8m and still won't eat? Any tips/tricks?

[PonderLand]

I'm starting to run out of ideas. He's CMPA and doesn't like his own milk in foods. He likes coconut milk I think. He had 1-2 spoons of that with weetabix once!
The most he's eaten since 5 1/2 months is 4 spoons of leek and potato purée. Now we're at 8 months and we've not progressed at all. I tried blw for the first month then tried puréed and spoon feeding him. He closes his mouth and turns his head. Gets angry and cries. I'm trying to stop before he gets to that point as I can sense him becoming agitated about food in general. For context he had a stay in hospital last week as his blood sugars were low. The consultant seemed to blame me for him not being weaned. It made their job a lot harder to get his sugar levels up as he wouldn't take any high sugar foods. The consultant told me he could grow to have a bad relationship with food it is carries on... any ideas of new recipes? I think finger foods would work best. He likes holding cucumber, tomato, peppers etc. He doesn't like getting his hands messy lol.

Will he eat toast, or rice cakes? I find spreading a bit of puree (or peanut butter) on either of those and giving them to my DS often goes down well when he's being fussy.
He also loves those baby 'crisp' type things (organix carrot sticks/sweetcorn rings, hap-pea snaps) - have you tried him with them?

He will hold toast but doesn't really eat it. He seems to have the mouth movements but doesn't put it near his mouth lol! He tries to trick me I think.
The organic stuff are a huge hit with him! He's been eating the carrot ones since I got a bit desperate at about 6 1/2m. He eats about 1/3 of them.
Good idea about spreading purée on rice cakes! He's not got the patience to suck them & gets bored quite easy but I might try that with some toast/crumpets tomorrow.
I stayed in today and made a few purees. I've also ordered a different seat for him. Clutching at straws maybe! I saw today that he's just cut his two bottom teeth so maybe I might see some improvements soon, he seemed to go backwards since he stayed in hospital.

What Ian he having on a daily basis, can you write down his intake of solids and fluids for us to get the full picture?

Ian = intake is

The more you force the food, the more he will resent it and that will cause a bad relationship with food

Every time he should be eating. Put him in his chair and give him finger food.

Sit with him and let him see you eat. If he tries it, fab give him praise

If he doesn't, don't worry about it, take it away and give him his milk as normal.

Keep perseveraning like that and eventually curiosity will get the better of him.

Let him have his own spoon and some yoghurt too. Will make a mess but it's likely to go in his mouth too

Yoghurt and dairylea really got my baby interested in food, and packets of baby food - ones with more than one ingredient. Once she started to like food I switched her to my recipes /purees. I agree with not forcing anything, it'll just make it worse. Let him get messy and stick his fingers in everything too, once they've explored what it is they are more likely to not mind trying it. Good luck!

Just to encourage you, he's MUCH keener on food than DD was at that age - then, if I managed to get anything in her mouth, she'd spit it out. If she couldn't spit it out, she'd vomit to get it out. The low point was when she vomited because she had yoghurt in her mouth.

She is doing better now, though she still drinks a lot of milk. I think it's only in the last year (possibly less) that she's switched to having the majority of her calories from solids. She's now 4.... We did see a dietitian, but didn't find their advice helpful.

Will your DS drink milk? I only ask because DD's enthusiasm for milk meant her weight was always OK (indeed at one point a bit high). That tempered our desperation to get her to eat.

No helpful suggestions, only sympathy.

He has 7oz every 3/4 hours. He wakes up at 6:30/7ish, I take him down and we have breakfast, which could be toast with dairy free spread and jam, weetabix with coconut milk, porridge with his formula, crumpets with dairy free spread.
Usually he will pick up the toast/crumpets and get a few sucks of them. I normally give him 20 minutes before clearing it away.
As he doesn't eat much he starts whinging/crying/shouting until I feed him. Normally this is 8:30ish after I've got him dressed.

Lunch can be any time from 12 till 2:30 depending on when he naps. I alternate between finger food or puréed. Today we had tuna pasta, he liked pushing them off the tray but didn't eat any, he did have a few sucks of cucumber and tomato. Usually after that I give him an organix carrot stick or similar and put him down to play while I clear it away.

Tea time is between 5/6:30 depending if he naps or not. Tonight we tried shepherds pie, last night he had pea and courgette purée. I give him a spoon and I put some on the tray. He keeps his mouth shut the whole time, he did have one taste of the pea purée, licked his lips too! But then didn't want anymore? If I keep trying then he gets really upset and I'm trying to avoid that so I give up after about 10 minutes. Tea times are the least successful, probably due to the fact he's tired.

I give him his milk after I do solids now, I have tried it the other way and had similar results. Frustrated/thrashing about/crying.
I've tried feeding him with the tv as a distraction, I've tried putting it infront of him and getting on with other things, washing up etc, I cheer, clap, praise! When I leave him to it he usually finds a very interesting buckle or something else that is inedible.
He does like water and drinks that no problems.

In the hospital I had to syringe 5ml of sugared solution every 5 minutes for 6 hours. Every single time was forced unfortunately. The nurses didn't want to insert a tube, they said it would be more stressful for him. I disagreed but I had to keep trying to get his sugars up. Eventually he had to have the tube fitted.
Since then he's (understandably) been angry at anything near his mouth that isn't what he's expecting (milk).

Is he hungry? I know it sounds silly but you do really have to reduce their milk intake a bit to get them into food. Have you tried cutting down milk and not giving bottles too close to meals.
Also, could you leave little plates of snacks on the floor for him to munch as he plays?
If he associates the high chair with stress you may need to undo that for a little while.
Also give him sweet things like fruit purees.. Babies like sweet stuff so that might be a good way in

Sorry just seen your reply. Maybe ask to speak to a peadiatrician just for some new ideas?

Yes he drinks his milk! His weight is fine, I have mentioned it to previous HCP, health visitor GP etc and they always told me not to worry. I did worry of course but I thought it wasn't that big a deal. I don't want to put pressure on it and I don't want him to hate meal times due to my own stress/anxiety.
Last week the consultant was quite blunt about it, we also had several (junior) doctors telling us he should be eating solids by now.

I'm going to make some veg cake type things tomorrow, and try porridge fingers that I've just read about for his breakfast.
I think foods that he is in control of will be the best option.

I don't think he realises that the stuff I put in front of him will take away his hunger. It's like he just hasn't made that connection yet. I do wait as long as I can before giving him milk but that doesn't result in more intake of solids, it just makes him more frustrated. He doesn't chew toys or teething things either.

I always thought 'food was for fun' until a year old & that you shouldn't put too much pressure or emphasis on getting them to eat solids as they get what they need from their milk? I'm pretty sure DS wasn't eating much in the way of solids at 8months. He's a strapping 2.5y/o now who eats most things.

I thought exactly the same! That's why I've never truly panicked when I've seen other babies his age chomping on a sandwich.
He will eventually eat right? I'm trying all I can but he is so adamant.
My parents keep telling me to give him dairy-free chocolate. Apparently that will be a magic cure.
He seems to prefer savoury foods to sweet but I do try him with sweet purees or offer poached pears/apples.
I'll try banana on toast this week, see how that goes.

I'm sure the stress of the hospital situation has made things worse. And possibly as he was poorly when in hospital he would be unlikely to want to eat anything anyway. Even when DS was admitted to hospital at 16 months with croup nobody batted an eyelid that he didn't touch any solids while he was in as he just wanted the comfort of milk in his bottle. If I were you I'd just go back to being relaxed about it in case he's picking up on your stress. Hopefully if you're chilled, he'll relax more & start to try more things. Plus I do think the teeth will help - did with DS who didn't get his teeth until 9 months.

Thinking back to the types of things DS ate early on... sweet potato & chicken purée was a hit, def the organix carrot sticks etc, mashed potato, banana porridge, and yoghurt.

DD will be starting solids in another month so I'm sure I'll be pulling me hair out again soon.

He will eventually eat. Don't listen to rubbish like giving him chocolate or other junk foods, just keep offering a variety of flavours, textures, temperatures and formats basically and keep it low stress, which I appreciate, is the most difficult part.

I tried all the crap advice with DS and it did nothing except made him develop bad habits. He got there with solids when he was ready. I think it can be a control thing too.

I don't understand why they won't let you put the sugar solution in his milk (bit of expressed in a bottle if you're breastfeeding) or in one of those medicine dosing dummies if he'll suck? I can understand them being worried about his sugars but really, milk (breast or formula) is much more calorie and nutrient dense than any solid foods or purees anyway, so it always seems like an odd fear to me and it's not as though you are withholding food from him. Plus most babies his age you wouldn't normally feed loads of high sugar foods so it seems a bit strange if they are blaming the lack of solids for the low blood sugar? Or have I misunderstood that - and they are just concerned as a separate thing?

Sorry Bertie I didn't make it clear in the update. He got a sickness bug last week and threw up constantly, he refused milk in the hospital, which is why I had to use the syringe. His blood sugar levels were dropping even with the solution as he had (unbeknown to us at the time) hypoglycaemia, in the end after syringing fluid, tube feeding etc they put him on an IV of glucose to stabilise his sugars. He was on that for 24 hours and the concerns were that once he stops the IV and carries on refusing milk his sugars will go down again, so they were hoping he'd eat some high sugar fruit/fruit juice to give his sugars a boost if he gets low bloods again. Luckily he took milk once his sickness subsided.
I didn't get their thinking, why would he refuse milk but accept solids? The thing I'd been trying for 3 months! But I suppose they just wanted a quick fix and to let us go home.

Just to add - we don't know why his sugar levels dropped during the sickness bug. They've taken blood tests etc and we'll get the results at the end of April. It could of just been his body not behaving correctly and a freak occurrence. We've got solution to give if they're low again. Although how we'd know if they were low is anyone's guess as he displayed no signs he was having a hypo

Oh poor thing :( I see what they mean though but fruit juice isn't solids, is it? You could give that through a bottle if you needed to.

As others have said it's quite normal for them to go off solids and just want milk when they're poorly anyway so I'm surprised that the doctors were odd about that. But I'm glad you're somewhat sorted now anyway!

He only drinks water/milk. Sugared juices etc that we tried in hospital had to be forced. I'm hoping he won't have another hypo so don't need to force anything, its awful as he is so adamant about things. Even things like checking his mouth for teeth, cleaning outside of ears, bogeys, cutting nails back etc I give up on.

Could TT affect weaning? I've had a few HCP spot his tongue tie but they've always said it's not worth getting cut as it didn't affect bf or bottle feeding.

Hmm I don't know - quite possibly, as they have to move the tongue to swallow. Perhaps it's hurting him and that's what's putting him off eating as too hard work?

I would relax the whole 'three meals a day, eating in his highchair' business for now
He's reluctant to even put food near his mouth, so everytime you put him in his highchair he'll know it's food time and he'll clamp his mouth shut and as he gets older and more stubborn this will get more frustrating and you'll get less food in him
I would just have brightly coloured plates of food around while he's playing, different plates each time, even use a muffin tin to put tiny bits in to keep it interesting and peak his curiosity
Make sure you eat some and be enthusiastic every now and again and offer him some
If he takes a few nibbles throughout the day that's better than nothing

Also maybe play with food? Cooked pasta, bits of crackers etc in cups/bowls for scooping or bananas, avocados etc in a bucket to mush?
Just to get him comfortable around food, he may start to lick it from his hands?

I'd basically throw the rule book about 'mealtimes' out of the window and just focus on getting him interested in food for now

oh I'd definitely go to GP about tongue tie - that may well be the reason!

I'm absolutely with NoCapes on this.

It's good that you've got a new highchair for when the time comes to reintroduce one, I think.