7 month old will not be fed!

[Cornberry]

My little girl has been on solids for about 8 weeks on and off with little success. She is BF on demand and when she was 5 months the HV said she was definitely ready to start solids. I wanted to wait until 6 months but she was grabbing at out dinners and I was worried she was hungry so we started a week later with tiny bits of mashed food. At fist she had a few mouthfuls but now she will not eat anything fed to her, she will only eat things she can feed herself, which really limits what she can eat other than sticks of fruit and broccoli and toast. Whenever the spoon comes near her she purses her lips and if we give her the spoon she usually throws it away. My concern is that we can't feed her enough variety to get all the nutrients she needs now. Any tips? Thanks!

At this age she will get a all her nutrients from the milk. Solid food shouldn't replace breast milk/formula, you're just getting her used to new tastes and textures. I would hold back a bit and just give her some finger food now and then. She will get a bit more interested as she gets older. The weening process is a long one.

How frustrating. I'm sure all of my DC went through the same stage of eating.

Have you tried giving her a spoon to hold while you feed her?

I did the whole purée thing with my first two DC. DC3 was very different and prefered to feed himself from as soon as he could, he was using a fork at 10 months old. I'd just put whatever we were having onto his high chair tray and he'd happily finger feed himself, right down to mash potato. You just need to think a little outside the box as to what to eat that an be picked up with hands.

Get the baby led weaning cookbook. I have a baby that won't be fed, however she just has what we eat (and has from 6 months)
Breakfast is mini shredded wheats with just enough milk to go soft, or bagel or crumpet or toast and peanut butter (smooth)

Lunch - hummus sandwiches or omelette or beans and fingers of toast (I mashed the beans into the toast before she got a pincer grip) or bread dipped in soup plus veggies

Dinner: fusilli pasta or penne work well plus Bolagnaise sauce or veggies in tomato sauce or tuna mayonnaise. Try casserole and new potatoes etc.

She will manage strips of meat even at this age. Baby food manufacturers want you to believe that everything needs mashing etc but it really doesn't for most children.

Good luck!

Scrambled egg
Sandwiches chopped in small squares

Lettuce
Celery to chump on

Rice cakes

Bread sticks

Lots of things to munch away on. Don't worry about the spoon thing just let her guide you. Do leave the spoon on her tray and she will soon get the hang of it

She's breastfeed.
She's 7 months old.

There's your answer.

Some children do not read the HV guidelines and don't start eating until they are older. They are fine and perfectly healthy and are getting all their nutrients.

DS did not 'start eating' really until he was well over 10 months. By this point I had driven myself half crazy 'trying to feed him' based on bollocks spouted by HVs and online guides.

Thank fuck for MN telling me ITS PERFECTLY NORMAL FOR CHILDREN NOT TO EAT SOLIDS UNTIL MUCH OLDER THAN THE ADVICE SUGGESTS.

I thought food was something children 'got' quickly and the weaning process was fast.

WRONG!!! Some children do get food. Some just don't. It does not matter WHAT you do or what method you try. They will not get it until THEY are ready. You can't force the issue (well you can, but that's more likely to cause issues than solve them).

DS totally refused spoons and even now at 19 months old only will allow himself to be spoon fed his real favs. Otherwise it all has to be put on a fork for him to feed himself now he is able or he'll try and feed it himself by hand (he's not quite got the loading thing himself yet). He has to be in control of his food.

All plans to do the 'healthy' approach went out the window too. If DS eats its a victory. Its double points if its healthy, but the main thing is he simply eats. We will have to have those other battles another day. Its not been for lack of trying.

So what your daughter is doing is 'better' than what DS did. Just small amounts are enough to start getting her used to flavours and textures. Nutrients are not the issue at 7 months. It will come in time. And that's the thing. Patience. Its a long race not a sprint.

Do yourself a favour. Spare yourself the mental torture and simply dont' try to force it. Let your daughter learn to eat at her own pace by simply making food available and not beating yourself up if she doesn't eat your lovingly made food. She might not for months yet. And don't get too caught up in the whole 'healthy' food guilt trip.

There is nothing wrong. Just a load of unnecessary pressure and poor advice out there.

My dd who is now 10, has never been fed off a spoon or from my fingers. She just out and out refused. I gave her pretty much what we were eating other than soup or gravy etc. she ate huge amounts of veggies, fruit and small bits of meat. She then slowly started using utensils and things moved on from their.

Mine also refused anything from a spoon that wasn't yoghurt.

Cooked carrot sticks, baby courgette cut in half or quarters (proper courgette just became too mushy, the skin holds it together), pasta, bolognase, pear slices, ripe kiwi into sticks, cucumber sticks.
Trying to think what else we did, sweet potatoes cut into sticks. Omelettes, cheese sticks.

Enjoy - oh and our dog was great for tidying up

Things to try

Hummus and pitta bread
Quiche - little squares
Cheese on toast
Pizza
Mine quite likes open faced tuna melts made on those sandwich thins
Pasta is always a winner- penne or fusilli
Fat noodles are good. Udon style with a tiny bit of sauce on them
Strips of meat like chicken, steak, pork fillet are good but my almost 8mo can also manage sausages (a once a month treat!) and meatballs if they are bite sized (he does have 4 teeth though).

Keep trying loaded spoons. I leave them on the highchair tray and if you back off, within a week or so she may come round and give them a try. I use two spoons at a time album not having to wrestle one out of his hands. Instead load up new spoon, put it on tray and the novelty of a new one means the drop the empty one and you can nab it.

Mat under highchair so you can recycle the food and don't over face them. 3 hits of food on the tray max at any time.

Many thanks for all your reassuring words :)

I second the recommendation for Gill Rapley's Baby-Led Weaning books. Also Carlos Gonzalez "My child won't eat".

I had a spoon refusenik too. We abandoned my lovingly prepared purees at 2 weeks in as it was making everyone utterly miserable, and followed his lead. We just adapted our own meals to be suitable, and gave him some of whatever we were having on his high chair tray - the BLW recipe book is good on this. As other posters have said, it's amazing what small ones can gum down if you're creative, including runny food if you pass them pre-loaded spoons or dippers. Sharing meals is great because it shows by example what eating is all about, and if the baby isn't hungry and chucks it all overboard, at least your time and effort preparing the meal hasn't been entirely wasted! Though I did use up some of the freezer stock of purees by spreading them on rice cakes or toast for DS.

All the foods mentioned already were favourites here too so I'll just add wagon wheel pasta, which was brilliant as he could pick it up easily and it held more of the sauce than penne or fusilli. Also, if you can face baking, savoury mini muffins.

Being honest, it was hard not to compare the quantities he ate with the amount that the spoon-fed baby birds all around us seemed to be consuming, and in the early months that did worry me. It was also a pain being the cabaret when we ate out with friends with spoon fed babies - he was spectacularly messy, I think partly due to temperament - and dealing with MIL's bafflement and offers of Ella's pouches when we visited. However, these were really all social issues. The important thing was that food and mealtimes for DS were fun, not a battle, and that he was getting what he needed from milk supplemented by the (small but slowly increasing) amount he could gum down.

It felt like a switch flipped around 9/10 months and food became a more serious business for him, though he was slower than our spoon fed friends to start to drop milk feeds. The bonus of having had a spoon refuser and let him feed himself from the start, was that we didn't have to go through the pain of transitioning him on to lumps and then finger foods and family meals, learning to eat was all just a natural progression. And by the time our friends were stressing about cutlery and mess as their little ones learned to feed themselves, DS was calnly getting on with it :-) He's now a well grown and fairly omnivorous 2 year old.

Babies are all different!

I don't know why HV completely ignore the WHO advice and push solids early. Drives me nuts. And babies generally grab anything they can at that age, food or not, but it doesn't mean they are ready for solids

Mine all enjoyed eating with one of these for foods they wanted but couldn't easily hold themselves, ie banana etc

www.superdrug.com/Munchkin/Munchkin-Fresh-food-feeder/p/546520?gclid=CPvD8ruzg8wCFbYV0wodCFkNXw&gclsrc=aw.ds

DD had loads of roasted veg to start with. Cut into chip batons and roasted in olive oil. Sweet potato and parsnip were her faves I remember.

I personally would not bother with the BLW book - look at MN and the babyledweaning.com website for theory but spend your money on books with recipes in. Great for when you run out of inspiration. I like the River Cottage Baby and Toddler book.

Also if you've already made loads of purees, stick them on toast or in pasta sauces so they don't go to waste!

DD2 absolutely refused solids until she was about 9 months. Then big sister kindly gave her a chocolate button, a couple of days later she accepted a lick of ice cream, and after that she decided to eat.
She wasn't a keen eater though until she was about 8yo when she suddenly discovered that she was hungry and since then has eaten everything in quantity.

I chose not to wean ds until he was 7.5yo, because if I'd weaned him at 6 months he would have been weaning over the time we were going away and I decided he didn't need it and it was easier for him not to be weaned then. I gave him a piece of toast at that age and he ate it fine. He's a good eater still.

I do have the baby weaning book and the Ella's purple book, and we do spread things on toast. I think we will persevere and be patient, but I do worry about her not eating enough, though I feel better hearing your stories, so thanks. All good advice, and yes, the wisdom of mums netters is so much better than HV advice. They are infuriating, and contradict each other too.

When I had dd1 the advice was to wean on the dot of 4 months. At 4.5months I mentioned to my HV I was considering starting weaning that week or so. At which point she all but self combusted with anguish. Apparently if you hadn't weaned on the dot of 4 months she would never learn to chew...
Strangely I didn't believe her.