weaning help-please!!!

[somersetlass]

my 7 and a half month ds has never been easy to feed since i started him on solids 2 months ago, but he has become increasingly difficult and often point blankly refuses to eat anything. his general feeding pattern is milk and petit filou at 7am, 3 cubes of veg puree at 11.30ish with tiny bit of milk to settle him to sleep at 12.30pm, 180ml milk at 2.30pm, 5 tsp baby rice plus 2 cubes of apple puree at 5pm and then a feed of anything between 100-200mls at 7pm before bed. as i said, a lot of that food often gets left. have also given him finger food to practise with. he absolutely refuses to ever have any protein and am fed up of wasting time and money cooking chicken dishes that get thrown away. also worried that i'm not progressing onto more of a variety of food. any advice-please!!!!

[notsolilKel]

is there anything he will eat happily? if so, go with that (if he's anything like my DS, these 'favourites' will only last a few days then it will be something else, e.g. bananas, cheese, organix puffs, cheerios, yogurt...).

As someone else said most calories and nutrients are still coming from milk, which my GP once reminded me, is actually complete "food." So try, try not to worry too much about the variety or passing stages of pickiness. Hard to not worry I know our instinct is to FEED!

My DS is no 13.5mo and I still quite often rely on the following trick - give finger food (e.g. cheerios or bits of bread) to start with, then squeeze in spoonfuls of other food in between his self-feeding bites.

Good luck!

[somersetlass]

thanks for the responses. very possible that teeth could be coming through- no sign yet, but lots of messy nappies and i hear that's a sign?! lots of finger food is a very good idea as he does like practising- just concerned that not a lot gets consumed! will keep trying- thank you, always nice to have someone to turn to!

[QueenDragonofSoup]

Have you tried just letting him feed himself with finger food and ditching the purees altogether? Most of his calories should be coming from milk at this age so I wouldn't worry about the solids.

DD still won't eat protein at 15 months old unless it's well hidden but it'll be in the milk so don't worry about that.