they can have some bonding time

I'd let her have free access to water all day but stop offering food constantly. Just offer her something every 2 to 3 hours, as you probably eat and if she refuses, assume she's not hungry.

So a day could look like this:

6.30 Breakfast - Ready Brek with chopped banana, blueberry muffins, eggy bread with berries or mashed banana on toast.

9.30 snack - cheese straws and a few halved grapes

12 lunch - sardines on toast, savoury muffin, omelette, cheesy pitta fingers etc

2.30 pm - snack and milk, things like dried figs, carrot sticks with hummus or a could of small breadsticks with cream cheese or just a bit of fresh fruit.

5pm dinner and pudding - spag Bol, chicken and roasted veg (sweet and she might just eat it), toad in the hole, fish pie etc followed by natural yogurt and fruit or even a small piece of cake like banana bread.

Milk before bed.

Have you tried any other ways settling her in the night? This article from Dr Sears has some good tips.

Are you getting her outside at least twice a day too? The daylight can help to reset their clocks

I would stop giving her bottles. initially cut down to 1 a day at night. Then do away with that one. Assuming she has teeth you have to brush them after the bottle anyway so do you do this when she's asleep?

How are you getting on now Monkey?